The Organization and Evolution of the Hohokam Economy: Agent-Based Modeling of Exchange in the Phoenix Basin, Arizona, AD 200-1450

The Hohokam of central Arizona left behind evidence of a culture markedly different from and more complex than the small communities of O'odham farmers first encountered by Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries A.D. Archaeologists have worked for well over a century to document Hohokam culture history, but much about Pre-Columbian life in the Sonoran Desert remains poorly understood. In particular, the organization of the Hohokam economy in the Phoenix Basin has been an elusive and complicated subject, despite having been the focus of much previous research. This dissertation provides an assessment of several working hypotheses regarding the organization and evolution of the pottery distribution sector of the Hohokam economy. This was accomplished using an agent-based modeling methodology known as pattern-oriented modeling. The objective of the research was to first identify a variety of economic models that may explain patterns of artifact distribution in the archaeological record. Those models were abstract representations of the real-world system theoretically drawn from different sources, including microeconomics, mathematics (network/graph theory), and economic anthropology. Next, the effort was turned toward implementing those hypotheses as agent-based models, and finally assessing whether or not any of the models were consistent with Hohokam ceramic datasets. The project’s pattern-oriented modeling methodology led to the discard of several hypotheses, narrowing the range of plausible models of the organization of the Hohokam economy. The results suggest that for much of the Hohokam sequence a market-based system, perhaps structured around workshop procurement and shopkeeper merchandise, provided the means of distributing pottery from specialist producers to widely distributed consumers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results of this project are broadly consistent with earlier researchers' interpretations that the structure of the Hohokam economy evolved through time, growing more complex throughout the Preclassic, and undergoing a major reorganization resulting in a less complicated system at the transition to the Classic Period.亚利桑那州中部的霍霍坎文化（Hohokam）留下了与公元16至17世纪欧洲人首次接触的奥奥哈姆（O'odham）小型农耕社群截然不同且更为复杂的文化遗存。考古学家已投入逾一个世纪的时间梳理霍霍坎文化的历史脉络，但索诺兰沙漠（Sonoran Desert）区域的前哥伦布时期生活仍有诸多未解之谜。其中，菲尼克斯盆地（Phoenix Basin）内霍霍坎经济的组织形式始终是一项棘手且复杂的研究课题，尽管此前已有大量相关研究聚焦于此。本论文针对霍霍坎经济中陶器分销领域的组织与演化模式，提出多项待验证假说，并采用基于智能体（Agent）的建模方法——模式导向建模（pattern-oriented modeling）开展评估。 本研究的首要目标是筛选出可解释考古记录中人工制品分布模式的各类经济模型。这些模型是基于不同理论框架构建的现实系统抽象表征，其理论来源涵盖微观经济学、数学（网络/图论）以及经济人类学。随后，研究团队将上述假说转化为基于智能体的模型，并最终验证其中是否存在与霍霍坎陶瓷数据集相符的模型。本项目采用的模式导向建模方法排除了多项假说，缩小了霍霍坎经济组织合理模型的范围。研究结果表明，在霍霍坎文化发展的多数阶段，以作坊采购与店主售卖为核心架构的市场体系，实现了专业制陶者生产的陶器向广泛分布的消费者群体的分销。值得注意的是，本研究结果与此前学者的解读大体一致：霍霍坎经济结构随时间推移不断演化，在前经典期（Preclassic）愈发复杂，而在向经典期（Classic Period）过渡时经历了重大重组，最终形成了更为简洁的系统。