Food, distance and power. Modeling a multi-factor proto­historic landscape in the Po plain

Laura Burigana

«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 2023, 34.1, 257-266; doi: 10.19282/ac.34.1.2023.28

Abstract

The paper illustrates the creation and integration of the environment as a multilevel landscape in AMPBV Simulator, a spatial Agent-Based Model (ABM) developed in NetLogo programming language. The model was conceived with the aim of investigating, through a simulative approach, the events and the circumstances (both anthropic and environmental) that presumably led, between the end of the Late Bronze Age, in the 12th cent. BC, and the beginning of the Final Bronze Age, the protohistoric communities of the Southern Verona plain (known as the Northern Terramare polity) from a climatic phase of maximum development and articulation to an anti-climatic phase of sudden collapse. The study context is an interesting application for an investigation through ABM, both because of the complexity of the case scenario, in which several interrelated actors and factors must have played an important role, and because of the availability of a number of geographical and archaeological data providing both a term of comparison and an excellent information base. With the development of an artificial environment and by modeling processes potentially critical for the fate of the Terramare system, the aim is, on the one hand, to give such a complex study case a new tool for historical analysis and, on the other hand, to experiment Agent-Based Modeling and assess its potential as a methodology for archaeological investigation in the Po Plain.

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