About

Past Networks is the open online repository portal for finding network data about the human past. It contains metadata descriptions and links to where the datasets are stored. This data is crucial to enable comparative studies to understand long-term change in the social networks of our species.

Past Networks encourages open publication, documentation and re-use of past social network data in history, archaeology, classics, network science and related disciplines.

Community

Past Networks is an initiative by the main international communities in past network research. It is integrated with the Historical Network Research Journal publication process, and with the events organised by the communities.

Download Full Dataset

Every night a full export of all published networks is created in ndjson format, where each line is a json network object.

Please see individual datasets for license information.

Download Latest Export

How to Cite

Brughmans, T., Hermankova, P., Mazzamurro, M., Bjerregaard Vahlstrup, P., and Møldrup-Dalum, P. 2025 Past Networks: the open online repository portal for network data about the human past. https://pastnetworks.org

Acknowledgements

Past Networks has been created by the Past Social Networks Project directed by Tom Brughmans, and made possible by The Carlsberg Foundation’s Young Researcher Fellowship (CF21-0382).

We thank Aarhus University’s Centre for Humanities Computing, Peter Bjerregaard Vahlstrup and Per Møldrup-Dalum.

Carlsberg Foundation
Past Social Networks Project
Aarhus University
Center for Humanities Computing
Project co-director
Tom Brughmans
Project co-director
Project co-director
Petra Hermankova
Project co-director
Project co-director
Matteo Mazzamurro
Project co-director