Rogers Archaeology Lab

New Publication—Building a Better Past…

By J. Daniel Rogers and Wendy H. Cegielski

 

 

Last week the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science published our commentary, “Building a better past with the help of agent-based modeling” (www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1718277114).  Our topic is computational modeling and trends in how archaeology and other historical sciences conduct research.  We focus on a methodology called agent-based modeling.  This is a kind of complex simulation that creates agents, typically having characteristics of humans.  The agents interact, make decisions, and changes take place over time.  The results are accumulated and compared to real-world information about some aspect of a social system, depending on the question being investigated.

Our back story for writing on this topic comes from a convergence of perspectives plus the inevitable power of opportunity.  First of all, although we work at different institutions (the Smithsonian and Arizona State University) and study different topics in different parts of the world, we both come from an American tradition of archaeological research that values both scientific and humanistic perspectives. While our graduate training took place 40 years apart, we still share foundational thinking, although our knowledge base is quite different.  A good collaboration creates an opportunity to make the most of shared and divergent perspectives and allows an awareness of certain trends that we might not have recognized individually.

In the PNAS Opinion we note that the current generation of sophisticated computational methods creates the context for a major change in thinking, similar to a paradigm shift.  We are not the only ones to comment on the significance of simulations and ABMs (Banks 2002; Epstein 2006; Farmer and Foley 2009; Lake 2015).  Until recently, however, the conceptual revolution has remained marginal, largely due to the scarcity of practitioners.  Now there are several universities training interdisciplinary scholars who make routine use of high-level computational methods. The emerging potential of computational modeling provides the methodology from which to consider how we do our work as archaeologists.

Our original title was Building a Better Past, which was a bit too grand but it did reflect our interest in engaging with the social sciences and other historical sciences, ranging from paleobiology to astrophysics.  To some extent we see archaeology as a proxy for the social sciences more broadly and agent-based modeling as a proxy for a wider variety of computational methods. The Opinion published in PNAS was preceded by an article we wrote on trends in the archaeological use of agent-based modeling (Cegielski and Rogers 2016).  In that article we analyzed publishing patterns, topic areas, and gave examples and descriptions of the fundamental workings of an agent-based model. From that survey of the literature it was easy to recognize that as a profession, archaeology had crossed a threshold.  Computer simulations were no longer seen as a novelty, but rather as an emerging core methodology.  

Bibliography

Bankes, Steven C. 2002 Agent-based Modeling: A Revolution? Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 99, no. Suppl 3: 7199–7200. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.072081299.

Cegielski, Wendy H. and J. Daniel Rogers. 2016 Rethinking the role of agent-based modeling in archaeology. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 41:283-298.  DOI: 10.1016/j.jaa.2016.01.009

Farmer, J. Doyne, and Duncan Foley. 2009 The Economy Needs Agent-based Modelling.” Nature 460: 685–86.

Lake, Mark W. 2015 Explaining the Past with ABM: On Modelling Philosophy. In Agent-based Modeling and Simulation in Archaeology, edited by Gabriel Wurzer, Kerstin Kowarik, and Hans Reschreiter, 3–35. London: Springer.

Rogers, J. Daniel and Wendy H. Cegielski. 2017 Building a better past with the help of agent-based modeling.  Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Science 114 (49): 12841-12844.  DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1718277114

A free download is available at:  www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1718277114

New Publication on Computational Modeling in Archaeology

Across the social sciences there is an emerging shift towards greater inclusion of computational methods in research. Agent-based modeling is one of the new approaches. In a new publication Wendy Cegielski and Dan Rogers describe how the field of archaeology is rapidly incorporating this new method. Their study, "Rethinking the Role of Agent-Based Modeling in Archaeology" published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology describes the trends in research and the challenges faced when using a complex new methodology. Cegielski and Rogers also use the article as a way to introduce the basic concepts of agent-based modeling, including a glossary of terms.

The link below will take you to a free pdf provided by the publisher:

http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Sa2S-JVbYIbs

Herding Simulated Sheep

By: Hollis Miller, NHRE Intern, with Meghan Mulkerin, Collections Specialist and Research Scientist Contractor.  

