The entanglement of
social practices and environmental conditions
through which societies appropriate a georesource
(after Stöllner 2021)

Systems thinking interpretation

elements in a causal mechanism
are related in such a way that
the state of one is closely linked to
the state of many others

diffuse causality & feedback loops

Can we identify mechanisms that explain the formation of georesourcescapes?
i.e. emergence

• Well-studied archaeological site
  (incl. work by Stöllner, Boenke, et al.)
• Core area of a wider, far-reaching archaeological culture (Hallstatt)

• Particularity and importance due to rock salt mining
• Links crafts, exchange and political complexity

• Dual settlement:
  
  • Mines (Bad Dürrnberg proper)
  • Village (Hallein)


• Salt mining:
  
  • Beginnings (Ha D: c.620–450)
  • Intensification
    (Lt A/B: c.500-250 BC)
  • Resilience to troubled times
    in later periods

Wood and food consumption estimates (e.g. for c. 1000 to 1700 workers) indicate salt mining activity costed a substantial economic effort

Labour intensity and
poor conditions

Multiplication of activities
(crafts, specialisations)

Dependency on exchange

Socio-ecological System (SES)
Simulation
Agent-based modelling

Many examples in archaeology
e.g., Doran et al. 1994, Wilkinson et al. 2013,
Lake 2014, Madella et al. 2014,
Wurzer et al. 2015,
Romanwska et al. 2019, 2021

Work done by K. Kowarik, G. Wurzer,
H. Reschreiter et alle
(Kowarik et al. 2015, 2012, 2010)

"Business process simulation" (G. Wurzer)

Progressive modelling

• Increasing complexity starting at the mine shaft up to the regional scale.
• Multiple models and experiments
• Interesting results on:
  • Mining logistics (gallery formation, labour requiremnts and organisation)
  • General demographic dynamics at local scale
    (hybrid ABM-SD model)
• Apparently truncated workplan

• Pooling of labour/resources for production/consumption
• Production for use value:
  limited necessities, limited production effort, aggregate underproduction
• Cohesive decision-making
• Household autonomy → interhousehold anarchy
• Full independence and self-sufficiency state (only theoretical)

Sahlins 1972. Stone Age Economics

• Strong rule of kinship
• Generalised, balanced and negative reciprocity
• Most regular exchanges entail pooling
• Tensions between production for use and production for exchange
  (self-interest vs. moral obligations to kin)
• Increasing production for exchange
  (overproduction from household perspective)
  → deviation from Chayanov's slope
• Social complexity both as requirer and enabler of intensification

• Pooling challenges increase with scale
• Leaders drive pooling and domestic overproduction
  (as decision-makers, negotiators)
• Households handling (recurrently) extra costs of exchanges
• Coercion and power replace kinship
• Inequality disrupts exchange balance
• Negative reciprocity weakens leadership
• More pooling boosts leader power
• Leadership needed for "production for exchange" economy?

Shifting focus from gallery/mine
to settlement and region

Reproducing a sustainable rock salt economy under the conditions at Dürrnberg
and
identify scenarios and factors of formation/intensification/obliteration

Intensive re-use of modules to encompass all relevant domains:

• food economy
• demography
• social structure
• multiple crafts
• local and regional exchange

Entities

• Households
• Work teams
• Land unit

Activities

• Iterative process of a work team
• Input: labour, artifacts and land (incl. resources)
• Output: artifacts, well being, events, ...
• Requirements (qualitative, quantitative)

Artifacts

• A broad spectrum of types with different properties (e.g., movable, container, etc)
• Intrinsically linked to the activities making them
• Used in activities (production) and direct consumption

(print in terminal)
activity setup
Activity output: axe
Input types: dict_keys(['wood', 'stone'])
Production functions: min(labor, land, wood, stone)
Max. productivity per input artifact per type: {'wood': 25, 'stone': 100}
Max. productivity per labor: 3
Max. productivity per land: 10

activity performance
Activity output: axe
Input: labor=10, land=20, artifacts={'wood': 100, 'stone': 50}
Output: axe=30
{'wood': 98.80000000000001, 'stone': 49.7, 'axe': 30}

Activities performed a number of times within a cycle (e.g. hours per day or week) according to a predefined sequence of activity IDs (activity profiles).

A "farming" household could have an activity profile where a `farming` activity occupies 2/3 of their working time-person slots.

Hierarchy of artifact subclasses and inheritance of properties:

e.g., artifact > movable > Container,
of ContainerType "VESSEL",
of MineralMaterialType "CERAMIC", etc

Types as extensive, yet finite, collections

Pathways of production defined by creation, transformation or destruction of artifacts