Falsification by Modelling and Simulation for Investigations in Hallstatt Archaeology

Abstract

The prehistoric salt mines of Hallstatt in Austria 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. Introduction Figure 1: Schematic reconstruction of the mining halls and shaft structure with rope pull systems (© D. Gröbner, H. Reschreiter, NHM Vienna). Tanzler et al. Falsification by Modelling and Simulation for Hallstatt Archaeology 130 SNE 28(3) – 9/2018 SN 1 Short-time Mining Processes Use of Bronze Picks Figure 2. Bronze pick for salt mining: archaeological reconstruction (left; © A. Rausch, NHM Vienna), pick rigid body model (midst), and supposed trajectories for use of the pick (right). Use of Rope Pull Systems. Tanzler et al. Falsification by Modelling and Simulation for Hallstatt Archaeology SNE 28(3) – 9/2018 131 SN Figure 3. Different design options for the rope pull system with closed rope (left) or open rope (right). Woodchip, Lighting and Air Consumption. Figure 5. Simulation results for air consumption depending on number of woodchips, burning time and workers . 2 Long-time Working Processes and Supply of Population Figure 5: Map of Hallstatt area: at left hill with mining area and mining village, at right valley with agricultural area (lake blue, garden -red, field brown, grass light green, wood dark green, rock –grey). Possible Stable Population. Tanzler et al. Falsification by Modelling and Simulation for Hallstatt Archaeology 132 SNE 28(3) – 9/2018 SN Figure 6. Simulation results with variation of food composition (green: available/used meat, red: available/used beans, blue: available/used grain) Overall Working Processes