   When I was accepted to the Smithsonian’s Natural History Research Experience (NHRE) Internship, I was so excited. I had always loved the Smithsonian and now I was getting the chance to work there! I first heard about the program through Liz Cottrell, co-director of NHRE, who gave a lecture at my school the year before. Along with my acceptance letter came a short description of the research project that I would be working on, entitled “Computational Modeling of Climate Change and Human Adaptation.” It sounded cool, especially since I am very interested in climate change, but I was a little worried because I knew nothing about computer models. 

Dr. Rogers points out some of the interesting trends that came out of my research with the computer model. Image Credit: NHB2014-01191.

Thankfully, upon my arrival in the office of Dr. Rogers, I learned that I simply had to learn how to use and apply the models – no computer programming necessary on my part. Even so, it still took me several weeks of reading, playing with the computer model and instruction from Dr. Rogers, before I was ready to officially design and execute my research project. 

The Mongolian landscape that HouseholdsWorld models, complete with herd animals. Photo Credit: Dr. J. Daniel Rogers. 

   The computer model I am using is called HouseholdsWorld (designed and tested under NSF grant BCS-0527471), which simulates a nomadic herding society in Mongolia. It is an agent-based model, which is a complex type of computer simulation that allows individual people or households (i.e. the agents) to make their own decisions each day. If you have ever played the Sims, you know that each Sim has its own personality and operates independently, although its decisions can be influenced by other people and social norms. This is basically the same concept as in agent-based modeling, albeit HouseholdsWorld has far less exciting graphics.

The HouseholdsWorld graphical user interface (GUI--pronounced "gooey". Now you speak computer!) showing households and clans moving on the landscape. 

Each agent in HouseholdsWorld has its own kinship network and its own life history of birth, marriage, childrearing, herding animals, and death. But even death is not the end to the agent’s participation in the model, because the agent’s living relatives will continue to remember them for several generations, much like you recall who your grandparents or great-grandparents are. This complexity is necessary because it reflects how societies in the real world operate, thus making the model more useful and applicable.

Here's another picture of the goats and sheep, which are typical of the kinds of animals a simulated household in our computer model would own. Who needs a graphical user interface anyway? Dr. Rogers has tons of these pictures from his travels in Mongolia. Photo Credit: Dr. J. Daniel Rogers.

    In HouseholdsWorld, the agents are households that move across a 10,000 km² landscape consisting of dense forests, open grasslands and rivers. Each household is a member of a camp, which is a small living group that generally contains 1 to 4 households, and is also a member of a clan, which is basically an extended lineage of families. The main goal of each household is to find the most abundant grass in order to support its herd of animals. In turn, this supports the household as well, because wealth is measured by the number of animals a household or clan owns. They also use the animals as a source of meat, milk and hides.

Households move in the model according to five social rules:

1) relying on the memory of the camp to return to locations that had good grass in previous years

2) searching for nearby abundant grass

3) staying close to other camp members

4) staying close to other clan members

5) avoiding members of foreign clans

How strictly the households follow these rules can be changed by the researcher.

    Bad weather is the main source of trouble for the households. There are two types of bad weather in the model, droughts and zuds, which are severe winter storms. When weather events occur in HouseholdsWorld, they decrease the amount of food available for the animals to eat, which causes both the animal and human populations to suffer. Generally, the weather events are based on historical climatological data from Mongolia, but the model can be programmed to increase the number of weather events, which could be used to approximate modern climate change.

Zuds are very dangerous for herd animals and the people who rely on them. Millions of animals can die from prolonged zuds. Image Credit: FAO: Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department, Chapter II - Cold, semi-arid Asia. 

    This summer I explored how the social connections people make with one another affect the ability of the society to bounce back after severe weather events. That ability is called resilience. Resilience is similar to flexibility. For example, think about a rubber band. You can stretch a rubber band and when you release the pressure, it returns to its original shape, however, if the rubber band is stretched too far, it will break. Similarly, the more times you stretch a rubber band, the less well it rebounds back to its original shape. Societies can act in similar ways, such as how the Roman Empire expanded throughout many centuries, but eventually reached a point of collapse because the government could no longer control unrest in the far-reaching corners of the empire. Equally so, a society that finds its adaptive capacity stretched too frequently, or several times in quick succession—such as back to back snowstorms—might be less able to cope with the events.

