Authors

Michael Storozum and Nicholas Gauthier

Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida

Abstract

Agent-based models of ancient agricultural societies are often used to address specific archaeological regions or problems. While this has been a productive approach, ABMs can also be useful tools for testing more general theories of the major transitions in social organization: the origins of agriculture, formation of states, and development of social inequality. Here, we use principles from human behavioral ecology to build an agent-based model that helps explore the social, climatic, and ecological factors that led to the emergence and spread of intensive farming societies and the attendant consequences that characterize many large Neolithic cultures. 

We integrate and extend previously published models of early societies developed by researchers outside archaeology to test the relative importance of ecological, social, and climatic conditions in shaping agricultural origins. Our model simulates the gradual transition from hunting and gathering to farming across ecosystems with varying levels of productivity. As foraging agents reproduce and deplete the natural resources of prey and wild plants, they gradually incorporate agricultural production to supplement their caloric needs. Eventually, a tipping point is reached when all wild plant and animal resources are nearly depleted, and the agents become dependent on agricultural production to support their caloric requirements. Crucially, this framework allows us to explore the role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge---increases in the rate and sustainability of resource extraction due to long-term familiarity with a given landscape---in shaping the timing and trajectories of these key tipping points. 

By driving the model with external geographical and climatic forcings operating at varying time scales, we can tailor simulations to explore multiple case studies of the emergence of agriculture around the world. We include here an example of the emergence and spread of maize agriculture in North America and assess the model’s ability to reproduce empirical patterns from the archaeological and paleoenvironmental records. 

Through this demonstration, we will argue that our model provides an initial kernel of an ecosystem of models of human-environment interaction that explore the social and ecological factors that led to the emergence of agriculture worldwide. Elaborate trade networks, deepened social inequality, and technological innovations stem from the origins of agriculture, making this a crucial starting point for future theory-based agent-based models. Understanding the driving forces behind agricultural intensification in the Neolithic may help reveal the factors (whether they be biological, cultural, or environmental) that expelled humanity from hundreds of thousands of years of relative equality.