Matching Items (18)
Filtering by

Clear all filters

151879-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
This dissertation investigates the long-term consequences of human land-use practices in general, and in early agricultural villages in specific. This pioneering case study investigates the "collapse" of the Early (Pre-Pottery) Neolithic lifeway, which was a major transformational event marked by significant changes in settlement patterns, material culture, and social markers.

This dissertation investigates the long-term consequences of human land-use practices in general, and in early agricultural villages in specific. This pioneering case study investigates the "collapse" of the Early (Pre-Pottery) Neolithic lifeway, which was a major transformational event marked by significant changes in settlement patterns, material culture, and social markers. To move beyond traditional narratives of cultural collapse, I employ a Complex Adaptive Systems approach to this research, and combine agent-based computer simulations of Neolithic land-use with dynamic and spatially-explicit GIS-based environmental models to conduct experiments into long-term trajectories of different potential Neolithic socio-environmental systems. My analysis outlines how the Early Neolithic "collapse" was likely instigated by a non-linear sequence of events, and that it would have been impossible for Neolithic peoples to recognize the long-term outcome of their actions. The experiment-based simulation approach shows that, starting from the same initial conditions, complex combinations of feedback amplification, stochasticity, responses to internal and external stimuli, and the accumulation of incremental changes to the socio-natural landscape, can lead to widely divergent outcomes over time. Thus, rather than being an inevitable consequence of specific Neolithic land-use choices, the "catastrophic" transformation at the end of the Early Neolithic was an emergent property of the Early Neolithic socio-natural system itself, and thus likely not an easily predictable event. In this way, my work uses the technique of simulation modeling to connect CAS theory with the archaeological and geoarchaeological record to help better understand the causes and consequences of socio-ecological transformation at a regional scale. The research is broadly applicable to other archaeological cases of resilience and collapse, and is truly interdisciplinary in that it draws on fields such as geomorphology, computer science, and agronomy in addition to archaeology.
ContributorsUllah, Isaac (Author) / Barton, C. Michael (Thesis advisor) / Banning, Edward B. (Committee member) / Clark, Geoffrey (Committee member) / Arrowsmith, J. Ramon (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This research uses Peircean Semiotics to model the evolution of symbolic behavior in the human lineage and the potential material correlates of this evolutionary process in the archaeological record. The semiotic model states the capacity for symbolic behavior developed in two distinct stages. Emergent capacities are characterized by the sporadic

This research uses Peircean Semiotics to model the evolution of symbolic behavior in the human lineage and the potential material correlates of this evolutionary process in the archaeological record. The semiotic model states the capacity for symbolic behavior developed in two distinct stages. Emergent capacities are characterized by the sporadic use of non-symbolic and symbolic material culture that affects information exchange between individuals. Symbolic exchange will be rare. Mobilized capacities are defined by the constant use of non-symbolic and symbolic objects that affect both interpersonal and group-level information exchange. Symbolic behavior will be obligatory and widespread. The model was tested against the published archaeological record dating from ~200,000 years ago to the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary in three sub-regions of Africa and Eurasia. A number of Exploratory and Confirmatory Data Analysis techniques were used to identify patterning in artifacts through time consistent with model predictions. The results indicate Emergent symboling capacities were expressed as early as ~100,000 years ago in Southern Africa and the Levant. However, capacities do not appear fully Mobilized in these regions until ~17,000 years ago. Emergent symboling is not evident in the European record until ~42,000 years ago, but develops rapidly. The results also indicate both Anatomically Modern Humans and Neanderthals had the capacity for symbolic behavior, but expressed those capacities differently. Moreover, interactions between the two populations did not select for symbolic expression, nor did periodic aggregation within groups. The analysis ultimately situates the capacity for symbolic behavior in increased engagement with materiality and the ability to recognize material objects can be made meaningful– an ability that must have been shared with Anatomically Modern Humans’ and Neanderthals’ most recent common ancestor. Consequently, the results have significant implications for notions of ‘modernity’ and human uniqueness that drive human origins research. This work pioneers deductive approaches to cognitive evolution, and both strengths and weaknesses are discussed. In offering notable results and best practices, it effectively operationalizes the semiotic model as a viable analytical method for human origins research.
ContributorsCulley, Elisabeth Vasser (Author) / Clark, Geoffrey A. (Thesis advisor) / Barton, C. Michael (Thesis advisor) / Marean, Curtis W (Committee member) / Davidson, Iain (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This dissertation uses a comparative approach to investigate long-term human- environment interrelationships in times of climate change. It uses Geographical Information Systems and ecological models to reconstruct the Magdalenian (~20,000- 14,000 calibrated years ago) environments of the coastal mountainous zone of Cantabria (Northwest Spain) and the interior valleys of the

This dissertation uses a comparative approach to investigate long-term human- environment interrelationships in times of climate change. It uses Geographical Information Systems and ecological models to reconstruct the Magdalenian (~20,000- 14,000 calibrated years ago) environments of the coastal mountainous zone of Cantabria (Northwest Spain) and the interior valleys of the Dordogne (Southwest France) to contextualize the social networks that could have formed during a time of high climate and resource variability. It simulates the formation of such networks in an agent-based model, which documents the processes underlying the formation of archaeological assemblages, and evaluates the potential impacts of climate-topography interactions on cultural transmission. This research then reconstructs the Magdalenian social networks visible through a multivariate statistical analysis of stylistic similarities among portable art objects. As these networks cannot be analyzed directly to infer social behavior, their characteristics are compared to the results of the agent-based model, which provide characteristics estimates of the Magdalenian latent social networks that most likely produced the empirical archaeological assemblage studied.

