Modeling Archaeology: Origins of the Artificial Anasazi Project and Beyond

The Artificial Anasazi (AA) agent-based simulation model was one of the first agent-based models to address archaeological questions. It grew out of a unique interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeologists/anthropologists (George Gumerman, Jeffrey Dean, Alan Swedlund), computational social scientists (Robert Axtell, Joshua Epstein), and computer modelers (Steve McCarroll, Miles Parker). This chapter describes the kinds of archaeological questions the AA model was designed to address and the ability of the model to answer those questions, as well as an extension of the model that incorporates individual-level age-specific fertility and mortality rates (the Artificial Long House Valley, or ALHV model). We also provide a brief overview of other archaeologically oriented agent-based simulation models and describe how they relate to the AA model. We conclude with a discussion of future directions for the AA and ALHV models as well as suggestions for further research on archaeological questions for which agent-based computer simulations may be especially suitable.