Modeling People, Places, and Things: Revisiting Archaeology as Model-Based Science

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? ​