How to ‘downsize’ a complex society

Angourakis et al.
IOW-Kiel, session 11

Kiel, 14 March 2019

https://andros-spica.github.io/IOW-Angourakis-et-al-2019/

How to ‘downsize’ a complex society

Experiments with agent-based models to assess the resilience of Indus Civilisation settlements to past climate change

Andreas Angourakis, Jennifer Bates, Jean-Phillipe Baudouin,
Alena Giesche, M. Cemre Ustunkaya, Nathan Wright,
Ravindra N. Singh and Cameron A. Petrie

available at https://andros-spica.github.io/IOW-Angourakis-et-al-2019/
https://andros-spica.github.io/IOW-Angourakis-et-al-2019/index.html?print-pdf (printable version)

Overview

One of the great ‘Old World’ Bronze Age civilisations
First cities in South Asia (c.2500-1900 BC) [“experiment”?]
De-urbanisation - collapse, decline or transformation?

Five (or four) known major urban centres
Possibly ‘city-states’
each up to 280 km apart
primarily rely on zebu, sheep, goat and water buffalo + wheat/barley + (some) summer crops

Indus Civilisation

Mohenjo-daro, Sindh, Pakistan. "Great bath" and "granary". (Source)

Long distance exchange/trade

R. Law 2010, T. Wilkinson 2012

summer rain, winter rain

Giesche et al. 2019

“Predictable unpredictability”

J.-P. Baudouin (in preparation) winter-rain

climate change

Giesche et al. 2019

start of the urban phase -> stronger winter monsoon (4.5 and 4.3 ka)
end of the urban phase -> some time after the decrease in both the summer and winter monsoon strength (4.1 ka)

Crop diversity

Petrie & Bates 2017

Bates 2016, Bates et al. 2017a, Bates et al. 2017b, Petrie & Bates 2017 haryana-crop-diversity

Petrie & Bates 2017

Farming in two seasons involves diverse land-use, water requirements, and careful scheduling of labour

multi-cropping and intercropping

constraints and potentialities of combining crops

Rakhigarhi hinterlands

Lohari Ragho

Occupied in Early and Mature phases (pre-4.2 kya BP)

Ideal for exploring the transition to the urban period and behaviour before the climate event.

Masudpur-I

Occupied in Mature and Late phases (post-4.2 kya BP)

Ideal for exploring behaviour after the climate event and the transition into the post-urban period.

others

MSD VII - Bhimwada Jodha,
1-2 ha mound, height 1-2 m

MSD 1 - Sampolia Khera,
5-6 ha mound, height 1-2 m

6km apart, c.15 km from Rakhigarhi
Intermittent occupation at both sites, spanning consecutive phases
barley, also millet + rice in the Early, Mature & Late Harappan

Bates et al 2017a/b, Petrie et al 2016

Flotation materials

Economical plants (M. Cemre Ustunkaya)

Charcoal (N. Wright)

TwoRains modelling programme

Mission:
to explore human adaptation to the shifting landscapes of NW India and expose the sustainability of different types of possible human responses, in terms of decision-making, to abrupt climate change

Aspects to model:

rural settlement
households
food production/consumption
land use (crop strategies)
surplus?

Households

Definition: propinquity and co-residence, rather than kinship
Importance: most universal element of human societies
Models (templates):
- Household demography
- Household economy

Household demography

Structure

models

Peristeva & Kostaki 2007, 2015

models

Coale-Demeny Life Tables Model ('cdmlt' functions in demogR package by James Holland Jones and collaborators)
Coale, A., P. Demeny, and B. Vaughn. 1983. Regional model life tables and stable populations. 2nd ed. New York: Academic Press.

Nuptiality

Household economy

cycle

labour

nutrition

nutrition effect on mortality

Land use model and strategy (decision-making)

land divided in cells (patches)
cultivable/non-cultivable
cover: crops/non-crops
soil (humidity, salinity, N, pH)

under construction!

Exchange network dynamics

'hubs' can emerge/fluctuate/collapse even without exogenous factors

PondTrade model

'TwoRains' project

ERC, 2015-2020

Follow our updates!

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the Land, Water and Settlement and TwoRains teams:

Aftab Alam, Alessandro Ceccarelli, Sagorika Chakraborty, Sudarshan Chakradhari, Arti Chowdhary, Yama Dixit, Charly French, Adam Green, Henry Green, Lily Green, David Hodell, Penny Jones, Carla Lancelotti, Emma Lightfoot, Frank Lynam, Sayantani Neogi, Hector Orengo, Arun Kumar Pandey, Danika Parikh, Vikas Pawar, Amit Ranjan, David Redhouse, Dheerendra Pratab Singh, Akshyeta Suryanarayan, & Joanna Walker.

Special thanks also to the Department of AIHC and Archaeology, BHU, the European Research Council (ERC), and the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) for support and funding, and to the Archaeological Survey of India for permission to carry out the work.