In this chapter, we present the initial findings of the Mediterranean Connectivity Initiative as a self-reflexive critique of our own digital praxis. We begin with an overview of our project’s goals, methods, and history, and then progress to a critique of the approaches we have initiated. The first step in our method utilizes the social network visualization software Gephi, which allows us to reconstruct potential social networks in Ostia based on social, religious, familial, and political affiliations mentioned in Ostia’s inscriptions. The networks reconstructed offer tantalizing possibilities for thinking about how ancient peoples intertwined religious and social activities in urban contexts.

Next, we discuss some early results from the second phase of our project, which combines our abstract Gephi networks with GIS mapping of Ostia’s inscription distribution. In our study of the Porta Romana necropolis, for example, our approach was able to trace how epigraphic texts responded to shifting urban features. An initial pilot project concerning the distribution of inscriptions with cultic associations, discussed in the chapter’s conclusion, suggests that the combination of these two digital techniques will allow us to examine abstract social networks over geographic space. These comments, like our project, are intended to be the starting point of a broader conversation in the burgeoning field of ancient digital humanities about how to use these tools appropriately and what they can offer to us as scholars.