Speaker: Iza Romanowska, AIAS-COFUND Fellow, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies

Local host: Professor Felix Riede, School of Culture and Society - Department of Archeology and Heritage Studies, Aarhus University 

Abstract

The fundamental difficulty in (almost) all archaeological inquiry is that the primary objects of our study are long dead. Trying to reconstruct the lives of past peoples based on the few bits and bobs they left behind is challenging. However, contrary to the widely held belief that archaeological data is somehow special in its ‘badness’, we are not the only discipline studying an inherently inaccessible system. A barrage of methods exists to deal with this problem, first and foremost among them: simulation modelling. The task might look daunting. How do we go from three hundred thousand pieces of Palaeolithic lithic debitage or 500kg of Roman pot to an understanding of the complex network of relationships between individuals, groups, and their environment that we know make human societies? Agent-based modelling provides a method for unravelling some of these complex interactions and uncovering the dynamic processes that have driven societies in the past. It is uniquely positioned to tackle the fact that data patterns that we commonly detect in the archaeological record are not a simple sum of individual human behaviours. ABM can even incorporate individual agency and the inherent unpredictability of human life - factors humanities researchers hold particularly dear. In this talk, I will ground modelling methods in the epistemological framework of the scientific process and showcase the innovative ways in which we can use simulation and other formal model-building techniques to understand the interactions between individuals and their social and natural environments. Drawing from a series of case studies I will show how ABM can accommodate very different research questions, widely diverse scales of analysis and various datasets. I will discuss the potential and limitations of computational modelling in humanities at large and highlight the range of possible applications.

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