Graphs are a mathematical abstraction. Directed labelled graphs are not modelled as automata, but the other way round.
If you are looking for an “implementation” within “lower-level mathematics”, there are various possibilities for that:
As directed graphs
Every undirected graph can be seen as a directed graph subject to the condition that whenever there is an edge from a to b, there is an edge from b to a.
In the case of weighted graphs, we add the requirement that antiparallel edges have the same weight.
As sets
Ever since ZFC (and possibly before that) mathematicians have a tendency to model stuff as sets.
Then, a simple undirected weighted Graph would be a triple (V, E, w) with V the set of your vertices / nodes, E a subset of the powerset of V containing only two-elemental sets (The set {a, b} represents the edge between a and b.) and a weight function w: E -> IR.