摘要：Human societies have adapted to spatial and temporal variability, such as that found in theprehistoric American Southwest. A question remains as to what the implications are of different socialadaptations to long-term vulnerability of small-scale human societies. A stylized agent-based model ispresented that captures small-group decision making on movements and resource use in ancient aridenvironments. The impact of various assumptions concerning storage, exchange, sharing, and migrationon indicators of aggregation and sustainability are explored. Climate variability is found to increase theresilience of population levels at the system level. Variability reduces the time a population stays in onelocation and can degrade the soils. In addition to climate variability, the long-term population dynamics ismainly driven by the level of storage and the decision rules governing when to migrate and with whom toexchange.