    Bringing this idea back to HouseholdsWorld, I wanted to know what happened to the society when I weakened the connections that people have with each other, so I set up three experiments:

1) No Bailout – in this experiment I weakened the economic connectivity that people had with one another by turning off the bailout function in the model. The bailout function is when households give some of their animals to other family members in times of need. However, in this experiment I turned off that feature, so households did not share animals with one another.

2) Alien Distance – in this second experiment I weakened the strength of kinship ties by lessening the number of people that each household recognized as family.

3) Social Rules – in the final experiment I changed the order of importance of the social rules. If you look back to the list of five social rules above, you will see that the first two involve finding the best grass, either by remembering where good grass was in previous years or simply by going to the best grass that is nearby. I switched these two rules in this experiment so that households are more likely to settle for nearby grass than seek out better grass that may be further away. In terms of connections between people, this experiment represents decreased communication among camp members.

    In order to have a control group to compare the experiment results to, I also did a baseline run of the model, using real historical and ethnographic data for how nomadic herding societies in Mongolia operate. After comparing each of my experiments to the baseline, I came up with some interesting results that suggest that the type connections people make with one another matters in terms of the population and function of the society.

If you would like to read more about my experiment, you can download my final poster presentation here: Download Miller_NHRE2014 (smaller) 

 1) No Bailout

a. Population decreased because poorer households could not survive

b. Society lost the social safety net when households no longer shared animals with one another

2) Alien Distance

a. Population increased

b. Fewer family members meant that each household had fewer people to worry about and potentially take care of, so they were able to act more independently – like a modern urban setting where people may be more concerned about their immediate family than their extended family

c. This would also mean that there were many more available marriage partners, making it easier for the society to reproduce

d. Families were on average less wealthy than in either the baseline or the No Bailout experiment

3) Social Rules

a. Population dropped significantly over the generations as birth rates decreased

b. This is probably due to a reduced number of marriage partners because in a smaller group, people are more likely to be related to one another and therefore not allowed to marry based on the customs

c. Households are much wealthier and there is a middle class larger than in any of the other experiments because of less competition for grass

This graph shows the total population for each of the experiments plotted throughout the 330 year time frame. Blue represents the Alien Distance experiment, red is the baseline run, green is the No Bailout experiment, and purple is the Social Rules experiment. The first 250 years of the run are an initialization phase when no extreme weather events occur, hence the fairly stable population during that period. The later section with high variability in the population is the phase when extreme weather events are introduced. These data suggest that connectivity is important to demographic success, as evidenced by the sometimes extreme deviance from the baseline run, especially in the Social Rules experiment.     

    The data revealed that lessened social connectivity does affect demographic success (i.e. population) and thus resiliency, but the direction of that effect depends on the type of connectivity in question. Humans make choices based on observations, inherited knowledge and the input of other humans. In short, they make the system more complicated and more difficult to predict as even subtle changes can have massive cascading effects. Understanding the dynamics of how societies and their natural environments interact with one another is especially important now, because the Earth system is currently being tested by humans through environmental degradation and climate change. Agent-based models, such as HouseholdsWorld, could be instrumental in learning how best to proceed regarding climate change and how our connections with one another around the globe are going to help and/or hurt us and the societies we have built.

Suggested Readings 

Cioffi-Revilla, Claudio, J. Daniel Rogers, and Maciek Latek. 2010. The MASON HouseholdsWorld Model of Pastoral Nomad Societies. In Simulating Interacting Agents and Social Phenomena: The Second World Congress on Social Simulation. Keiki Takadama, Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, and Guillaume Deffaunt, eds. Pp. 193–204. Agent-Based Social Systems. Tokyo: Springer.

Rogers, J. Daniel, Teresa Nichols, Theresa Emmerich, Maciej Latek, and Claudio Cioffi-Revilla. 2012. Modeling Scale and Variability in Human-Environmental Interactions in Inner Asia. Ecological Modelling 241: 5–14.

Walker, B. H, and David Salt. 2006. Resilience Thinking : Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Acknowledgements

This blog post was made possible by support from the National Science Foundation. HouseholdsWorld was created under NSF Grant: BCS-0527471. Hollis Miller's internship through the Natural History Research Experience program was supported by NSF's REU Site, EAR-1062692. 

