Contrasting the influence of factors shaping the spread of early farming
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 08/04/2016

Computational models have long been used to answer questions about spreading phenomenon in archaeology, but until recently the models used have primarily been reaction-diffusion systems, derived from or inspired by Fisher’s (1937) ‘wave of advance’ model. These models have the benefit of being analytically manageable, and have been used to provide various quantitative measures of such spreads, such as the speed of advance, or the localised direction of a wave.

More recently, agent based models have found use in exploring the more qualitative aspects of spreading scenarios, and these are better suited to testing hypotheses about how, or why, a phenomenon spread.

We present one such model, derived from Axelrod’s (1997) cultural dissemination model, and its application to the study of the spread of early farming into South-Eastern Europe. A series of modifications to the model allows us to better represent both the spatial reality of archaeological data, and the specific scenario of neolithisation. Further variation allows us to contrast conflicting hypotheses about how farming spread, and what level of interaction took place within and between both the already present mesolithic cultures, and the expanding neolithic.

By contrasting the behaviour of these models with a newly collated data set of dates and material assemblages, utilising approximate Bayesian computation, we hope to discover to what degree various factors shaped the spread of the neolithic, and the transient cultural landscape of the time.

Nelis Drost and Marc Vander Linden (University College London)