Research and Collections Division, New York State Museum, Albany, NY 12230, USA.
Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, 250A Baldwin Hall, Jackson Street, Athens, GA 30602-1619, USA.
Sci Adv. 2017 Aug 9;3(8):e1700497. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1700497. eCollection 2017 Aug.
The dispersal of Iroquoian groups from St. Lawrence River valley during the 15th and 16th centuries A.D. has been a source of archaeological inquiry for decades. Social network analysis presented here indicates that sites from Jefferson County, New York at the head of the St. Lawrence River controlled interactions within regional social signaling networks during the 15th century A.D. Measures indicate that Jefferson County sites were in brokerage liaison positions between sites in New York and Ontario. In the network for the subsequent century, to which no Jefferson County sites are assigned, no single group took the place of Jefferson County in controlling network flow. The dispersal of Jefferson County populations effectively ended this brokerage function concomitant with the emergence of the nascent Huron-Wendat and Iroquois confederacies and may have contributed to the escalation of conflict between these entities. These results add to a growing literature on the use of network analyses with archaeological data and contribute new insights into processes of population relocation and geopolitical realignment, as well as the role of borderlands and frontiers in nonstate societies.
15 世纪至 16 世纪期间，易洛魁人从圣劳伦斯河谷的分散一直是考古学研究的课题。这里呈现的社会网络分析表明，位于圣劳伦斯河上游的纽约杰斐逊县的遗址在 15 世纪控制了区域社会信号网络中的互动。各项指标表明，在随后一个世纪的网络中，纽约和安大略的遗址之间存在杰斐逊县的中介联系。而在没有杰斐逊县遗址的网络中，没有任何一个群体能够取代杰斐逊县来控制网络流量。杰斐逊县人口的分散有效地结束了这一中介功能，同时新兴的休伦-温达特和易洛魁联盟也出现了，这可能导致了这些实体之间冲突的升级。这些结果增加了网络分析在考古学数据中的应用文献，并为人口迁移和地缘政治调整过程以及边境和前沿在非国家社会中的作用提供了新的见解。