NorthLands in a Changing World

Before stepping out the front door of the Museum on a recent evening, I pull on my serious down parka and snap the fur-trimmed hood snug under my chin. Bill Fitzhugh, Director of the Arctic Studies Center, looks at me like I’m from another planet and says, “15 degrees isn’t that cold! If you were in Ulaan Baator now you wouldn’t be able to breathe.” Not being able to breathe is an exaggeration, but I got the point, thinking, “That is exactly why I am not in Ulaan Baator in February.”

I say, “Give me a hot desert any day.”

I will take my chances with sunburn and dehydration in the Gobi over frostbite in the Arctic Circle. Sure, I know 15° F isn’t very cold. In Washington we do get temperatures like this from time-to-time, although probably less so in the future.  

I’m also sure that Bill Fitzhugh is better adapted to the cold than I am. In his research, he camps with the reindeer herders in Russia and Mongolia, excavates European contact sites in Frobisher Bay north of Hudson Strait, and dives in Hare Harbor on Quebec’s North Shore. Bill specializes in the study of cold places, Vikings, Inuit, and the Mongol Empire.

Bill measures a whale limb bone, during an underwater excavation in Hare Harbor, Quebec. Image Credit: Bill Fitzhugh.

We have been colleagues for decades and have traveled in Mongolia, attended some of the same conferences, and sat at the same tables in countless meetings here at the Museum. The irony of my aversion to extreme cold is that the northern ice is melting and the Arctic is becoming warmer more quickly than other parts of the globe. And as part of a 4-year NSF grant, I am a member of a research team that is developing computer simulations of the ways social and climate systems interact. Last year the project received supplemental funding to include the Arctic.  Bill’s experience and that of the other members of the Arctic Studies Center, especially Laura Fleming, Igor Krupnik, and Stephen Loring have become critical links for this research project. Our current efforts are focused on both the Boreal and Arctic regions through a simulation called NorthLands.   

For me the experiences of 15° F in Washington, indigenous ways of life in the Arctic, and the travels of European explorers are directly connected and now linked even further through a modern high-tech way of building simulated worlds to find connections and their implications. The current evidence for climate change motivates us to seek better and more realistic ways of coping. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released a report focused on the state of knowledge about managing risks and adapting to climate change. One of the case studies was drawn from the Canadian far north. We need to know how the risks will affect the lives of people who call those regions home, not to mention the fact that what happens in the Arctic has implications for us all.

The NorthLands view, looking down on the North Pole. This is the NorthLands model's graphical user interface (or GUI- pronounced "Gooey." This amuses us.). Photo Credit: Mason Smithsonian Joint Project on Climate and Societal Modeling.

The NorthLands model has 4 major components: climate, biogeography, social systems (including government), and infrastructure (roads, buildings, airports, etc.).  The model is currently under construction at George Mason University’s Center for Social Complexity, using the MASON simulation toolkit.  We think we can make a unique contribution by developing a simulation that replicates the dynamics of very complex socionatural interactions, on a very large scale.  Once NorthLands is fully functional, we can adjust different components and study the effects to analyze alternative scenarios.  We then compare the results against what we know about the real world.  Does NorthLands give us new insights?  Here are some of the questions we hope the NorthLands model will help us get closer to answering:

• What are the principal criteria for successful adaptation? What resources will be required?
• What kinds of collective action will be needed for successful adaptation?  How important are governmental policies?
• Is our adaptive capacity sufficient for the given challenges? Will we need new technologies?
• Are extreme weather and abrupt changes likely to exceed our capacity to adapt in some regions?

The experience of climate change isn’t just gradual rising temperatures. It is not as if every day is just slightly warmer; the change isn’t linear. There is an upward trend, but jagged ups and downs is probably a better way to describe the process as we experience it through increased variation in weather.  Climate change is sometimes about more extreme and unusual weather, and even abrupt changes.  Climate is complicated and even chaotic, but that doesn’t mean we cannot interpret the trends and sort out the implications for the ways we live on this planet.

You can read more about the project and the people working on the project on our website and the George Mason NSF-CDI Wiki.

In a future blog I will take a closer look at the word “adaptation” and the many ways it is used to describe the potentials of our future. 

 By: Dr. J. Daniel Rogers

Internology: What Do Interns Do at NMNH?

