Was Thebes really necessary: uncertainty in spatial modelling
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2018-10-09

Regional interactions are an important aspect of settlement history and these alone may lead similar sites to follow very different historical trajectories. In this talk we will consider how models can provide one viewpoint of the role of spatial interactions in settlement evolution. We will illustrate the approach with the example used by Rihll and Wilson in 1979, that of the rise of central Greek cities in the ninth and eight century BC.
To understand settlement formation using models of spatial interactions various choices need to be made including site locations, site separations, and the functions which characterise the ease of travel between sites. Different choices will necessarily lead to different outputs and we can only proceed if modelling choices that are ‘close’ give outcomes that are similar. Where there are local differences it suggests that there was no compelling reason for one outcome rather than the other. If these differences are important for the historic record, we may interpret this as sensitivity to contingency.
In our work, we identify the sources of uncertainty for spatial modelling in general and show how to quantify their effect on results. For our example of Greek city states, we find some results are robust e.g. Athens does owe its position to a combination of geography and proximity to other sites. At the same time, we conclude that some of the earlier modelling results are not robust. Of these the rise of Thebes is the most contingent so suggesting that its success reflects social forces outside the grasp of simple spatial modelling.
This is a significant extension of preliminary work first presented at EAA Glasgow 2015 (Rivers & Evans, Frontiers in Digital Humanities, 2017, to appear).

Author: Dr Evans, Tim - Imperial College London (Presenting author)
Co-Author: Prof Rivers, Ray - Imperial College London