Extraction and analysis of a Trajan-related social network
- Copyright 2019-2020 Vincent Labatut
TrajanNet is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. For source availability and license information see licence.txt
- Lab site: http://lia.univ-avignon.fr/
- GitHub repo: https://github.com/CompNet/TrajanNet
- Data: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13143104
- Contact: Vincent Labatut vincent.labatut@univ-avignon.fr
This set of R scripts aims at analyzing a historical dataset describing the relationships between the Roman emperor Trajan and his entourage. It does the following:
- Extracts various networks based on some tabular data containing individual and relational attributes.
- Computes a number of statistics and generates the corresponding plots, for both the tables and graphs.
- Performs a sequence analysis of certain chronological attributes.
The raw dataset was manually elaborated by Gaëtane Vallet during her Master's thesis in ancient history. See her thesis (in French) for more information [V'18,V'20]. The files produced by the scripts (graphs, plots, tables...) can be obtained by executing them, but they are also directly available on Figshare.
Here are the folders composing the project:
- Folder
data
: contains the data used by the R scripts, as well as produced by them.- Folder
tables
: input data presented as the following CSV tablestrajan_attributes.csv
: individual description of each historical character in the dataset.trajan_careers.csv
: careers of the character, described as sequences of positions.trajan_positions.csv
: list of professional positions a character can hold.trajan_relations.csv
: connections between the characters.trajan_typical_careers.csv
: ideal careers, described as sequences of positions.
- Folder
nets
: networks procuded by the scripts, and the associated plots and tables.- Folder
all
: network containing all the types of links at once (multiplex signed network). - Folder
family
: network with only the family ties (uniplex signed network). - Folder
friend
: network with only the friendship ties (uniplex unsigned network). - Folder
pro
: network with only the professional ties (uniplex signed network). - Folder
unknown
: network with relationships whose exact nature is unknown (uniplex signed network). - Folder
signed
: signed network with no distinction between relationship types (signed collapsed multiplex network).- Folder
na-as-positive*
: network obtained by considering the links whose sign is unknown as positive ones. - Folder
na-as-ignored*
: network obtained by discarding the links whose sign is unknown. - Folder
*-closure
: closure of the signed network obtained using strong structural balance. - Folder
*-closure-poly
: closure of the signed network obtained using weak structural balance.
- Folder
- Folder
- Folder
attributes
: descriptive results obtained for the individual attributes. - Folder
sequences
: descriptive results obtained for the individual attributes.- Folder
withNAs
: gaps in careers are explicitly represented as missing values. - Folder
withoutNAs
: gaps in careers are not represented at all.
- Folder
- Folder
- Folder
src
: contains theR
source code.
You just need to install R
and the required packages:
- Install the
R
language - Download this project from GitHub and unzip.
- Install the required packages:
- Open the
R
console. - Set the current directory as the working directory, using
setwd("<my directory>")
. - Run the install script
src/install.R
.
- Open the
In order to extract the networks from the raw data, compute the statistics, and generate the plots:
- Open the
R
console. - Set the current directory as the working directory, using
setwd("<my directory>")
. - Run the main script
src/main.R
.
The scripts will produce a number of files in the subfolders of folder nets
. They are grouped in subsubfolders, each one corresponding to a specific topological measure (degree, closeness, etc.).
The verification.R
was used to check the consistency of the raw data. The rest of the scripts are just secondary functions called by main.R
.
igraph
package: build and handle graphs.signnet
: analysis of signed graphs.graphlayouts
: plot graphs.ggraph
: plot graphs.TraMineR
: sequence analysis.SDMTools
: misc.scales
: color conversion.circlize
: circos-type plots.plot.matrix
: matrix plots.alluvial
: alluvial diagrams.cluster
: cluster analysis.dendextend
: dendrogram-related features.
- Signed nets:
- Consider the evolution of the relationships
- Synchronous closure, separate the different steps until complete graph
- Structural similarity between spaniards / the rest (and other attributes)
- Multiplex plot of the different types of links (didn't find an appropriate tool)
- [V'20] Vallet, G. Les princes et les hommes : carrières et réseaux dans l’entourage de Trajan de 98 à 118 après J.-C., Second part of the Master's thesis, Avignon University, Human and Social Sciences Faculty, History Department, Avignon, France.
- [V'18] Vallet, G. L'entourage de Trajan : étude prosopographique de l'entourage du prince de 98-117 apr. J.-C., First part of the Master's thesis, Avignon University, Human and Social Sciences Faculty, History Department, Avignon, France.