Digital Classicist London seminar: Testing Paradigms with Big Data and Social Network Analysis

[Gabriel Bodard]

Warriors without War on Archaic Crete: Testing Paradigms with Big Data and Social Network Analysis

Friday, 31st July 2026, 17:00-18:30 BST, Institute of Classical Studies

Jesse Obert (University of South Florida)

Register to attend in person: https://ics.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/warriors-without-war-archaic-crete-testing-paradigms-big-data-social-network-analysis

Stream live: https://youtu.be/4vEP6zIXhgE

In the 1930s, G. T. Griffith described the Greek island of Crete as “a ready-made nursery for mercenaries” because Cretans were poor and violent in his own day. The island was still being integrated into the Greek State after centuries of resistance and guerilla warfare against the Ottoman Empire. Simon Hornblower repeated this same sentiment some fifty years later when he concluded that Cretans utilized mercenary service as “a kind of alternative to colonization, both being a form of emigration to escape poverty.” In the 1990s, Angelos Chaniotis cherry-picked the admittedly massive body of archaeological and epigraphic evidence—published in English, German, Greek, and Italian—to navigate the complex period between the islanders’ more peaceful histories as “Minoan farmers” and “Roman traders.” In the twenty-first century, scholars continue to describe Crete as an island gripped by “internecine conflict and interpolity warfare,” to quote Donald Haggis, without discussion or debate. 

In preparation for my current book project—entitled The Hoplite and the Polis: A History of Warriorhood on Archaic and Classical Crete—I collated all the archaeological, artistic, epigraphic, and textual evidence for violence on the island into a single digital database. I then visualized this legacy data using social network analysis. This process produced surprising results: there is ultimately very little evidence to support the academic consensus. Instead, I discovered a robust warrior culture that encouraged Pan-Cretan egalitarianism. Archery was prolific as a form of violence, but it was exclusively used for hunting and rituals that promoted camaraderie between elites from different cities. In this paper, I will illustrate how DH tools can help us test old paradigms, reassess legacy data, and integrate interdisciplinary evidence into our understanding of antiquity. 

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Dr Gabriel BODARD (he/him)
Reader in Digital Classics

Director of Studies (research): Digital Humanities Research Hub

Director of Studies (research): Institute of Classical Studies

Mailing address:

  Institute of Classical Studies

  University of London

  Senate House

  Malet Street

  London WC1E 7HU

 
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