Mixing Emic and Etic Perspectives for Studying Small-Scale Communities of the Past: The Case of Pathyris (c. 165-88 BCE) (original) (raw)

Abstract

Some 30 km South of Thebes (modern Luxor) in Egypt, the subsidiary military camp of Pathyris (modern Gebelein) was established sometime between 165 and 161 BCE. For about 75 years – or three generations - an unusually rich body of surviving written sources pertaining to the lives and affairs of the Pathyrites allows for the small-scale community they formed to be studied in detail. The research project here presented, aims to study social and economic life in Ptolemaic Pathyris through a distinct network approach. It centres on its individual members and their interrelations as revealed by c. 450 texts associated with 21 ancient archives from the site. Particularly relevant here, is Social Network Analysis (SNA). By means of mapping a significant number of specific socio-economic relations in a systematic bottom-up approach, SNA can tackle the diversity of the source material and enable the relational data contained in the texts to be studied on an inter-archival, as well as an archive-by-archive basis. SNA offers new perspectives and methodological tools for organizing, analyzing and interpreting attributed relational data. In order to make sense of evolving patterns and observations, their meaning must though be read in relation to the larger picture. The talk argues for a balanced relation between emic and etic perspectives by highlighting (1) the project’s applied method of attributing node and edge entries with categorizing labels and (2) subsequent contextualisation of the networks in time and place. In both cases, pros and cons of emic and etic approaches are critically discussed.

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