https://d3qi0qp55mx5f5.cloudfront.net/anthrolpology/docs/Climate_Variation.pdf

Climate Variation and the Rise and Fall of an Andean Civilization

Agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) is a new approach to modeling systems comprised of autonomous, interacting agents. Computational advances have made possible a growing number of agent-based models across a variety of application domains. Applications range from modeling agent behavior in the stock market, supply chains, and consumer markets, to predicting the spread of epidemics, mitigating the threat of bio-warfare, and understanding the factors that may be responsible for the fall of ancient civilizations. Such progress suggests the potential of ABMS to have far-reaching effects on the way that businesses use computers to support decision-making and researchers use agent-based models as electronic laboratories. Some contend that ABMS "is a third way of doing science" and could augment traditional deductive and inductive reasoning as discovery methods. This brief tutorial introduces agent-based modeling by describing the foundations of ABMS, discussing some illustrative applications, and addressing toolkits and methods for developing agent-based models.

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Agent-based modeling and simulation

In this ground-breaking work, Norman Yoffee shatters the prevailing myths underpinning our understanding of the evolution of early civilisations. He counters the emphasis in traditional scholarship on the rule of 'godly' and despotic male leaders and challenges the conventional view that early states were uniformly constituted bureaucratic and regional entities. Instead, by illuminating the role of slaves and soldiers, priests and priestesses, peasants and prostitutes, merchants and craftsmen, Yoffee depicts an evolutionary process centred on the concerns of everyday life. Drawing on evidence from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica, the author explores the variety of trajectories followed by ancient states, from birth to collapse, and explores the social processes that shape any account of the human past. This book offers a bold new interpretation of social evolutionary theory, and as such it is essential reading for any student or scholar with an interest in the emergence of complex society.

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Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations

Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays

Design theory provides a useful means for analyzing both practical and prestige technologies, although the goals and constraints of each are very different. The aggrandizer model of prestige technology postulates that prestige items were essential elements in aggrandizer strategies and that prestige items emerged only under conditions of sustainable food surpluses and included the most important innovations of the last 30,000 years such as metal working, pottery, sophisticated art, and domesticated plants and animals. The aggrandizer model also accounts for the transformation of some prestige technologies into practical technologies.

Practical and prestige technologies: The evolution of material systems

List of Figures List of Maps List of Tables Preface Foreword 1. Ancient Collasuyu 2. The Evolution of Political Economies 3. The Geography and Paleoecology of the Titicaca Basin 4. The Ethnography and Ethnohistory of the Titicaca Basin 5. The History of Archaeological Research in the Titicaca Basin 6. The Origins and Elaboration of Rank in the Early and Middle Formative Periods 7. The Rise of Competitive Peer Polities in the Upper Formative Period 8. The First State of Tiwanaku 9. The Rise of Complex Agro-Pastoral Societies in the Altiplano Period 10. Conquest from Outside: The Inca Occupation of the Titicaca Basin 11. The Evolution of Social Power in the Titicaca Basin Appendix: Selected Terms from the 1612 Aymara Dictionary of Ludovico Bertonio Notes References Cited Index

Ancient Titicaca: The Evolution of Complex Society in Southern Peru and Northern Bolivia

▪ Abstract The earliest states developed in the central Andean highlands and along the central Pacific coast of western South America. The consensus in the archaeological literature is that state societies first developed in the central Andes in the early part of the first millennium C.E. A minority opinion holds that first-generation states developed as early as the late second millennium B.C.E. in the same area. The Andean region constitutes one of a few areas of first-generation state development in the world. This area therefore represents an important case study for the comparative analysis of state formation. This article outlines the arguments for state formation in South America, presents the evidence, analyzes the underlying assumptions about these arguments, and assesses the South American data in terms of contemporary anthropological theory of state evolution.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3069208.pdf

The Origin of State Societies in South America

Archaeological research over several decades has documented extensive areas of relict raised fields throughout the Americas. The existence of huge tracts of fields utilized in a context of complex political evolution has fostered a debate similar to the “hydraulic hypothesis” controversy, originated by Julian Steward and Karl Wittfogel over a generation ago. In this paper I assess recent research and offer a model that is tested with settlement and demographic data from the Juli-Pomata area of Lake Titicaca in southern Peru. The key variables of the model are differential levels of surplus production, the control of domestic labor by elite groups, and opportunistic economic strategies by the elite. The Juli-Pomata data support a causal link between complex political organization and the existence of labor-intensive raised-field systems. The simplistic explanations of the hydraulic hypothesis remain untenable, but I argue that more subtle causal relationships exist between political centralization and agricultural intensification.

The Hydraulic Hypothesis Revisited: Lake Titicaca Basin Raised Fields in Theoretical Perspective

/pdf/ancient-andean-political-economy-2b0md4zk99.pdf

Ancient Andean Political Economy

Defining ethnicity in archeological settlements is a major methodological problem in the South Central Andes. In this region, pre-Hispanic political and economic organization has been understood within the theoretical framework known as zonal complementarity or verticality. Due to a process of direct colonization by independent polities in key ecological zones, these models are characterized by a striking regional ethnic heterogeneity in space and time. The use of the household as an analytical unit is proposed as the most successful means of defining ethnically distinct populations in pre-Hispanic contexts. This methodology is applied to Late Intermediate period (ca. A.D. 1000–1475) sites in the Osmore Drainage of southern Peru. Two domestic architectural types are defined that are hypothesized to correspond to ethnically distinct groups. Excavation data are analyzed to further differentiate these household types and provide a framework for addressing the dynamics of pre-Hispanic cultural process in the South Central Andes.

Charles Stanish

Papers

Ancient Titicaca: The Evolution of Complex Society in Southern Peru and Northern Bolivia

The Origin of State Societies in South America

The Hydraulic Hypothesis Revisited: Lake Titicaca Basin Raised Fields in Theoretical Perspective

Ancient Andean Political Economy

Household Archeology: Testing Models of Zonal Complementarity in the South Central Andes