Attempting to make agent-based models more applicable to regional settlement models
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 11/09/2020

Agent-based models of past human society have traditionally come in two flavours, one highly abstract and difficult to directly compare to the archaeological record due to its abstraction and one highly specific but still unlikely to “match” the archaeological record. A potential middle ground of archaeological agent-based models that strike a balance between these two positions have not been sufficiently explored. Here I will discuss a way forward where an abstract approach to modelling, but with specific parameterisation and landscapes, can still lead to novel insights into settlement patterns that are consistent with regional archaeological datasets. I illustrate this point using a foraging, mobility, and settlement model of Stone Age South Africa.


Colin D. Wren