Simulations

Roman Social SimThis is the main ‘Purges and Proscriptions’ Model. I am not yet ready to publish the model on the internet, but a description of the model came out in December 2005 in the Archaeological Computing Newsletter. Click here for a ‘map‘ of the different routines in the model, and its underlying logic.

Itineraries

I presented the results of one of my initial models, “Itineraries“, at the Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages workshop at UBC on October 28th 2005, in my paper “The Antonine Itineraries and Agent-Based Modeling”. The slideshow from my presentation is available here. You may have to click on a particular slide to get an animation to begin. (Be warned: if you have a slow connection, it could take some time to view the presentation).

In my paper, I am trying to understand the geography of the Empire from the point of view of a person using them to navigate. I take the lists in the Itineraries, and recast them as networks of interconnected cities. Are there any significant differences between provinces’ connective network topography in terms of the transmission of information?

The agent-model itself is built on top of the navigation procedure in ‘cruise.nlogo’ model by Simran McKenna and Dayoung Jung (under the guidance of Stephen Guerin). The itineraries are overlaid on the map of their respective province. One agent is given a piece of ‘knowledge’ which he may or may not share with those he encounters. The rate at which knowledge is transmitted therefore depends on the chance of transmission in any given encounter, and on the topology of the itinerary network. By controlling for the different variables, significant differences in how the different provinces’ networks facilitate the transmission of information may be observed.

Click here for a movie of the model view-window, showing transmission of information in Roman Britain, and latterly, in the western part of the Empire. Initially, all agents but one are ‘ignorant’ of the message (and are coloured brown). Agents that are blue have ‘heard’ the information.

This model was published in the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 19.1.

TravellerSim

A model for generating spatial social network organisation, no Thiessen Polygons required!

The model, documentation, and code, are available here.

My slideshow demonstrating the model, presented at the Computer Applications in Archaeology Conference at Fargo may be viewed here . This model will be published in the conference proceedings.

CityLife

Wouldn’t it be interesting for us as archaeologists, if we could study ancient settlements by watching their inhabitants…? This model represents a small experiment in reviving a dead city. It represents a point of departure….