Modeling Long-Term Landscape Dynamics and the Emergence of Intensification

Abstract:

Archaeologists have focused on reconstructing the past in ever more sophisticated ways since the inception of the discipline. However, this research strategy may no longer be sufficient to address new challenges facing the discipline. A complementary strategy is to use the past as a laboratory for testing dynamic models of socioecological process. The study of agricultural practices in particular can benefit from this approach because they have direct and indirect, long-term consequences on landscapes that vary in intensity, time, and space. We are developing a modeling laboratory for characterizing interactions between agricultural practices and landscape change for the Mediterranean Basin. Here, we report on initial work that integrates agent-based models of village farming and GIS-supported surface process models to capture the long-term dynamics ofsocioecological landscapes.