ROMFARMS

This repository contains the ROMFARMS model, created by Jamie Joyce in 2019 as part of his PhD thesis 'Farming along the limes: Using agent-based modelling to investigate possibilities for subsistence and surplus-based agricultural production in the Lower Rhine delta between 12BCE and 270CE', as part of the research project 'Finding the limits of the limes'.

The model was developed to better understand the interplay and dependencies of the factors involved in agricultural production in the Roman period in the Dutch river area. The primary research questions investigated were 1) to understand how different agricultural behaviours impact productivity, and 2) to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of different strategies of arable farming and animal husbandry in the region for obtaining surplus production. It was written in NetLogo v. 6.0.2 to generate estimates of agricultural production under different scenarios of land availability, workforce size and production strategies. A full description of the model assumptions and parameters can be found in Jamie Joyce's thesis. The version in this repository has been extended with a complete in-line documentation of the model code by Philip Verhagen.