Theme:
6. A Decade after the ‘Third Science Revolution in Archaeology’
Session format:
Round table (without formal abstracts, only list of confirmed discussants / session co-organisers to be provided)
Title:
Towards an Open Platform for Computer Simulations of Past Socio-ecological Systems
Content:
Archaeologists are increasingly relying on computer simulations to reconstruct and understand past societies. They are successfully building and running simulations of agrarian production, trade, settlement development and movement, to name a few. The current state of the field, however, is characterised by idiosyncrasy and limited communication and integration of the community, hampering the ability of modellers to cumulatively build on each other's work. This is predominantly due to the lack of appropriate tools and platforms enabling closer integration.
To remedy this situation, the NAS2A project (Network for Agent-based modelling of Socio-ecological Systems in Archaeology) is developing an open library of model algorithms and code for modelling of socio-ecological systems in archaeology. It aims to redefine current practices in collaboration and synergy in modelling communities by developing an openly available and functional models library, offering a host of elements (modules, techniques, algorithms, how-to’s/wikis etc.) as modular building blocks for elaborate and case-driven models and research questions.
In this first roundtable of the (proposed) EAA Community “Computational Modelling of Social-Ecological Systems (COMS)”, we will present the results of the project’s first results towards developing the necessary infrastructure and standards, and invite feedback from experts and the roundtable audience. In particular, we want to address the following questions:
- how can we ensure that model elements can be used for a wide range of research questions?
- how can we facilitate interaction, comparison and testing of models across platforms and programming languages?
- how can we achieve a sustainable infrastructure for this?
- and what more is needed to make simulation modelling accessible to a wider community of archaeologists?
Confirmed discussants:
Felix Riede (Aarhus University)
Maja Gori (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
Keywords:
computer simulations, socio-ecological systems, Open Science
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
yes
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Philip Verhagen (Netherlands) 1
Co-organisers:
Dries Daems (Turkey) 2
Iza Romanowska (Denmark) 3
Martin Hinz (Switzerland) 4
Maurits Ertsen (Netherlands) 5
Affiliations:
1. Faculty of Humanities, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
2. Institute of Social Sciences, Middle East Technical University, Ankara
3. Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies
4. Institut für Archäologische Wissenschaften, Universität Bern
5. Water Resources, Delft University of Technology
THIS SESSION CAN NOT BE SELECTED AT THIS MOMENT