Agent-based modeling of ancient societies and their organization structure
Authored by Angelos Chliaoutakis, Georgios Chalkiadakis
Date Published: 2016
DOI: 10.1007/s10458-016-9325-9
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Abstract
Some of the most interesting questions one can ask about early
societies, are about people and their relations, and the nature and
scale of their organization. In this work, we attempt to answer such
questions with approaches introduced by multiagent systems.
Specifically, we developed a generic agent-based model (ABM) for
simulating ancient societies. Unlike most existing ABMs used in
archaeology, our model includes agents that are autonomous and
utility-based. Our model can (and does) also incorporate different
social organization paradigms and technologies used in ancient
societies. Equipped with such paradigms, our model allows us to explore
the transition from a simple to a more complex society by focusing on
the historical social dynamics-i.e., the flexibility and evolution of
power relationships depending on social context and time. As a case
study, we employ our model to evaluate the impact of the implemented
social and technological paradigms on an artificial Early Bronze Age
``Minoan{''} society located at a particular region of the island of
Crete. Model parameter choices are based on archaeological evidence and
studies, but are not biased towards any specific assumption. Results
over a number of different simulation scenarios demonstrate an
impressive sustainability for settlements consisting of and adopting a
socio-economic organization model based on self-organization, and which
was inspired by a recent framework for modern self-organizing agent
organizations. This is the first time a self-organization approach is
incorporated in an archaeology ABM system.
Tags
Crete