Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) represents a methodology with significant potential for altering archaeological analytical practice. The tripling of publications within the last 7 years that use ABM provides evidence for the significance of this emerging approach. However, the scope of the research topics investigated has not increased accordingly. A consensus exists among ABM practitioners, that once generally accepted by the field, ABM can make revolutionary advances within the overall archaeological research paradigm. Unresolved concerns within the archaeological community center on whether ABMs are sufficiently grounded in empirical data, are aligned with theoretical trajectories, and on the difficult task of mastering the computational systems. It is worth exploring these aspects of the disjuncture between the mainstream and ABM practitioners for two reasons-to frame a discussion of qualities of ABM that make it transformative and to provide guidelines for broadening ABM's applicability. With capacity-building in mind, offered here is a practical reference for the nonpractitioner archaeologist considering ABM. A glossary is included of key terms used in the text to describe ABM methods and theory.

With a few exceptions, the distant past is an anonymous land occupied by people who made things and left behind a cryptic record of broken pieces. Even when the written word comes into play in human history and we can read the hieroglyphs naming an Egyptian pharaoh and describing royal achievements, the majority of human experience remains unknown and unrecoverable. Archaeologists usually excavate to gather physical evidence from ruins, monuments, and artifacts, which become data streams for the interpretation of past societies. Basic excavation is supplemented by a variety of scientific and historical research methods, all of which are far removed from observing the actual experiences of individuals in the past.The result is that aggregated categories such as households, neighborhoods, cities, nations, and civilizations become the units of analysis. These categories are incredibly important, but they are often used because finer analytical levels are unavailable. Furthermore, the aggregate categories are typically implemented under expectations of classical science, such as equilibrium outcomes that assume normal distributions as well as Fig. 1. Agent-based modeling is a powerful means for archeologists to explore the connections among individual action, intangible social entities, and broader interpretations at any time scale. If used more widely, ABM could free practitioners from many traditional limitations and make findings translatable to the general scientific public. Image courtesy of Wendy Cegielski and Jay Etchings

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Specialists and students will find of particular interest the concluding essay of the volume (Chapter 14, "Greater Cahokia-Chiefdom, State or City? Urbanism in the North American Mid-Continent, AD 1050-1250"), in which Thomas Emerson succinctly presents the evidence for Cahokia being an urban center (city) rather than a major town within a chiefdom analogous to those of the late prehistoric Southeast. This broader debate has bedeviled Mississippian archaeologists in Illinois since at least the early 1980s, when some Illinois archaeologists adamantly argued that rather than a city, Cahokia represented a vacant ceremonial center with only a very small year-round resident population. In contrast, Emerson, Pauketat, and their coauthors clearly consider this argument to have now been settled in favor of identifying Greater Cahokia as an urban landscape.Other notable chapters that further develop concepts of urbanism, neighborhoods, and archaeological precincts include Emerson's "Creating Greater Cahokia" (Chapter 2) and Pauketat's "Thinking through the Ashes, Architecture, and Artifacts of East St. Louis" (Chapter 13). Additional important chapters focusing on these and other concepts that expand on our knowledge of Greater Cahokia include Pauketat's "In and around the Northside and Southside Excavations at East St. Louis Precinct" (Chapter 5); "Community Organization of the East St. Louis Precinct" (Chapter 6) by Tamira Brennan et alia; "The People of East St. Louis" (Chapter 8) by Kristin Hedman; and "Crafting and Exotica at the East St. Louis Precinct" (Chapter 11) by Steven Boles et alia, which deals with the craft production of copper, crystal, galena, pipestone, and other artifacts.In sum, IDOT and the Illinois State Archaeological Survey should be commended for the publication of this outstanding volume, which will represent a benchmark study in American Bottom archaeology for decades to come. Not often does a summary volume of this type and this caliber about a major archaeological investigation, if completed at all, reach this level of theoretical and substantive importance.