Modeling the Influx of Agriculture: An Agent-Based Model Exploring Agricultural Spread Scenarios in the Western Mediterranean

Summary

During the sixth millennium BC agropastoral subsistence spread rapidly across Mediterranean Europe. The results of the currently available radiocarbon chronology suggest that this transition may have occurred in less than 1,000 years. The swift proliferation of new types of material culture and new modes of subsistence has led researchers to hypothesize that the appearance of agriculture in the west Mediterranean was the result of a migration of farmers, the adoption of agriculture by indigenous groups, or a combination of these processes.

In archaeological research, agent-based models (ABM) are emerging as productive analytical tools for understanding prehistoric complex systems. Given the variety of environmental, economic, demographic and social factors involved in the spread of agropastoralism, ABMs can play a pivotal role in researching the advent of the Neolithic. Four general models have been commonly advanced to explain the spread of agriculture through Europe’s western Mediterranean region and this project will evaluate each of them. This submission outlines an ABM under development that can be used to test these alternative hypotheses and the generation of test implications that can be evaluated with empirical data.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

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