Antoine BOURROUILH SETTLEMENT AND THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES Dynamic Modelling of Society-Environment Interaction Using Excavated Sites from Marne-la-Vallée (Seine-et-Marne)

Abstract

This article results from work initially undertaken within a Masters program at the University Paris 1 and presently the subject of thesis research within the "Environmental archaeologies" group (UMR 7014 ArScAn). On-going research aims to study rural settlement during the early Middle Ages as seen through the agrarian-system. The geographical context concerned is the North of France and more specifically the Marne-la-Vallée area on the northern boundary of the Brie plateau. The archaeological record is being used to identify production systems and forms of land-use which may or may not have guaranteed settlement continuity. Ultimately different scenarios will be put forward which may account for and explain the time-space dynamics of the "settlement-environment" system. In order to do this, a studymethod based upon multiagent systems has been adopted. This fundamentally modelling approach allows integration of part of the complexity of society-environment relations. A presentation is made of the agrarian-system model retained for examining settlement in the North of France during the early Middle Ages. Demonstration and argument are submitted for the translation of different subsystems within the model.

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