Alternative Stories of Agricultural Origins: The Neolithic Spread in the Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

The spread of agriculture from the Near East to Europe has long been a subject of intense archaeological study and debate in light of the social and economic changes that occurred and were set in motion as a result of this transition. Despite the attention paid to this important process, a consensus is far from being reached. Perhaps for these reasons, new methods and theoretical approaches have often been applied to the questions surrounding the spread of agriculture first. Recently, computational modeling has emerged as a promising technique for the study of the origins of agriculture. Our approach employs an agent-based computational model of agricultural spread for the Iberian Peninsula and utilizes a substantial radiocarbon database. This method allows for us to test multiple hypotheses about the manner in which agriculture spread, where it may have spread from and to focus on the critical evaluation of the available chronological record and its effects upon our results.