Linking land use patterns to spatial logistics, institutional complexity and terrain constrains in farming-herding interaction. A theory-building Agent-Based approach.

Summary

The relation between the main variants of pre-industrial economic production in arid Eurasia, from nomadic pastoralism to irrigated agriculture, is known to have been unstable, with abundant examples of conflict and shifting patterns of land use right up to contemporary times. We present the latest development of a six-year effort, within the SimulPast project, in experimenting and generating theory that could help explain the different land use patterns. Using Agent-Based simulation models, we progressively put together mechanisms hypothesized to be relevant factors in shaping the balance of farming and herding land use within this type of setting and observe their simulated consequences under a wide variety of conditions.

We will present here the design and results of two models, NomadFrontier and NomadBorder, which were built on the exploration of two previous models, Musical Chairs and Nice Musical Chairs, and introduce new aspects: (i) an explicit penalization based on spatial distances, (ii) territorial marks that regulate the access to pasture, (iii) a two-level institutional structure, comprising corporate groups and political associations between these, and (iv) a parametric representation of terrain constraints. Last, we will compare the simulation experiments with our assessment of several historical and archaeological case studies in Eurasia.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16813