Agent-based model (Other Keyword)
1-7 (7 Records)
Agent-based models are useful tools for modeling decision making and its system level effects when the system being modeled is too complex to be accurately described by a simple mathematical model. This is important archaeologically because site distributions and material assemblages represent the aggregate results of many individual subsistence decisions that take place in a complex ecological and social landscape. In this poster, we present an agent-based model for subsistence intensification...
A Family of Five is Not the Same as One Household: The Effects of Disaggregation on Demographic Outcomes in Archaeological Simulation Models (2016)
Many archaeological agent-based computer models (ABMs) use the household as the smallest unit of investigation but, in order to answer questions about how factors such as disease, social interaction, and population movement contributed to population dynamics in prehistory, there is a need for individual-level models. Our team has worked to disaggregate an early archaeological ABM, the Artificial Anasazi model, into an individual-level model, the Artificial Long House Valley model. The baseline...
Free or Despotic? The Distribution of Hunter-Gatherer Ethnolinguistic Groups in California (2015)
How do hunter-gatherers divide their landscape into territories? In this paper, I will delve into results from a prior study showing a significant difference in territory size between coastal and inland groups in California (Dennehy et al. 2014). I will first simulate territory sizes and locations using an Agent-Based Model (ABM) of hunter-gatherer bands. The model will draw on human behavioral ecology to simulate distribution of foraging groups under three different conditions of social...
Modelling the Effects of Knapper Decision-making and Social Learning on Flake Assemblage Variability (2017)
Paleolithic archaeologists are keen to infer the means by which flintknapping knowledge was acquired and transmitted among past toolmakers from lithic assemblages. The inferences generated from recent studies, which tackle this issue with a variety of analytical approaches, are often fraught with equifinality because the same range of lithic variability can be explained by multiple learning scenarios. To help address this issue, we examine the extent to which different knapper decision-making...
Neolithic Spread Models, Agricultural Islands and Pivotal Parameters: Impressions Gleaned from Simulating the Spread of Agriculture in the West Mediterranean (2016)
The significance of the spread of agriculture cannot be overstated and for this reason strong disagreement continues to arise over the processes responsible for the shift from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic. Four influential models have been proposed for the spread of agriculture in the west Mediterranean and can be applied to the circumstances of the Impresso-Cardial spread: the Wave of Advance Model, the Capillary Model, the Maritime Pioneer Colonization Model and the Dual Model. All four...
Using ABM to Evaluate the Impact of Topography and Climate Change on Social Networks (2017)
Anthropological research suggests that climate and environmental resources influence the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers. My research uses an agent-based model to generate test expectations related to the impact of different geographical and social environments on the social networks formed therein. It focuses on Magdalenian social networks created in the Cantabrian and Dordogne region, and visible through similarities of portable art representations. The regional resources and climate of the...
Using computer models and art stylistic similarities to evaluate the impacts of geography and social processes on Magdalenian social networks (2015)
Anthropological research has demonstrated the influence of climate and environmental resources on the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers. While most previous work has focused on environmental influences on hunter-gatherer economic and ecological behaviors, this research will evaluate the impact of different geographical and social environments on the social networks formed therein. This project will use an agent-based model to generate test expectations related to the processes that shaped the social...