Benjamin Davies

• PhD
• Research Associate at Yale University

Globally, fire is a primary agent for modifying environments through the long-term coupling of human and natural systems. In southern Africa, control of fire by humans has been documented since the late Middle Pleistocene, though it is unclear when or if anthropogenic burning led to fundamental shifts in the region's fire regimes. To identify poten...

The late Holocene was a period of cultural change along the west coast of South Africa, with widespread archaeological evidence for shifts in settlement patterns and economic activity. With these changes, we expect variability in the movement patterns of resident populations. In this proof-of-concept paper, we use lithic assemblages from Spring Cav...

A central goal of paleoanthropology is understanding the role of ecological change in hominin evolution. Over the past several decades researchers have expanded the hominin fossil record and assembled detailed late Cenozoic paleoclimatic, paleoenvironmental, and paleoecological archives. However, effective use of these data is precluded by the limi...

Despite advances in our understanding of the geographic and temporal scope of the Paleolithic record, we know remarkably little about the evolutionary and ecological consequences of changes in human behavior. Recent inquiries suggest that human evolution reflects a long history of interconnections between the behavior of humans and their surroundin...

Stone tools represent the largest source of information about past human behaviors on the planet. Much of the information about stone tools remains untranslated because we have little understanding about what the variation in artifact form means. One component of stone tool production that has less ambiguity is the reductive nature of the technolog...

Movement and mobility are key properties in understanding what makes us human and so have been foci for archeological studies. Stone artifacts survive in many contexts, providing the potential for understanding landscape use in the past through studies of mobility and settlement pattern. We review the inferential basis for these studies based on ar...

The Pleistocene ungulate communities from the western coastal plains of South Africa's Cape Floristic Region (CFR) are diverse and dominated by grazers, in contrast to the region's Holocene and historical faunas, which are relatively species-poor and dominated by small-bodied browsers and mixed feeders. An expansion of grassy habitats is clearly im...

There is a growing use of agent-based model (ABM) simulations to reconstruct past human-environment interactions. ABMs are useful in that they offer scientists the opportunity to model processes and study phenomena and systems that may not be otherwise reproducible or testable. Replication or re-implementation studies of ABMs are, however, infreque...

Shell mounds are a prominent part of the Cape York Peninsula archaeological record. A short period of fieldwork allowed initial assessment of their presence, size, and shape in the Kwokkunum region, Albatross Bay. Shell mounds found in this area vary in size with some examples amongst the largest found in the Cape York Peninsula. Comparison of terr...

There is a growing use of agent-based model (ABM) simulations to reconstruct past human-environment interactions. ABMs are useful in that they offer scientists the opportunity to model processes, phenomena, and study systems that may not be otherwise reproducible or testable. Replication or re-implementation studies of ABMs are, however, are infreq...

A major challenge facing archaeologists is communicating our research to the public. Thankfully, new computational tools have enabled the testing and visualization of complex ideas in an easily packageable format. In this article we illustrate not only how agent-based modeling provides a platform for communicating complex ideas, but also how these...

Formal models of past human societies informed by archaeological research have a high potential for shaping some of the most topical current debates. Agent-based models, which emphasize how actions by individuals combine to produce global patterns, provide a convenient framework for developing quantitative models of historical social processes. How...

Evidence for changes in human mobility is fundamental to interpretations of transitions in human socioeconomic organization. Showing changes in mobility requires both archaeological proxies that are sensitive to movement and a clear understanding of how different mobility configurations influence their patterning. This study uses computer simulatio...

Archaeologists are using spatial data in increasingly sophisticated analyses and invoking more explicit considerations of space in their interpretations. Geographic information systems (GIS) have become standard technology for professional archaeologists in the collection and management of spatial data. Many calls have been made to develop and adap...

Formal models of past human societies informed by archaeological research have a high potential for shaping some of the most topical current debates. Agent-based models, which emphasize how actions by individuals combine to produce global patterns, provide a convenient framework for developing quantitative models of historical social processes. How...

A major challenge facing archaeologists is communicating our research to the public. Thankfully, new computational tools have enabled the testing and visualization of complex ideas in an easily packageable format. In this article we illustrate not only how agent-based modeling provides a platform for communicating complex ideas, but also how these...

Archaeologists are using spatial data in increasingly sophisticated analyses and invoking more explicit considerations of space in their interpretations. Geographic information systems (GIS) have become standard technology for professional archaeologists in the collection and management of spatial data. Many calls have been made to develop and adap...

Evidence for changes in human mobility is fundamental to interpretations of transitions in human socioeconomic organization. Showing changes in mobility requires both archaeological proxies that are sensitive to movement and a clear understanding of how different mobility configurations influence their patterning. This study uses computer simulatio...

Preprint here: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/tyjc9/ Computer simulation is a tool increasingly used by archaeologists to build theories about past human activity; however, simulation has had a limited role theorising about the relationship between past behaviours and the formation of observed patterning in the material record. This paper visits...

The generative nature of the archaeological record stands in contrast with reconstructive goals of the discipline. This is particularly evident in discussions of surface archaeology, which is often considered deficient for reconstructing human behavior in the past when compared with subsurface deposits. We look at a case study from Rutherfords Cree...

http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?i=440506#{%22issue_id%22:440506,%22page%22:10}

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/691436 A case study from western New South Wales, Australia, illustrates the age, preservation, and distribution of late Holocene heat-retainer hearths that are abundant in the semiarid archaeological record in the region. These hearths were constructed as underground ovens with stone heat retainers....

Archaeologists make inferences about past human behaviour based on patterned material residues in various depositional contexts, including existing landsurfaces. These deposits are generated by processes that may obscure patterns at some observational scales while highlighting others, and interpretive differences can arise from a lack of explicit m...

Humans have been traversing the world’s oceans for at least 50,000 years. For archaeologists interested in prehistoric seafaring, computer simulation has proven a useful method for investigating the challenges and strategies used in the past. However, a number of barriers have inhibited wider adoption of the simulation approach. we present a protot...

Describes a new simulation for computer modelling of prehistoric seafaring using NetLogo and R Statistical software. Focused initially on Pleistocene settlement of Sahul, Polynesian settlement of the Pacific and Spanish Manila Galleons.