Networks of networks: a citation network analysis of the adoption, use, and adaptation of formal network techniques in archaeology

This article aims to evaluate how a citation network analysis could contribute to a review of a specific corpus of archaeological literature, and how the publishing and citation behaviour of archaeologists affects the use of citation network analysis techniques for archaeology. It will do this through a case study that aims to trace the adoption of formal network methods by archaeologists. A review of the archaeological literature will be confronted with an analysis of a citation network consisting of 33,556 publications and 42,993 citations. The results indicate that a citation network analysis succeeds in quantitatively expressing the intuitive results drawn from the literature review. It also allows for the archaeological literature to be re-contextualized in a larger multidisciplinary body of literature. However, the use of citation network analysis for archaeology is significantly restricted by the limitations of the available citation databases, which are still less representative for the humanities and the social sciences than for the natural sciences. It is suggested that different disciplines in the humanities require distinct strategies for citation data collection and analysis.