    It’s been a busy year so far here at Rogers Archaeology Lab. We’ve welcomed several new interns since January, including Samantha Linford, whose blog post on Mongolian Pastoralists you may have read. While she was here she also co-wrote an article with Dr. Rogers titled Modeling the Sustainability of Wealth Among Pastoralists, which has been submitted for publication.  Samantha has recently graduated from University of California Santa Cruz, and is currently doing archaeological survey work in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona. Samantha was a great help to have around the museum and we wish her well in her future endeavors!

Samantha Linford examining pottery sherds from the Island of Nevis that we were preparing for return after being on loan to the museum for research. Photo Credit: Meghan  Mulkerin

    Currently with us for Summer 2013, we have Nicole Coscolluela and Julia Grasso. Nicole recently graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a dual Bachelor of Arts degree in Classics and Archaeology. She is moving to Scotland in August to start her program towards a Master’s of Science degree in Human Osteoarchaeology at the University of Edinburgh. Julia is a current graduate student in Anthropology with a Museum Training concentration at The George Washington University.

From left: Julia Grasso, Madeline Shaffer, and Nicole Coscolluela. Photo Credit: Meghan Mulkerin.

    Nicole and Julia have been busy working on the interpretation of the River Basin Survey site, Cattle Oiler (39ST224), that we have been cataloguing for the past several months. Nicole is deciphering the gendered use of quill flatteners at Cattle Oiler, while Julia has been focusing on foodways by collecting data on ceramic types found at the site. In order to do this, she had to learn how to predict the measurements of a pot’s rim diameter from a small piece of its broken rim, which is usually what we find in archaeological sites. By taking these measurements, we can discover all the different sizes of vessels in use at the site—a kind of prehistoric Native American Julia Child’s kitchen, if you will! 

Dan teaching Julia and Maddy how to measure rim sherd diameters. Photo Credit: Meghan Mulkerin.

    Both interns have been assisting Dr. Rogers and I with the interpretation of the context of the objects found at the site using the original site reports made by the excavators; archival resources, such as photographs of the dig in process; and other literature on the River Basin Survey. We have also reached out to our colleagues Eric Hollinger and Bill Billeck, who have expertise in Plains archaeology, to find out more about the uses of certain objects, such as the Catlinite tablet found at Cattle Oiler (39ST224) and the bone ice gliders from H.P. Thomas (39ST12). We look forward to sharing more about this research with you soon.

    Our former Federal Work Study student, Madeline Shaffer has also recently joined our team to assist with background research on the NSF Mason-Smithsonian Joint Project on Climate and Societal Modeling. She has been researching relationships between social systems and climate change, focusing on global-scale social trends. These trends include population growth, human migration responses, mortality rates, risk of conflict, and economic response in relation to current and future climate change. Madeline has also been studying the cultural geography of Sub-Saharan Africa, in order to develop a summary of multiple aspects of social systems within the region that may be applied to currently developing CDI models.

    It hasn’t been all work here, though! We had a lot of fun at the Annual Staff Picnic at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival a couple weeks ago. We enjoyed the wide variety of food choices and music, and made sure to browse through all the great items for sale in the marketplace. Our favorite part of the festival may have been this awesome Puli Dog Sculpture, by Hungarian artist, Gábor Miklós Szőke.  

  Puli Dog Sculpture with (from left) Julia Grasso, Meghan Mulkerin, Nicole Coscolluela, Madeline Shaffer. 

    We also attended the Department of Mineral Sciences Laboratories Open House in late June. The interns and museum staff were invited to come and learn how diamonds are used in their High Pressure Lab; how microbes eat and transform rocks and minerals in their Geomicrobiology lab; and more! We cringed with Elizabeth Cottrell and Brent Grocholski, as they described what it sounds like when a diamond shatters, as sometimes happens during their experiments to understand how minerals behave at deep pressures in the earth. For the curious, it sounds like popping bubble wrap! Using the culets (or points) of diamonds, they crush tiny amounts of a mineral between the two diamonds, capitalizing on the diamond’s amazing strength, and measure the resulting changes in the mineral’s state. They can even look through the flawless top facet of the diamonds to watch what is happening! 

Left: Elizabeth Cottrell shows us the hand crank that is used to add pressure to the contents of the small device pictured, which contains the diamonds, while Brent Grocholski watches. Right: Diagram of how the diamonds come together inside the device.

