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Settlement Dynamics and Hierarchy from Agent Decision-Making: a Method Derived from Entropy Maximization

This paper presents an agent-based complex system simulation of settlement structure change using methods derived from entropy maximization modeling. The approach is applied to model the movement of people and goods in urban settings to study how settlement size hierarchy develops. While entropy max...

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Autor principal: Altaweel, Mark
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5750773/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29368754
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10816-014-9219-6
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author Altaweel, Mark
author_facet Altaweel, Mark
author_sort Altaweel, Mark
collection PubMed
description This paper presents an agent-based complex system simulation of settlement structure change using methods derived from entropy maximization modeling. The approach is applied to model the movement of people and goods in urban settings to study how settlement size hierarchy develops. While entropy maximization is well known for assessing settlement structure change over different spatiotemporal settings, approaches have rarely attempted to develop and apply this methodology to understand how individual and household decisions may affect settlement size distributions. A new method developed in this paper allows individual decision-makers to chose where to settle based on social-environmental factors, evaluate settlements based on geography and relative benefits, while retaining concepts derived from entropy maximization with settlement size affected by movement ability and site attractiveness feedbacks. To demonstrate the applicability of the theoretical and methodological approach, case study settlement patterns from the Middle Bronze (MBA) and Iron Ages (IA) in the Iraqi North Jazirah Survey (NJS) are used. Results indicate clear differences in settlement factors and household choices in simulations that lead to settlement size hierarchies comparable to the two evaluated periods. Conflict and socio-political cohesion, both their presence and absence, are suggested to have major roles in affecting the observed settlement hierarchy. More broadly, the model is made applicable for different empirically based settings, while being generalized to incorporate data uncertainty, making the model useful for understanding urbanism from top-down and bottom-up perspectives.
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spelling pubmed-57507732018-01-22 Settlement Dynamics and Hierarchy from Agent Decision-Making: a Method Derived from Entropy Maximization Altaweel, Mark J Archaeol Method Theory Article This paper presents an agent-based complex system simulation of settlement structure change using methods derived from entropy maximization modeling. The approach is applied to model the movement of people and goods in urban settings to study how settlement size hierarchy develops. While entropy maximization is well known for assessing settlement structure change over different spatiotemporal settings, approaches have rarely attempted to develop and apply this methodology to understand how individual and household decisions may affect settlement size distributions. A new method developed in this paper allows individual decision-makers to chose where to settle based on social-environmental factors, evaluate settlements based on geography and relative benefits, while retaining concepts derived from entropy maximization with settlement size affected by movement ability and site attractiveness feedbacks. To demonstrate the applicability of the theoretical and methodological approach, case study settlement patterns from the Middle Bronze (MBA) and Iron Ages (IA) in the Iraqi North Jazirah Survey (NJS) are used. Results indicate clear differences in settlement factors and household choices in simulations that lead to settlement size hierarchies comparable to the two evaluated periods. Conflict and socio-political cohesion, both their presence and absence, are suggested to have major roles in affecting the observed settlement hierarchy. More broadly, the model is made applicable for different empirically based settings, while being generalized to incorporate data uncertainty, making the model useful for understanding urbanism from top-down and bottom-up perspectives. Springer US 2014-09-16 2015 /pmc/articles/PMC5750773/ /pubmed/29368754 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10816-014-9219-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2014 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.
spellingShingle Article
Altaweel, Mark
Settlement Dynamics and Hierarchy from Agent Decision-Making: a Method Derived from Entropy Maximization
title Settlement Dynamics and Hierarchy from Agent Decision-Making: a Method Derived from Entropy Maximization
title_full Settlement Dynamics and Hierarchy from Agent Decision-Making: a Method Derived from Entropy Maximization
title_fullStr Settlement Dynamics and Hierarchy from Agent Decision-Making: a Method Derived from Entropy Maximization
title_full_unstemmed Settlement Dynamics and Hierarchy from Agent Decision-Making: a Method Derived from Entropy Maximization
title_short Settlement Dynamics and Hierarchy from Agent Decision-Making: a Method Derived from Entropy Maximization
title_sort settlement dynamics and hierarchy from agent decision-making: a method derived from entropy maximization
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5750773/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29368754
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10816-014-9219-6
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