HR: 17:50h
AN: GC54C-03 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: A Simulation Framework for Exploring Socioecological Dynamics and Sustainability of Settlement Systems Under Stress in Ancient Mesopotamia and Beyond
AU: * Christiansen, J H
EM: jhc@anl.gov
AF: Argonne National Laboratory, Building 900 9700 South Cass Ave., Argonne, IL 60439-4832, United States
AU: Altaweel, M R
EM: maltaweel@anl.gov
AF: Argonne National Laboratory, Building 900 9700 South Cass Ave., Argonne, IL 60439-4832, United States
AB: The presentation will describe an object-oriented, agent-based simulation framework being used to help answer longstanding questions regarding the development trajectories and sustainability of ancient Mesopotamian settlement systems. This multidisciplinary, multi-model framework supports explicit, fine-scale representations of the dynamics of key natural processes such as crop growth, hydrology, and weather, operating concurrently with social processes such as kinship-driven behaviors, farming and herding practices, social stratification, and economic and political activities carried out by social agents that represent individual persons, households, and larger-scale organizations. The framework has allowed us to explore the inherently coupled dynamics of modeled settlements and landscapes that are undergoing diverse social and environmental stresses, both acute and chronic, across multi-generational time spans. The simulation framework was originally used to address single-settlement scenarios, but has recently been extended to begin to address settlement system sustainability issues at sub-regional to regional scale, by introducing a number of new dynamic mechanisms, such as the activities of nomadic communities, that manifest themselves at these larger spatial scales. The framework is flexible and scalable and has broad applicability. It has, for example, recently been adapted to address agroeconomic sustainability of settlement systems in modern rural Thailand, testing the resilience and vulnerability of settled landscapes in the face of such perturbations as large-scale political interventions, global economic shifts, and climate change.
DE: 0402 Agricultural systems
DE: 0493 Urban systems
DE: 0510 Agent-based models
DE: 1630 Impacts of global change (1225)
SC: Global Environmental Change [GC]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting