Archaeological Research in Jalisco - Complexity Simulation


1998-present Corn and Complexity Project
William Baden, Chris Beekman My people call it maize

      This is a collaborative project with William Baden of Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne, to examine the development of social complexity in West Mexico through agent-based computer simulation. Advances in programming and in studies of cognitive mapping have brought computer studies of decision making in complex social environments within the reach of social scientists. This is a long-term project whose eventual goal is a very large agent based simulation of the development of complex society, allowing the operator to alter variables and examine their long term effects. This is an enormous undertaking, and we hope to live long enough to produce something from it. The project is guided by Chaos and Complexity theory, both aspects of Non-Linear Dynamics, and the work of Ilya Prigogine and others. We believe that this perspective is highly applicable to human societies, and this project is largely an attempt to explore that possibility.

For Bill, this is an extension of his interests in traditional maize agriculture and computer simulation. For me, this is an extension of my interests in the effects of local political actors on wider structures. It's not just for breakfast, lunch, and dinner anymore
      The study area is, naturally, the Tequila valleys of central Jalisco, and we are beginning by extending the Stability Theory analysis that Bill developed in his dissertation and a 1995 SEAC paper to an area with a different environmental and cultural background. This first part of the simulation, intended to get our feet wet with this material, is therefore focusing on a reconstruction and evaluation of the agricultural system. In Bill's original research, he looked at the difficulties of maize agriculture in Mississippian and Early Historic contexts, in particular how decreasing yields over time (an inescapable fact of maize agriculture and nitrogen depletion until 19th century fertilization methods) were a form of energy input causing perturbations to the larger system, i.e. inducing settlement dislocation and related social disruption. The staple of Mesoamerican agriculture and diet was, of course, maize, and much of Bill's work should carry over. Some differences in Mesoamerica that we need to deal with include different maize varieties, the possible use of some fertilizers, different agricultural practices, and of course different weather. The two pictures that follow show the valley pocket below the site of Llano Grande. One was taken during the end of the dry season (November-May) while the other is from the early part of the wet season (June-October).

dry season- May wet season - June



      Most existing work with computer simulation in archaeology has tended to be overly narrow, focusing on single game theoretic sets (e.g. the Prisoner's Dilemma) or on economic topics. This, ironically, is directly opposed to one of the fundamental points of Complexity Theory, which emphasizes the interrelationship of many variables to produce inherently unpredictable patterns. It is therefore our eventual goal to plunge into cognitive mapping and genetic algorithms in an attempt to simulate political and social relationships as well.
      Our initial work on this project has been to obtain LANDSAT data for the study area, to synthesize ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological reports on Mesoamerican agricultural practices, and to broaden our existing programming skills. We are currently scanning soil maps of the study region and assembling everything within the ArcView GIS package as an initial analytical platform. Data in digital format does not exist for Mexico in the same way that it does for the United States, and so we are assembling much of this information from scratch. Since we have also not yet applied for a grant to get some time off for either of us to handle programming, progress has been slow. A grant proposal in the near future seems inevitable.
Views of the study area in central Jalisco are currently accessible in four forms.
Surface contours distinguished by colors
3D surface
With 100 m contour lines
LANDSAT multi-bandwidth image

A look at any of these maps can distinguish a series of valleys and lake basins forming a ring around the central Volcan de Tequila.