A CAMEL DRIVER IN THE ACHAEMENID PERSIAN EMPIRE: SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS OF A NONELITE PROFESSIONAL AND THE PERSEPOLIS FORTIFICATION ARCHIVE<link href="#bics12035-note-0068"/>

Social network analysis is a rapidly expanding field for interpreting the interplay of relationships in the past. Scholars of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East have experimented with technologies of network analysis in attempts to approach numerous historical and archaeological questions from a new perspective. However, due to the fragmentary nature of our data, the complexities of past social interactions remain elusive. The evidence available in many of these social network analyses is seldom fine-grained enough to represent individual human actions; the data sets are constantly in need of manipulation, reconstruction, and speculation. With these caveats in mind, however, the sealed and dated imperial administrative documents of the Persepolis Fortification archive (509–493 BCE in the reign of Darius I of the Achaemenid Persian Empire) present an opportunity to study individuals with a rare degree of textual and visual information and detail. Moreover, it is possible to glimpse interactions among a variety of social groups beyond the narrow elite that is already well represented in many of our literary and archaeological sources. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to demonstrate the utility of a social network approach for exploring the complex data set of the Persepolis Fortification archive; and second, to display the potential of this analytical tool for understanding social life in the Persian Empire below the level of the highest elites of the court. The paper thus embraces numerous non-elites who were the beating heart driving this impressive, evolving, imperial system of vast geographical expanse and multicultural complexity.1 Dakizidda, a camel