We especially enjoyed the inter-relatedness of the Geomicrobiology lab’s research to our research on climate and environmental change. Dominique Chaput explained to us how she is working to develop techniques to strip manganese out of ground water that has been polluted through coal mining (one of the many sources of anthropogenic climate change). We also enjoyed their taste in décor…

“We put the fun in Fungi” sign in the Department of Mineral Sciences Geomicrobiology lab. Photo Credit: Meghan Mulkerin

  Algae and fungi growing in the Geomicrobiology lab. Photo Credit: Meghan Mulkerin

    This tour acquainted staff outside of the Mineral Sciences Department with the types of analytical tools that are available to them through cross-departmental collaboration. Some of these tools include an electron probe microanalyzer (pinpoint analysis of materials); an analytical NanoSEM with EDS and CL (high resolution imaging and analysis of just about anything!); a Time of Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer (solar wind samples and blood in an ancient mosquito in the same lab!); an X-ray Diffractometer (mineral “fingerprinting”); a Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer (measure water and carbon dioxide in rocks!); and a Luminoscope (spectacular imaging of minerals like you have never seen before). We learned a lot, and thank our colleagues for their great open house! This is just another example of the kinds of fascinating things interns are exposed to at the National Museum of Natural History. To learn more about internships at Natural History, please visit the Intern and Fellows website of NMNH, or the listing of all internships at the Smithsonian. 

Until next time! 

-Meghan Mulkerin, Collections Specialist Contractor

Working Together: Ethnography and Archaeology

        The nomads of Mongolia and surrounding areas are no strangers to travel, and are well acquainted with influence from overarching powers, but curiously, regardless of modern influences, contemporary pastoralism in Mongolia has maintained a high level of continuity with ancient practice (Bold 1996). Through the strong preservation of ancient customs, Mongolian pastoralists are an important resource for ethnographers and socio-cultural anthropologists, as well as archaeologists. As archaeologists strive to uncover more information about Mongolia’s past, ethnographic studies have become an increasingly important factor contributing to their research, since many modern Mongolians still continue to live a nomadic pastoralist lifestyle and maintain many of the traditions that their ancestors had. As archaeological research becomes increasingly region oriented, specific ethnographic information is needed in order to provide viable comparisons between archeological data and present day ethnic groups.

Mongolian gers, with herds in the background. 2011. Photo: J. Daniel Rogers

        Luckily, ethnographic research within Mongolia has increased in recent times and helps to suppliment the older sources (Kradin 2005; Honeychurch 2008; Fijn 2011). Several important ethnographic studies includes those by Simukov, Vainshtein, Fernández-Giménez, and Fijn spans from 1934 through 2011 and each ethnographer provides research pertaining to a different aspect of Mongolian pastoralism, each reflecting the predominant socio-cultural views of the time periods in which they were written. Simukov, Vainshtein, Fernández-Giménez, and Fijn all provide data related to Mongolian pastoralism that that can be analyzed in the archaeological record. Integrating the results of both ethnographic and archaeological research can foster greater interdisciplinary discussion of the purpose, presence and prevalence of pastoralist communities in Mongolia, past through present.

        Our story begins with …drum roll please… Andrei Dmitriyevich Simukov! This Russian geologist conducted ethnographic field work on pastoralists in Mongolia, which is wonderful;  he has lots of great descriptions and charts…except, it’s published mostly in Russian and well, your authors can’t read Russian, so we will have to rely on the portions of his text that were translated into English.

        Simukov’s articles in the journal “Contemporary Mongolia” published in 1935, provide detailed graphs relating to the nitty-gritty details of pastoralist practices according to region.  This information is beneficial to archaeologists excavating within those specific regions, because they can compare the information they are finding about the past to modern practices through Simukov’s data.  Simukov’s data specifically defines the amount of livestock per household as well as the number of times a household moved within a given year. Simukov also recognizes that environmental factors influence sustainability. A significant portion of his study is dedicated to the different "zones" of Mongolia from steppe to mountains. This is especially useful for researchers who may be unfamiliar with the Mongolian environment. His description gives insight into the challenges pastoralists must face in order to make responsible decisions, especially within particular regions. Although helpful, one must be wary of Simukov's neatly delineated categorizations.

Image: Finch, C. (ed). Mongolia’s wild heritage: Biological Diversity, Protected Areas, and Conservation in the Land of Chingis Khan. Boulder, CO: Avery Press, 1999. Accessed via: Susan Fox's blog post, Mongolia Monday: The 6 Ecosytems.

