From Words to Maps – A Network Analysis Approach to Hittite Political Geography
The study of Hittite political geography often includes an a priori selection of a group of texts or regions that limits our understanding of the system as a whole (Barjamovic 2011, 66). This paper introduces a novel quantitative approach that avoids arbitrary limitations on regions or texts through the employment of network analysis. The primary dataset is a sample of over 20,000 Hittite toponyms, containing more than 2000 unique instances, created by Dr. Adam Kryszen through the project “Toponyme der Hethiter” (Kryszeń 2019). Drawing on Tobler’s first law of geography, which suggests that geographically close places are more related to each other than distant places (Tobler and Wineburg 1971), this study hypothesizes that the co-occurrence of toponyms in Hittite texts reflects their geographical relatedness. Therefore, the study expects the detected communities of the co-occurrence network to broadly correspond to geographical regions. The quantitative representation of toponyms allows the integration of textual evidence with archaeological and geographical data. To suggest localizations for disputed toponyms, the resulting networks are projected onto real-world maps using known geographical anchors. While this model cannot provide exact locations of places, it can support or challenge suggested localizations constructed through traditional methods.
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