A consistent access to food is paramount for humans at individual and group level. Besides providing the basic nutritional needs, access to food defines social structures and has stimulated innovation in food procurement, processing and storage. We focus on the social aspects of food storage, namely the role of cooperation for the emergence and maintenance of common stocks. Cooperative food stocks are examined here as a type of common-pool resource, where appropriators must cooperate to avoid shortage (i.e. the tragedy of commons). 'Food for all' is an agent-based model in which agents face the social dilemma of whether or not to store in a cooperative stock, adapting their strategies through a simple reinforcement learning mechanism. The model provides insights on the evolution of cooperation in terms of storage efficiency and considering the presence of social norms that regulate reciprocity. For cooperative food storage to emerge and be maintained, a significant dependency on the stored food and some degree of external pressure are needed. In fact, cooperative food storage emerges as the best performing strategy when facing environmental stress. Likewise, an intermediate control over reciprocity favours cooperation for food storage, suggesting that concepts of closed reciprocity are precursors to cooperative stocks, while excess control over reciprocity is detrimental for such institution.Research for this article was funded in parts by the SimulPast Consolider (CSD2010-00034). A.A. contribution was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO FPI BES-2013-062691), and it is part of the activities of the Equip de Recerca Arqueòlogica i Arqueomètrica, Universitat de Barcelona (ERAAUB), as a research group consolidated by the Generalitat of Catalonia (2014 SGR-845). A.L.B. has contributed to this paper as part of activities of the Complexity and Socio-Ecological Dynamics Emergent Research Group consolidated by the Generalitat of Catalonia (2014 SGR-1417), on contracts from the Juan de la Cierva Programme (MINECO JCI-2011-10734) and during a visiting fellowship at the Cluster of Excellence CliSAP (DFG EXC177).Peer Reviewe

This paper presents an archaeological and archaeometric study of a range of Islamic ceramics (9th-17th centuries) from Termez (south Uzbekistan), a city which has been proven to be both a production centre and a trading post. Pottery was manufactured in a number of workshops located in the lower city (shahristan) and its suburbs (rabad) and is consistent with the products of the most important Central Asian centres. For the first time, the fabrics of glazed and unglazed wares and two pottery moulds from two excavated areas at Termez were examined by WD-XRF, XRD and petrographic thin section analysis in order to determine the features of local manufacture and identify possible imports.

The domestication of plants and the origin of agricultural societies has been the focus of much theoretical discussion on why, how, when, and where these happened. The ‘when’ and ‘where’ have been substantially addressed by different branches of archaeology, thanks to advances in methodology and the broadening of the geographical and chronological scope of evidence. However, the ‘why’ and ‘how’ have lagged behind, holding on to relatively old models with limited explanatory power. Armed with the evidence now available, we can return to theory by revisiting the mechanisms allegedly involved, disentangling their connection to the diversity of trajectories, and identifying the weight and role of the parameters involved. We present the Human-Plant Coevolution (HPC) model, which represents the dynamics of coevolution between a human and a plant population. The model consists of an ecological positive feedback system (mutualism), which can be reinforced by positive evolutionary feedback (coevolution). The model formulation is the result of wiring together relatively simple simulation models of population ecology and evolution, through a computational implementation in R. The HPC model captures a variety of potential scenarios, though which conditions are linked to the degree and timing of population change and the intensity of selective pressures. Our results confirm that the possible trajectories leading to neolithisation are diverse and involve multiple factors. However, simulations also show how some of those factors are entangled, what are their effects on human and plant populations under different conditions, and what might be the main causes fostering agriculture and domestication.

The development, floruit and decline of the urban phase of the Indus Civilisation (c.2600/2500-1900 BC) provide an ideal opportunity to investigate social resilience and transformation in relation to a variable climate. The Indus Civilisation extended over most of the Indus River Basin, which includes a mix of diverse environments conditioned, among other factors, by partially overlapping patterns of winter and summer precipitation. These patterns likely changed towards the end of the urban phase (4.2 ka BP event), increasing aridity. The impact of this change appears to have varied at different cities and between urban and rural contexts. We present a simulation approach using agent-based modelling to address the potential diversity of agricultural strategies adopted by Indus settlements in different socio-ecological scenarios in Haryana, NW India. This is an ongoing initiative that consists of creating a modular model, Indus Village, that assesses the implications of trends in cropping strategies for the sustainability of settlements and the resilience of such strategies under different regimes of precipitation. The model aims to simulate rural settlements structured into farming households, with sub-models representing weather and land systems, food economy, demography, and land use. This model building is being carried out as part of the multi-disciplinary TwoRains project. It brings together research on material culture, settlement distribution, food production and consumption, vegetation and paleoenvironmental conditions.