ABSTRACT

Predictive modeling as a tool for archaeological research is not new. The use of different predictive models to understand historical questions such as shifts in settlement patterns can be seen in archaeological projects from as early as Thorkild Jacobsen’s work in Mesopotamia (preserved in unpublished notes with basic methodologies in 1936 [1958]), Braidwood’s work in Anatolia (1937), and V.Gordon Willey’s (1953) Peruvian research, to the modern studies of the Roman European countryside (Robert 1996). Given the importance and the characteristics of the Mesopotamian alluvium, it is not surprising to find that many researchers have used these data in predictive-modeling efforts to enhance historical understanding.