The MASON HouseholdsWorld Model of Pastoral Nomad Societies

Abstract

Computational modeling of pastoralist societies that range as nomads over diverse environmental zones poses interesting challenges beyond those posed by sedentary societies. We present Households World, a new agent-based model of agro-pastoralists in a natural habitat that includes deserts, grasslands, and mountains. This is the paper-of-record for the Households World model as part of a broader interdisciplinary project on computational modeling of long-term human adaptations in Inner Asia. The model is used for conducting experiments on socio-environmental interactions, social dynamics experiments, and for developing additional models with higher levels of social complexity.