Integrating Qualitative and Social Science Factors in Archaeological Modelling

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

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2. Introducing Qualitative and Social Science Factors in Archaeological Modelling: Necessity and Relevance

   • Marc Vander Linden, Mehdi Saqalli

   Pages 1-14

3. O Tempora O Mores: Building an Epistemological Procedure for Modeling the Socio-anthropological Factors of Rural Neolithic Socio-ecological Systems: Stakes, Choices, Hypotheses, and Constraints

   • Mehdi Saqalli, Melio Saenz, Mahamadou Belem, Laurent Lespez, Samuel Thiriot

   Pages 15-54

4. From Culture Difference to a Measure of Ethnogenesis: The Limits of Archaeological Inquiry

   • Juan A. Barceló, Florencia Del Castillo, Laura Mameli, Franceso J. Miguel, Xavier Vilà

   Pages 55-89

5. Modeling Niche Construction in Neolithic Europe

   • R. Alexander Bentley, Michael J. O’Brien

   Pages 91-108

6. What Can a Multi-agent System Tell Us About the Bantu Expansion 3,000 Years Ago?

   • Florent Le Néchet, Christophe Coupé, Hélène Mathian, Lena Sanders

   Pages 109-135

7. From Past to Present: The Deep History of Kinship

   • Dwight W. Read

   Pages 137-162

8. Modeling the Relational Structure of Ancient Societies through the Chaîne opératoire: The Late Chalcolithic Societies of the Southern Levant as a Case Study

   • Valentine Roux

   Pages 163-184

9. Ethnoarchaeology-Based Modelling to Investigate Economic Transformations and Land-Use Change in the Alpine Uplands

   • Francesco Carrer, Graeme Sarson, Andrew Baggaley, Anvar Shukurov, Diego E. Angelucci

   Pages 185-216

10. Trowels, Processors and Misunderstandings: Concluding Thoughts

    • Mehdi Saqalli, Marc Vander Linden

    Pages 217-223

11. Back Matter

    Pages 225-231

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This book covers the methodological, epistemological and practical issues of integrating qualitative and socio-anthropological factors into archaeological modeling. This text fills the gap between conceptual modeling (which usually relies on narratives describing the life of a past community) and formalized/computer-based modeling which are usually environmentally-determined. Methods combining both environmental and social issues through niche and agent-based modeling are presented. These methods help to translate data from paleo-environmental and archaeological society life cycles (such as climate and landscape changes) into the local spatial scale. 

The epistemological discussions will appeal to readers as well as the resilience socio-anthropological factors provide facing climatic fluctuations. Integrating Qualitative and Social Science Factors in Archaeological Modelling will appeal to students and researchers in the field.

• prehistoric societies and modeling
• agent based modeling and history
• socio-anthropological modeling
• dynamics in human and primate societies
• model-based archaeology
• ancestors and algorithms
• computational social sciences
• data-driven science, modeling and theory building

“The volume is most likely to appeal to archaeological modellers who will find interesting case studies with a somewhat wider disciplinary outlook. The aim of generating mutual understanding is, however, commendable, and those non-modellers who venture to pick up a book about modelling and persevere will be afforded valuable insights in the process and merits of striving to integrate qualitative and social science factors into archaeological models.” (Daniël van Helden,Antiquity, Vol. 95, 2021)

 

• UMR CNRS 5602 GEODE, Géographie de l’Environnement Maison de la Recherche, Université Toulouse 2 Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France

  Mehdi Saqalli

• Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge CB2 3Dz, Cambridge, UK

  Marc Vander Linden

Agronomist and doctor in farming systems analysis, Mehdi Saqalli works on rural past and present societies through the use of modelling tools, particularly multi-agent tools, for the understanding of localized dynamics combining socio-anthropological and agro-environmental factors in the future of these societies. Field sites concern several present-time tropical and temperate areas on development issues but also past Neolithic societies in Europe and the Mediterranean area. The aim is to formalize this complexity by articulating spatial, temporal and socio-political scales through the use of dynamic spatialized socio-geographical models.

Marc Vander Linden is a specialist in European Later European prehistory and currently holds a temporary lectureship at the University of Cambridge, where he teaches archaeological methods. His research interests include spatial and temporal variability of material culture, early farming systems, demography, development-led archaeolology, and the use of quantitative and modelling methods. He has run fieldwork in Belgium, Syria, Great Britain, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro.   

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