Falsification by Modelling and Simulation for Investigations in Hallstatt Archaeology

Abstract

The prehistoric salt mines of Hallstatt in Aus-tria are subject of great interest for archaeologists. Salt mining activities are dated to 1458-1245 B.C. in the Bronze Age. Modelling and simulation as virtual computational experimental archaeology can contribute important insights into different areas of archaeology as an addition to traditional experimental methods. In a cooperative project between the Natural History Museum Vienna and the TU Wien, questions regarding prehistoric mining processes, logistic processes, and population growth in the agricultural environment are analysed by modelling and simulation. This contribution presents simulation studies, which allow to study short-term mining processes and long-term population dynamics and agricultural working processes. Moreover, essentially, the simulation studies allow also excluding cases for these working processes. This fact underlines a special property of simulation in the area of archaeology: while classical modelling and simulation aims for verification of a certain assumptions, modelling and simulation in archaeology partly aims for falsification of assumptions of working processes or other historic events.