Digital Tools and Ancient Empires: Using Network Analysis and Geographic Information Systems to Study Imperial Networks in Hellenistic Anatolia

An increasing number of historians and sociologists have theorized empires as a series of interlocking networks of social and political interactions. Less attention has been paid to how digital techniques can be deployed to study the structure of those networks, their geospatial context, or their visualization, especially in the construction of maps. Advances in digital gazetteers, social network analysis (SNA) software, and historical geographic information systems (HIGS) are fundamentally altering this paradigm, enabling the discovery, modeling, and visualization of complex geospatial networks. Through a study of the Hellenistic Attalid Kingdom in Anatolia (282–133 b. c. e.), this article demonstrates a digital methodology and analytical framework that enables any historical project to create a digital gazetteer of people, places, and events; use linked open data (LOD) enhance that gazetteer with data from other projects; and display the results as a dynamic geospatial network that can be used for research and pedagogy.