Anthropology Exercises: The Tsembaga

These pages provide an opportunity to use system dynamics
to study the system described in Pigs for the Ancestors, Roy Rappaport's (1968)
classic anthropological study of the Tsembaga tribesmen in the New Guinea highlands.
The pages begin with background on the tribesmen and their pig population.
Then we'll develop a series of introductory models to explain the cylical pattern of the populations.
The pages conclude with a system dynamics model developed by Shantis and Behrens (1973)
and a revision in the 1973 model based on the critique by Kampmann (1991).

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background | a simple model
add humans to the model | add cultivation to the model
the 1973 model | revisions in the 1973 model
introductory exercises | advanced exercises
Return to the Exercises Guide

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