The late A.D. 1200s depopulation of the Mesa Verde region of the American Southwest is one of the great mysteries of American archaeology. 
Many mechanisms have been proposed to account for this rapid out-migration of regional populations. Most suggest increasingly severe resource imbalances across a densely populated landscape. Some accepted research, however, shows that potential maize production was sufficient to support the estimated populations of the time. If these populations emigrated due to resource scarcity, then scarcity of other resources must have contributed to decisions to leave. On the other hand, there are hints of important changes in sociopolitical organization just prior to the depopulation.
This famous depopulation is one of the riddles that the Village Project addresses. The project was undertaken to examine the interaction of simulated agrarian households with their natural environment taking in to account the production and consumption of various natural resources essential for everyday life. By evaluating the possibility of crises in factors such as potable water, woody fuels, and protein, this research will help determine whether resource factors were in fact critical in these decisions, or whether social factors may have largely influenced the exodus.
Other problems we are addressing are addressed in the Research Plan.
First All-Hands Meeting Held at Crow Canyon
Submitted by Tim Kohler on Sat, 06/13/2009 - 14:25.jpg)
Researchers from as far away as Windsor, Ontario, Pullman, Washington, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and points in-between convened at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado, from June 7-10 2009 to coordinate the next five years of VEP investigations. In addition to presentations on experimental farming, monitoring temperature, assessing soil quality, and experimenting with new approaches to modeling, we discussed the on-going Community Center Survey in Mesa Verde National Park and plans for future survey and collections research in the northern Rio Grande of New Mexico.
Turkey domestication in VEP model
Submitted by Kyle Bocinsky on Wed, 04/29/2009 - 10:24Kyle Bocinsky, a first-year graduate student working as a research assistant to Tim Kohler, has been busy building turkey use into the VEP simulation. Modeling turkey has two components: first, Kyle is generating wild turkey on the landscape, using diffusion algorithms congruent with those already in place for deer. Turkey have a different preferred browse than deer, rabbit, or hare, and will hypothetically choose to exist in different habitats than the other fauna. This component should be completed in early May.
Agent-based Modeling
Since the 1990s there has been a marked increase in interest in computational approaches—including simulation—by social science researchers. This appears to be driven both by a cross-disciplinary interest in the sciences of complexity and the ever-increasing computational capacity at our disposal.
In the past, due to the complexity of the phenomena involved, we have been forced to use simplistic world models. Today we are able to study a world in which most important phenomena emerge from the non-linear interaction of many agents (physical, biological, or social) in systems that are rarely at equilibrium.
This vision promotes a method—agent-based modeling—that provides a computational environment in which the behaviors of such systems can be studied.