Middle age social networks: A dynamic organizational study

Abstract

This article describes the main components of the multiagent model and the tool we are designing in order to analyze the structure and the dynamics of an historical social network from the Middle Age. This social network has been built through the discovery of many notarized documents and first studied according to a mathematical approach. Using a customizable multiagent system to simulate the network's evolution and Markov chain calculus to adjust behavioral parameters, we propose a method to assess behaviors' importance and effects on the global network's evolution. From a historical point of view, this multiagent model also aims at explaining this network's dynamics during some specific periods such as the Hundred Year's War where numerous notarized documents disappeared. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.