Modeling People, Places, and Things: Revisiting Archaeology as Model-Based Science
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)
Ten years ago, Kohler and van der Leeuw proposed "rethinking archaeology as a model-based science," which makes conscientious use of simplified representations of socionatural systems in order to both build and apply archaeological theory. Since that time, use of computational modeling in archaeology has grown, topics being modeled have diversified, and methods for model-building have become more flexible and accessible. There has also been increasing interest in applying archaeological models to contemporary social and environmental issues, incentivizing integration with real world datasets from within and outside archaeology. This emphasis on application brings new opportunities and challenges, and invites revisitation of questions concerning model generality and equifinality. In this symposium, we focus on the topic of application in model-based archaeology, looking at how archaeologists have applied models, as well as how they would like them applied. The symposium is guided by three broad questions: First, how do we model people in the past, as individuals or aggregates, and who gets modeled? Second, what are the roles of space and place in a model, and when/how do they matter? And finally, how do we connect computational models to the things that compose the archaeological record and to other "real world" phenomena?
Other Keywords
Modeling •
Simulation •
Agent-based model •
agent-based models •
Geoarchaeology •
Model •
Subsistence Strategies •
Epistemology •
Lithic Variability •
Gis
Geographic Keywords
Kingdom of Sweden (Country) •
Kingdom of Norway (Country) •
French Republic (Country) •
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Nort (Country) •
Ireland (Country) •
Isle of Man (Country) •
Kingdom of Belgium (Country) •
Bailiwick of Guernsey (Country) •
Republic of Turkey (Country) •
Faroe Islands (Country)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-14 of 14)
- Documents (14)
- Can you Model my Valley? Particular People, Places and Times in Archaeological Simulation (2017)
- Density, Discard and Distraction: How Do We Form Inferences of Behavior from the Early Pleistocene Record (2017)
- Effective Population Size and the Effects of Demography on Cultural Diversity and Technological Complexity (2017)
- Emergent Landscapes: Simulating the Distribution of Residential Features in a Hawaiian Dryland Agricultural System (2017)
- Environmental Variation and Technological Change: Results of an Agent-based Simulation (2017)
- Modeling Human-Environment Interaction in Sub-Saharan Africa: Archaeological Data, Ecological Questions (2017)
- Modeling Polity Growth Among Ancestral Pueblo People in the Northern San Juan (2017)
- Modelling the Effects of Knapper Decision-making and Social Learning on Flake Assemblage Variability (2017)
- The Neolithic transition in Europe: Archaeology versus Genetics (2017)
- Testing Social and Ecological Drivers for the Initial Spread of Agriculture on the Iberian Peninsula (2017)
- Using ABM to Evaluate the Impact of Topography and Climate Change on Social Networks (2017)
- Using the Archaeological Record to Better Understand Models: An Australian Case Study (2017)
- Visualizing the Invisible: How Can We Model Roman Religious Processions? (2017)
- What We Choose to Model and How We Think the World Works (2017)