The Challenges and Potentiality of Using Network Analysis in Exploring Interactions in the Southwestern Balkans during the Middle and Late Bronze Age

Sovjan, a pile-dwelling settlement located in southeastern Albania with a stratigraphic sequence extending from the Early Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age attesting continuous habitation, serves as a starting point for a discussion on the applicability of Network Analysis (NA) in the southwestern Balkans. The excavations of several settlements in the Lakes Region divided between modern Albania, Greece, and North Macedonia, together with an extensive survey of the area around the former Lake Maliq where Sovjan is located, permit an analysis of connectivity conducted at different spatial (from micro- to macro-regional) and temporal levels. Important changes in connectivity patterns can be discerned on the basis of technological and stylistic changes observable in the ceramics and the different interregional influences at play in Sovjan. The Early Bronze Age, with its contact networks that extend from the Carpathian region to Greece, is separated from the Late Bronze Age by the hitherto poorly researched Middle Bronze Age. Following this interim period in which networks shrink and change, far-reaching networks arise once again demonstrating influences from the Danube region and, above all, central Macedonia.