This research contributes several new results, most of which point to the advantages of using an inter-disciplinary approach to the study of the archaeological record. It demonstrates the benefits of using an agent-based model to parse social data from long- term palimpsests. It shows that geographical and environmental contexts affect the structure of social networks, which in turn affects the transmission of ideas and goods that flow through it. This shows the presence of human-environment interactions that not only affected our ancestors’ reaction to resource insecurities, but also led them to innovate and improve the productivity of their own environment. However, it also suggests that such alterations may have reduced the populations’ resilience to strong climatic changes, and that the region with diverse resources provided a more stable and resilient environment than the region transformed to satisfy the immediate needs of its population.
ContributorsGravel-Miguel, Claudine (Author) / Barton, C. Michael (Thesis advisor) / Coudart, Anick (Committee member) / Clark, Geoffrey A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
The static, fragmentary archaeological record requires us to construct models of the human past. Traditionally, these have been narratives that make compelling stories but are difficult to evaluate. Recent advances in geospatial and agent-based modeling technology offers the potential to create quantitative models of human systems, but also challenge us

The static, fragmentary archaeological record requires us to construct models of the human past. Traditionally, these have been narratives that make compelling stories but are difficult to evaluate. Recent advances in geospatial and agent-based modeling technology offers the potential to create quantitative models of human systems, but also challenge us to conceive of human societies in ways that can be expressed in algorithmic form. Besides making our own explanations more robust, integrating such quantitative modeling into archaeological practice can produce more useful accounts of human systems and their long-term dynamics for other disciplines and policy makers.|abstract
ContributorsBarton, C. Michael (Author)
Created2009
Description

PowerPoint presentation to the Santa Fe Institute, October 2004.

ContributorsBarton, C. Michael (Author)
Created2004
Description

Dramatic changes in land use were associated with the rise of agriculture in the mid Holocene in the Mediterranean region. Both surface properties and drainage networks were changed along with direct modifications to surface properties (vegetation removal and change, sediment liberation and compaction); consequent drainage alteration (terracing, canals) and u

Dramatic changes in land use were associated with the rise of agriculture in the mid Holocene in the Mediterranean region. Both surface properties and drainage networks were changed along with direct modifications to surface properties (vegetation removal and change, sediment liberation and compaction); consequent drainage alteration (terracing, canals) and up and downstream responses in the watersheds communicated these changes throughout the landscape.

The magnitude, rate, and feedbacks with the growing human populations are critical questions in our effort to assess human-landscape interactions. To investigate these relationships, recent field work in the Penaguila Valley of southeast Spain included landform mapping, alluvial deposit description, and sample collection emphasizing areas of active erosion, remnant land surfaces and their relation to archaeological sites.

We have updated our geomorphic maps by refining the delineation of alluvial terraces, steep-walled (40m deep) drainages ("barrancos"), and hollows ("barrancos de fondo plano"). Hollows are curved, elongate, flat-bottomed gullies with steep walls (2-30m tall) and extend headward from the main barrancos. This work enables more accurate terrace correlations necessary for both landscape evolution modeling and interpretation of the development history of the basin.

Alluvial terraces are crucial to this research because they record periods of past stable topography. In the Penaguila, sites dating back to late Mesolithic and early Neolithic (around 6600 BP) and subsequent periods (Chalcolithic and Bronze Age) are exposed on a prominent terrace surface mapped as Terrace A. This broad low relief surface is scarred by deep barrancos and hollow formation that expose bedrock marls and overlying alluvial deposits. Stratigraphic profiles and texture analyses of Terrace A deposits reveal overland flow facies and channel networks in reworked and CaCO3-encrusted marls, and several organic-rich paleosols. Small remnant surfaces mapped as Terrace Z (below Terrace A) were observed within the main barrancos and indicate a later, brief accumulation period with subsequent incision to the modern channel.

Holocene landscape development in the Penaguila appears to have progressed from a period of stability to slope denudation with aggradation (stream infilling) followed by rapid incision which initiated sometime near the time of occupation. This change from a low relief alluvial surface to one cut by narrow channels may have been an important shift for local populations. Their response to that environmental modification may be associated with the horticulturalist to agricultural intensification noted in the archaeological record. Tighter chronology and better understanding of the driving processes for barranco incision and hollow formation will improve our ability to correlate the changing landscape with land use practices. Such an improved correlation leads to better understanding of human-landscape interactions.

ContributorsDiMaggio, E. N. (Author) / La Roca, N. (Author) / Arrowsmith, J. Ramon (Author) / Diez-Castillo, A. (Author) / Bernabeu, J. (Author) / Barton, C. Michael (Author)