A Computational Approach to Initial Social Complexity: Gobekli Tepe and Neolithic Polities in Urfa Region, Upper Mesopotamia, Tenth Millennium BC
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Extensive archaeological field work and multidisciplinary research in recent decades shows that communities of sedentary hunter-gatherers during the tenth millenium BC built the earliest presently known monumental structures during the PPNA (ca. 9600–8800 BC) at the site of Göbekli Tepe and nearby PPNB sites in present-day Urfa province, southeastern Turkey. However, the earliest evidence of agriculture began further south (e.g., the Levant) or dates to a later period (early PPNB, ca. 8750 BC, terminus post quem). We present a novel computational analysis of initial social complexity in these early Anatolian communities, based on Canonical Theory of politogenesis, evolutionary dynamics, and lines of evidence drawn from published data on Göbekli Tepe and related Urfa sites. Theory and data are then used to create an agent-based model simulating the emergence of worship sites, other diffused cultural patterns, and the emergence of cultivation as may have occurred in the region during the PPNA and initial PPNB periods. The model is implemented in NetLogo. Along with other computational models of early social complexity, it aims to contribute to multidisciplinary understanding of prehistory, origins of civilization, and long-term culture change. Extensions of the model to other regions of politogenesis are also discussed.