Environmental Vulnerability of Early Societies: Some Reflections on Modeling Issues

Abstract

Understanding the vulnerability of early societies to climatic fluctuations and local environmental degradation requires development of a hierarchy of system dynamical models. It is through the development and verification process of such models that we will arrive at explanations of abrupt demographic and/or cultural changes documented by archaeology. Any modeling process will have to ask questions and make decisions about the definition of the system of interest, the appropriate spatial and demographic aggregation level to be adopted and details of the physical, ecological and cultural processes to be included.