Dr Jessica Nitschke will present the Department of Archaeology seminar with a talk entitled, "The Emergence of Social Complexity in Predynastic Upper Egypt: An Agent-Based Approach". 

Abstract: The archaeological record shows that from ca. 4000 BC onwards, Neolithic farming communities in Upper Egypt underwent a process of increasing social complexity. This included a rise in wealth inequality and hierarchy; settlement agglomeration; and the development of complex cultural ideology, culminating in the emergence of a unified territorial state encompassing the whole Nile Valley by ca. 3200-3100. The emergence of the ancient Egyptian state has long been a point of fascination for scholars, but without a clear consensus on how or why this state emerged; archaeologists still struggle to adequately narrate and understand this process. 

This seminar will explore what Agent Based Modeling (ABM)—a type of computational simulation—can contribute to the discussion. While ABM has shown increased popularity in the social sciences in recent years to study the emergence of social-level phenomena, it is still relatively underused as a methodological tool by archaeologists. However, ABM potentially offers one of the most robust means of testing hypotheses about social change in the distant past against the empirical data. This paper will introduce some of the prevailing theoretical models in the Egyptological literature concerning the rise of polities and social complexity and show how ABM can be used to critically evaluate and refine these models, focusing on the early stage of the process: the transition from so-called egalitarian agri-communities to agglomerated settlements with pronounced social stratification. Specifically, I will present an ABM that explores how a combination of human-decision making, environmental/topographical factors, and chance all interconnect to result in the emergence of a settlement system and wealth hierarchy similar to that witnessed in the archaeological record of predynastic Upper Egypt. 

Bio: Jessica Nitschke has a BA in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology from the University of California at Berkeley. She is a research associate in the Department of Ancient Studies at Stellenbosch and a part-time lecturer in the Classics section in SLL at UCT. The research presented here is being done in pursuit of a Masters of Science degree in the Archaeology Department at UCT in collaboration with the Computer Science Department.