How to ‘downsize’ a complex society: an agent-based modelling approach to assess the resilience of Indus Civilisation settlements to past climate change
The development, floruit and decline of the urban phase of the Indus Civilisation (c.2600/2500-1900 BC) provide an ideal opportunity to investigate social resilience and transformation in relation to a variable climate. The Indus Civilisation extended over most of the Indus River Basin, which includ...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IOP Publishing
2020-01-01
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| Series: | Environmental Research Letters |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abacf9 |
| _version_ | 1797747800910331904 |
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| author | Andreas Angourakis Jennifer Bates Jean-Philippe Baudouin Alena Giesche M Cemre Ustunkaya Nathan Wright Ravindra N Singh Cameron A Petrie |
| author_facet | Andreas Angourakis Jennifer Bates Jean-Philippe Baudouin Alena Giesche M Cemre Ustunkaya Nathan Wright Ravindra N Singh Cameron A Petrie |
| author_sort | Andreas Angourakis |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The development, floruit and decline of the urban phase of the Indus Civilisation (c.2600/2500-1900 BC) provide an ideal opportunity to investigate social resilience and transformation in relation to a variable climate. The Indus Civilisation extended over most of the Indus River Basin, which includes a mix of diverse environments conditioned, among other factors, by partially overlapping patterns of winter and summer precipitation. These patterns likely changed towards the end of the urban phase (4.2 ka BP event), increasing aridity. The impact of this change appears to have varied at different cities and between urban and rural contexts. We present a simulation approach using agent-based modelling to address the potential diversity of agricultural strategies adopted by Indus settlements in different socio-ecological scenarios in Haryana, NW India. This is an ongoing initiative that consists of creating a modular model, Indus Village, that assesses the implications of trends in cropping strategies for the sustainability of settlements and the resilience of such strategies under different regimes of precipitation. The model aims to simulate rural settlements structured into farming households, with sub-models representing weather and land systems, food economy, demography, and land use. This model building is being carried out as part of the multi-disciplinary TwoRains project. It brings together research on material culture, settlement distribution, food production and consumption, vegetation and paleoenvironmental conditions. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T15:56:48Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-7cb39e2fcf0e424699da00b4d31dcb36 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1748-9326 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T15:56:48Z |
| publishDate | 2020-01-01 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Environmental Research Letters |
| spelling | doaj.art-7cb39e2fcf0e424699da00b4d31dcb362023-08-09T14:53:42ZengIOP PublishingEnvironmental Research Letters1748-93262020-01-01151111500410.1088/1748-9326/abacf9How to ‘downsize’ a complex society: an agent-based modelling approach to assess the resilience of Indus Civilisation settlements to past climate changeAndreas Angourakis0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9946-8142Jennifer Bates1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7100-4741Jean-Philippe Baudouin2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0219-8634Alena Giesche3https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3673-7269M Cemre Ustunkaya4https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4217-1695Nathan Wright5https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2482-2661Ravindra N Singh6https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1102-4839Cameron A Petrie7https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2926-7230McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge , Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 3DZ, United KingdomDepartment of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia, Pennsylvania PA 19104, United States of AmericaDepartment of Geography, University of Cambridge , Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 3EN, United Kingdom; Institute of Environmental Physics, University of Heidelberg , Heidelberg 69117, Germany; Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge , Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 3EQ, United KingdomDepartment of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge , Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 3EQ, United KingdomMcDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge , Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 3DZ, United KingdomMcDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge , Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 3DZ, United Kingdom; School of Social Science, The University of Queensland , Brisbane, Queensland QLD 4072, AustraliaDepartment of AIHC and Archaeology, Banaras Hindu University , Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh 221005, IndiaMcDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge , Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 3DZ, United Kingdom; Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge , Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 3DZ, United KingdomThe development, floruit and decline of the urban phase of the Indus Civilisation (c.2600/2500-1900 BC) provide an ideal opportunity to investigate social resilience and transformation in relation to a variable climate. The Indus Civilisation extended over most of the Indus River Basin, which includes a mix of diverse environments conditioned, among other factors, by partially overlapping patterns of winter and summer precipitation. These patterns likely changed towards the end of the urban phase (4.2 ka BP event), increasing aridity. The impact of this change appears to have varied at different cities and between urban and rural contexts. We present a simulation approach using agent-based modelling to address the potential diversity of agricultural strategies adopted by Indus settlements in different socio-ecological scenarios in Haryana, NW India. This is an ongoing initiative that consists of creating a modular model, Indus Village, that assesses the implications of trends in cropping strategies for the sustainability of settlements and the resilience of such strategies under different regimes of precipitation. The model aims to simulate rural settlements structured into farming households, with sub-models representing weather and land systems, food economy, demography, and land use. This model building is being carried out as part of the multi-disciplinary TwoRains project. It brings together research on material culture, settlement distribution, food production and consumption, vegetation and paleoenvironmental conditions.https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abacf9agent-based modellingagricultureBronze Ageclimate changeIndus Civilisationmodelling and simulation |
| spellingShingle | Andreas Angourakis Jennifer Bates Jean-Philippe Baudouin Alena Giesche M Cemre Ustunkaya Nathan Wright Ravindra N Singh Cameron A Petrie How to ‘downsize’ a complex society: an agent-based modelling approach to assess the resilience of Indus Civilisation settlements to past climate change Environmental Research Letters agent-based modelling agriculture Bronze Age climate change Indus Civilisation modelling and simulation |
| title | How to ‘downsize’ a complex society: an agent-based modelling approach to assess the resilience of Indus Civilisation settlements to past climate change |
| title_full | How to ‘downsize’ a complex society: an agent-based modelling approach to assess the resilience of Indus Civilisation settlements to past climate change |
| title_fullStr | How to ‘downsize’ a complex society: an agent-based modelling approach to assess the resilience of Indus Civilisation settlements to past climate change |
| title_full_unstemmed | How to ‘downsize’ a complex society: an agent-based modelling approach to assess the resilience of Indus Civilisation settlements to past climate change |
| title_short | How to ‘downsize’ a complex society: an agent-based modelling approach to assess the resilience of Indus Civilisation settlements to past climate change |
| title_sort | how to downsize a complex society an agent based modelling approach to assess the resilience of indus civilisation settlements to past climate change |
| topic | agent-based modelling agriculture Bronze Age climate change Indus Civilisation modelling and simulation |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abacf9 |
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