 

          Simukov was interested in grouping people, regions, and practices into "types." For Simukov, there existed different types of people, who lived in different regions, and who practiced different types of pastoralism. He formats his writing very much according to these types with a detailed description following each type heading.  Although Simukov’s method is immensely useful in demonstrating the scope of ethnic and cultural diversity, one should proceed with caution. Married women who live in Connecticut are not all the Stepford wives, with perfectly manicured nails and cookies baking in the oven, and Mongolian nomads are not all practicing cookie cutter methods of pastoralism. No one household follows the exact practices Simukov describes, and there is no guarantee that every household follows the same methods every year. On the whole, Simukov's research, particularly the raw data, not only provides detailed descriptions, but also leaves room for interpretation.

        Another notable ethnographic study was conducted by ecologist María Fernández Giménez. Her study primarily focuses on communities in Bayan-Ovoo and Jinst Sums, Bayankhongor Aimag; Mongolia. She extensively addresses the different environments of Mongolia in her research integrating the discussion of environment into the lives of the pastoralists.  As an ecologist, Fernández Giménez is interested in how people and the environment interact. This is a two-way street and she recognizes this by stating how people influence the environment and vice versa. Her approach is interdisciplinary, with fields ranging from anthropology to sociology.  This interdisciplinary approach coupled with the use of direct quotations (albeit translated to English) from her interviews lends a personal quality as well as validity to her research.

        Cultural diversity is implied through discussion of Simukov's types, but it is actually demonstrated through Fernández Gimenez’s interviews.  She is also concerned with the cultural transference of knowledge to younger generations, which is useful to archaeologists interested in tracking cultural transmission through time. 

         Sevyan Vainshtein is a Russian anthropologist who discusses the economy of the nomadic pastoralists of Tuva, a region on the borders of Mongolia in Russia. Vainshtein’s goal was to provide an accurate and detailed field record documenting the economy of Inner Asian nomads. This particular topic is invaluable to archaeologists studying the generational transference of wealth amongst pastoralist communities in Mongolia. Vainshtein’s documentation may also be valuable to the debate concerning inequality among Inner Asian pastoralists addressed in recent literature by David Sneath and criticized by others such as, Nikolay Kradin and Peter Golden, but that is a subject for an entire blog post unto itself. Migrating back to the topic of ethnographers…

         Sources written in English about Mongolian herders are limited, but ethnographers such as Natasha Fijn are contributing to this literature. In the recently released book, Living with Herds: Human Animal Coexistence in Mongolia (2011),  Fijn notes she was unfortunately “unaware of any other work written in English that has examined the importance of herd animals, specifically ungulates, to nomadic pastoralist Mongolia” (2011: 17).

Fijn, Natasha. 2011. Living With Herds: Human-Animal Coexistence in Mongolia. Cambridge University Press. Image: Cambridge University Press.

       Fijn conducted most of her ethnographic research in 2005 while living with Mongolian herders in the Bulgan province around the Khujerin River Valley and in Arkhangai province. She sought to observe the process of animal domestication within current hybrid communities focusing on social behaviors between humans and other animals (2011: 17). This dynamic approach to interpretation and theory is particularly interesting for archaeologists that have traditionally held the perspective of domestication as solely a one-way street and not necessarily an interaction or conversation of sorts between man and animal. Fijn's approach, like most anthropologists, is interdisciplinary, providing a more holistic understanding of life on the Mongolian steppe. 

Mongolian herders. 2011. Photo: J. Daniel Rogers

        The graph below (see below to download) demonstrates the ethnographic evidence related to herd and population dynamics in Inner Asia. The graph is organized by country and region, including ethnographic studies from the Southern Gobi to the northern grassland steppe.  The average household and herd sizes of various nomadic populations, as well as the frequency of their movement across the landscape are also noted.

Pastoralist Household and Herding Data by Region Based on Ethnographic Data. Data compiled for NSF-funded project, Agent-Based Dynamics of Social Complexity (BCS-0527471). Click here to Download Table.

