Sean Bergin

• PhD
• Research Professor at Arizona State University

For much of its history, archaeological research has relied on site-specific projects, regional comparisons, and theory building from case studies. However, recent research themes concerning the emergence of complex social-ecological systems and long-term land-use legacies require a new approach to archaeological data. Large-scale syntheses of arch...

The present study seeks to better understand the coupling of social and biophysical systems during the late Pleistocene and Holocene, a period characterized by changing interglacial conditions as well as human population expansion and intensified ecosystem management. The approach consists of a combination of patch-based archaeological survey metho...

One of the primary goals of the palaeosciences is to produce robust understandings of palaeoecologies of extinct ecosystems. The time has arrived where such palaeoecologies can be significantly improved—agent-based models (ABMs) that synthesize our modern understandings of animal ecology with past conditions provide a unique opportunity for this. T...

The spread and adoption of agropastoral subsistence in the west Mediterranean is unique in prehistory due to its speed and distinctive spatial arrangement along the coast of the Mediterranean. The common explanation for this pattern focuses on the significance of maritime migration and coastal exploration in the movement of Neolithic groups. This c...

Most models or explanations of the past attempt to integrate a wide array of social and ecological processes while relying on modest amounts of evidence. This makes the validation of such models challenging, especially when explanations apply to wide geographical or chronological contexts, such as the transition to agriculture across Europe. Comput...

This volume contains a collection of research aimed towards understanding prehistoric subsistence change with the use of new computational modeling techniques. There is a sort of poetic irony when using humanity’s newest technology to study early human history. The distance between past and future almost appears highlighted when using a tablet to r...

Did the Neolithic Revolution Revolutionize the European Landscape? An Analysis of the Relationship between Climate, Vegetation, and the Arrival of Agro-pastoral Subsistence Snitker, Grant (Arizona State University) and Sean Bergin (Arizona State University) Archaeologists have long recognized the spread and adoption of agro-pastoral subsistence i...

Call of papers

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 reas...

RESUMEN: Presentamos en este trabajo una evaluación inicial de los trabajos de prospección sistemática llevados a cabo en la comarca de La Canal de Navarrés (Valencia) desde el año 2014 en el marco del proyecto NSF " The Emergence of Coupled Natural and Human Landscapes in the Western Mediterranean ". El programa desarrollado ha seguido un protocol...

Our study assesses the influence of differences in terrain and locomotor energetics on the land-use strategies and settlement patterns of Levantine Neanderthals and Modern Human – Early Upper Paleolithic groups through a digital application of site catchment analysis. Our findings indicate that Neanderthals habitually commanded smaller site exploit...

The emergence of coupled natural and human landscapes marked a transformative interval in the human past that set our species on the road to the urbanized, industrial world in which we live. This emergence enabled technologies and social institutions responsible for human-natural couplings in domains beyond rural, agricultural settings. The Mediter...

RESUMEN: Presentamos en este trabajo una evaluación inicial de los trabajos de prospección sistemática llevados a cabo en la comarca de La Canal de Navarrés (Valencia) desde el año 2014 en el marco del proyecto NSF " The Emergence of Coupled Natural and Human Landscapes in the Western Mediterranean ". El programa desarrollado ha seguido un protocol...

Here we discuss the importance of using the rich and growing database of high-precision, audited radiocarbon dates for high-resolution bottom-up modelling to focus on problems concerning the spread of the Neolithic in the Iberia. We also compare the spread of the Late Mesolithic (so-called Geometric) and the Early Neolithic using our modelling envi...

https://www.openabm.org/model/4447

2015 Bergin, S. Modeling the Influx of Agriculture: An Agent-Based Model Exploring Agricultural Spread Scenarios in the Western Mediterranean. Poster Presentation at the 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in San Francisco, CA.

In the Symposium "Making Sense of Archaeological Survey we report on new digital field methods we have applied in La Canal de Navarrés (Valencia) in the summer of 2014. Although we have carried out archaeological surveys in the Valencian Region for 25 years, this was the first time we undertook archaeological survey, in a new research area, without...

We present a repository for disseminating the computational models associated with publications in the social and life sciences. The number of research projects using computational models has been steadily increasing but the resulting publications often lack model code and documentation which hinders replication, verification of results and accumul...

This study involves the high-resolution spatial analysis of a 9,500-year-old Early Neolithic site in an effort to reconstruct the social and economic organization of the settlement at household and community scales. We introduce an approach to distinguishing stratified occupational surfaces (floors) from intervening deposits (fills), to tracing the...

The archaeological record has been described as a key to the long-term consequences of human action that can help guide our decisions today. Yet the sparse and incomplete nature of this record often makes it impossible to inferentially reconstruct past societies in sufficient detail for them to serve as more than very general cautionary tales of co...

The archaeological record has been described as a key to the long-term consequences of human action that can help guide our decisions today. Yet the sparse and incomplete nature of this record often makes it impossible to inferentially reconstruct past societies in sufficient detail for them to serve as more than very general cautionary tales of co...

Bergin, S. Isaac Ullah, Bulent Arikan, C. Michael Barton, Gary Mayer and Hessam Sarjoughian. Simulating Neolithic Landscape Dynamics: A Coupled ABM-GIS Model of Agro-Pastoral Systems in Eastern Spain. Poster Presentation at the 76th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Sacramento, CA.

The evolution of Mediterranean landscapes during the Holocene has been increasingly governed by the complex interactions of water and human land use. Different land-use practices change the amount of water flowing across the surface and infiltrating the soil, and change water's ability to move surface sediments. Conversely, water amplifies the impa...

2010 Bergin, S. Isaac Ullah, Michael Barton, Gary Mayer and Hessam Sarjoughian. Coupled ABM-GIS Modeling of Agro-Pastoral Systems in Eastern Spain. Poster Presentation at the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in St. Louis, MO.

Agent-based modelling has become an increasingly important tool for scholars studying social and social-ecological systems, but there are no community standards on describing, implementing, testing and teaching these tools. This paper reports on the establishment of the Open Agent-Based Modelling Consortium, www.openabm.org, a community effort to f...