Neolithic Spread Models, Agricultural Islands and Pivotal Parameters: Impressions Gleaned from Simulating the Spread of Agriculture in the West Mediterranean

Summary

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 models have been tested against the available archaeological evidence, including the available radiocarbon chronology, site locations and artifact styles. As is so often the case in archaeology, not enough evidence is truly available to conclusively prove or disprove any one model. It is in this context that computational modeling can be best applied – to make existing models explicit, to evaluate the models of Neolithic spread and to approach the spread of agriculture from an exploratory perspective. This research examines four well known models for the spread of agriculture by comparing the chronology generated by an agent-based model of each spread type to the chronological record for the arrival of the Neolithic.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Human-Environmental Interactions in the Mediterranean Basin

Keywords

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