         Ethnographic research continues to assist archaeologists in understanding past societies through many avenues of research, from fieldwork to lab analysis and even computer simulation models. Yes-- even computer simulation models. Agent-based computer simulation models such as HouseholdsWorld (Cioffi-Revilla et al. 2007; Cioffi-Revilla et al. 2010; Rogers et al. 2012) alas do not provide an escape from reality as a video game would, but in fact provide something much more useful: comparable data. Computer simulation models utilize data from ethnographers, archaeologists, climatologists, paleo-biologists and many other scientists in order to create a simulated Mongolian social world, where various variables can be controlled in order to run experiments to examine how social and environmental factors are related to change and adaptation. In other words, every bit of research is important and key to understanding the entire picture!

-By Sarah Flores Ettinger and Samantha Linford. Editor: Meghan Mulkerin. 

 

Works Cited:

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 Bold, Bat-Ochir. 1996. Socio-economic Segmentation--Khot-Ail in Nomadic Livestock Keeping of Mongolia. Nomadic Peoples 39: 69–86.

 Bazargur, D. 1989.Geography of Pastoral Animal Husbandry [in Mongolian]. Mongolian Academy of Science, Institute of Geography, Ulaanbaatar.

Bazargur, D., S. Chinbat, and S. Shiirev-Ad’yaa. 1989. Bugd nairamdah mongol ard ulsyn malchdyn nuudel [The movement of pastoralists of the Mongolian People’s Republic]. Mongolia State Publishing House, Ulaanbaatar.

 Bruun, Ole. 2006. Precious Steppe: Mongolian nomadic pastoralists in pursuit of the market. Lexington Books, Lanham, MD.

 Cioffi-Revilla, C., S. Luke, D. C Parker, et al. 2007. Agent-based Modeling Simulation of Social Adaptation and Long-Term Change in Inner Asia. In Advancing Social Simulation: The First World Congress in Social Simulation, edited by S. Takahashi, D. Sallach, and J. Rouchier, 189–200. Springer, Tokyo.

 Cioffi-Revilla, Claudio, and Mark Rouleau. 2010 MASON RebeLand: An Agent-Based Model   of Politics, Environment, and Insurgency. International Studies Review 12: 31–52.

 Erdenebaatar, Diimaajavyn. 2000. Expedition Report on Ethnographic Research conducted in the basin of the Egiin River in Khantai Baga, Khutag-Ondor Soum of Bulgan Aimag. Mongolian Academy of Sciences Institute of History.

 Fernandez-Gimenez, Maria. 1997. Landscape, Livestock, and Livelihoods: Social Ecological and Land-Use Change among the Nomadic Pastoralists of Mongolia. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI.

 Fijn, Natasha. 2011. Living With Herds: Human-Animal Coexistence in Mongolia. Cambridge University Press.

 Frohlich, B., T. Amgalantugs, J. Littleton, et al. 2008. Bronze Age Burial Mounds (Khirigsuurs) in the Hovsgol Aimag, Mongolia: A Reconstruction of Biological and Social Histories. Studia Archaeologica Instituti Archaeologici Academiae Scientarum Mongolicae VI(XXVI): 6.

 Honeychurch, William, and Joshua Wright. 2008. "Asia, Central and north, Steppes, Deserts, and Forests." In Encyclopedia of Archaeology, edited by Deborah M Piersall, 1:517–532. Academic Press, New York

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 Kradin, Nikolay N. 2005. "Social and Economic Structure of the Xiongnu of the Trans-Baikal Region." Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia 1(21): 79–86.

 Rogers, J. Daniel, Teresa Nichols, Theresa Emmerich, Maciej Latek, and Claudio Cioffi-Revilla. 2012. Modeling scale and variability in human-environmental interactions in Inner Asia. Ecological Modelling 241: 5– 14.

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 Simukov, A. D. 1935. “Materialy Po Kochevomu Byrtu Naselaniya MNR [Materials About the Movements of the Population of Mongolia].” Sovrennaya Mongoliya [Contemporary Mongolia] 13 (6): 89–104.

 Vainshtein, Sevyan. 1980 Nomads of South Siberia: The Pastoral Economies of Tuva. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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 Ykhanbai, Hijaba, Enkhbat Bulgan, Ulipkan Beket, Ronnie Vernooy, and John Graham. 2004. Reversing Grassland Degradation and Improving Herders’ Livelihoods in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia. Mountain Research and Development 24(2): 96–100.