Overview

The Village Project is designed to help archaeologists understand the factors influencing settlement patterns of small-scale agrarian peoples. Although such societies are becoming increasingly rare, they represent the norm throughout most of the Neolithic period the world over.

This project uses computer simulation in the form of agent-based modeling (ABM) to investigate where prehistoric people of the American Southwest would have situated their households based on both the natural and social environments in which they lived. The model is developed using the Swarm multi-agent simulation libraries, developed through the Santa Fe Institute and now offered as a public service by the Swarm Development Group. An overview of simulation in archaeology is presented in a recent popular magazine article by Kohler, Gumerman, and Reynolds 2005.

We seek to understand general processes in the particular (though changing) environments of southwestern Colorado between A.D. 600 and A.D. 1300. This emphasis on realism is in contrast to much agent-based modeling in the social sciences, which has typically put a premium on generality. Agent-based models not only provide us a platform through which the archaeologists, hydrologists, computer scientists, and economists associated with this project can interact (see Personnel) but allow us to study a system which is characterized by high degrees of interaction between the landscape as it was affected by climate change and by the actions of farmers, and among the farmers themselves, as they sought to make a living in this marginal farming area.

This project extends earlier research reported by Kohler et al. 2000 that investigated what models for locational behavior at the household level would best replicate the Pueblo II and Pueblo III settlement systems as they were understood in the late 1990s. We are now working with Crow Canyon Archaeological Center to map the known sites in our study area back to A.D. 600, to estimate the number of households living at each of these sites, and to estimate as precisely as possible the dates for those occupations. We have been presenting our preliminary findings in symposia at the Society for American Archaeology meetings and many other venues since 2002. To view a selection of these papers click here.

Our website is published to offer users a broad overview of the project, its history, the people involved, information on similar research and links to further information. We welcome questions and feedback.

Project
Progress Reports

Agent-based modeling
in the social sciences

 

 

 

Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction