5 - Simulating the Growth of Hierarchies

Abstract

This chapter discusses the value of developing the analysis and interpretation of rank-size relationships and considering the sorts of processes that might have produced the relationships. Archaeologists usually have to estimate population from settlement area, and a general relationship between the logarithm of settlement area and the logarithm of population size has been observed to exist. Some researchers have considered the types of processes involved in the growth of hierarchies and have discussed the rank-size relationships that result. In many cases, it may be difficult to estimate precisely the size of prehistoric sites or only parts of the sites may have been inhabited at any one time. Any original rank-size relationship is blurred and distorted by the time it reaches the archaeologist. The chapter discusses the various types of stochastic processes, which can best be seen as generating a wide range of archaeological data. The chapter also focuses on the nature and interpretations of deviations from expected patterns. The most marked differences from the end results of relatively unconstrained stochastic processes occur with the more reliable data sets in which there has been some constraint on the development of a hierarchy. The closest similarities with simple stochastic processes occur with apparently reliable data in a purely rural situation where the probable lack of any constraints, at least in the formation and perhaps in the survival of the pattern, may be assumed. The structure in each rank-size curve is the composite result of a complex balance between original forces and survival and recovery processes.