Water, energy, and food are essential resources to sustain the development of the society. The Food-Energy-Water Nexus (FEW-Nexus) must account for synergies and trade-offs among these resources. The nexus concept highlights the importance of integrative solutions that secure supplies to meet demands sustainably. The existing frameworks and tools do not focus on formal model composability, a key capability for creating simulations created from separately developed models. The Knowledge Interchange Broker (KIB) approach is used to model the interactions among models to achieve composition flexibility for the FEW-Nexus.Domain experts generally use the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) and Low Emissions Analysis Platform (LEAP) systems to study water and energy systems, respectively. The food part of FEW systems can be modeled inside the WEAP system. An internal linkage mechanism is available for combining and simulating WEAP and LEAP models. This mechanism is used for the validation and performance evaluation of independent modeling and simulation proposed in this research. The Componentized WEAP and LEAP RESTful frameworks are component-based representations for the legacy and closed-source WEAP and LEAP systems. These modularized systems simplify their use with other simulation frameworks. This research proposes two interaction model frameworks based on the Knowledge Interchange Broker approach. First, an Algorithmic Interaction Model (Algorithmic-IM) was developed to integrate the WEAP and LEAP models. The Algorithmic-IM model can be defined via programming language and has a fixed cyclic execution protocol. However, this approach has tightly interwoven the interaction model with its execution and has limited support for flexibly creating model hierarchies. To overcome these restrictions, the system-theoretic Parallel DEVS formalism is used to develop a DEVS-Based Interaction Model (DEVS-IM). As in the Algorithmic-IM, the DEVS-IM is implemented as a RESTful framework, uses MongoDB for defining structural DEVS models, and supports automatic code generation for the DEVSSuite simulator. The DEVS-IM offers modular, hierarchical structural modeling, reusability, flexibility, and maintainability for integrating disparate systems. The Phoenix Active Management Area (AMA) is used to demonstrate the real-world application of the proposed research. Furthermore, the correctness and performance of the presented frameworks in this research are evaluated using the Phoenix-AMA model.

This study focuses on two broad questions concerning how variability in lithic technology relates to the biological and cultural evolution of humans. First, when did cumulative culture evolve? To address this question, the complexity of lithic technologies spanning hominin evolution was compared to the complexity of non-human primate technologies, and complexity achievable through randomized flaking behaviors in order to identify when lithic technologies developed that were more complex than technologies that may not require cumulative culture. The results suggest that a modern-human like capacity for cumulative culture was likely shared with the last common ancestor between modern humans and Neanderthals, and likely was developing prior to 2 mya. The second question focuses on whether one can reliably detect migrations and population expansions in the Pleistocene through lithic technology alone. To address this question, spatio-temporal variability in technology was compared to variability across cultural traits that do retain evidence of history: phonemes in human languages. Then, variability across technologies was measured in regions where population and migration histories are known a priori: these data include carefully selected assemblages relating to the migrations of Ancestral Puebloan people from Northern Arizona into the river valleys of Central and Southern Arizona, as well as assemblages relating to the expansion of Austronesian speakers into Near, and Remote Oceania. While lithic technologies show similar spatio-temporal patterning to phonemes in languages, suggesting potential for strong historical signal in lithic technology, within Oceania and Arizona technologies either weakly, or do not reflect population history. This is likely in part because prehistoric people tended to rapidly change their technologies to suit new circumstances. The above studies highlight the usefulness of broad, comparative studies of technological variation in addressing questions about the causes of variability in lithic technology and how lithic technology relates to the evolution of the genus homo.

This dissertation consists of three essays, each examining distinct aspects about public organization adaptation to extreme events using evidence from public transit agencies under the influence of extreme weather in the United States (U.S.). The first essay focuses on predicting organizational adaptive behavior. Building on extant theories on adaptation and organizational learning, it develops a theoretical framework to uncover the pathways through which extreme events impact public organizations and identify the key learning mechanisms involved in adaptation. Using a structural equation model on data from a 2016 national survey, the study highlights the critical role of risk perception to translate signals from the external environment to organizational adaptive behavior.

The second essay expands on the first one to incorporate the organizational environment and model the adaptive system. Combining an agent-based model and qualitative interviews with key decision makers, the study investigates how adaptation occurs over time in multiplex contexts consisting of the natural hazards, organizations, institutions and social networks. The study ends with a series of refined propositions about the mechanisms involved in public organization adaptation. Specifically, the analysis suggests that risk perception needs to be examined relative to risk tolerance to determine organizational motivation to adapt, and underscore the criticality of coupling between the motivation and opportunities to enable adaptation. The results further show that the coupling can be enhanced through lowering organizational risk perception decay or synchronizing opportunities with extreme event occurrences to promote adaptation.

The third essay shifts the gaze from adaptation mechanisms to organizational outcomes. It uses a stochastic frontier analysis to quantify the impacts of extreme events on public organization performance and, importantly, the role of organizational adaptive capacity in moderating the impacts. The findings confirm that extreme events negatively affect organizational performance and that organizations with higher adaptive capacity are more able to mitigate those effects, thereby lending support to research efforts in the first two essays dedicated to identifying preconditions and mechanisms involved in the adaptation process. Taken together, this dissertation comprehensively advances understanding about public organization adaptation to extreme events.

What causes social systems to resist change? Studies of the emergence of social complexity in archaeology have focused primarily on drivers of change with much less emphasis on drivers of stability. Social stability, or the persistence of social systems, is an essential feature without which human society is not possible. By combining quantitative modeling (Exponential Random Graph Modeling) and the comparative archaeological record where the social system is represented by networks of relations between settlements, this research tests several hypotheses about social and geographic drivers of social stability with an explicit focus on a better understanding of contexts and processes that resist change. The Valencian Bronze Age in eastern Spain along the Mediterranean, where prior research appears to indicate little, regional social change for 700 years, serves as a case study.

The results suggest that social stability depends on a society’s ability to integrate change and promote interdependency. In part, this ability is constrained or promoted by social structure and the different, relationship dependencies among individuals that lead to a particular social structure. Four elements are important to constraining or promoting social stability—structural cohesion, transitivity and social dependency, geographic isolation, and types of exchange. Through the framework provided in this research, an archaeologist can recognize patterns in the archaeological data that reflect and promote social stability, or lead to collapse.

Results based on comparisons between the social networks of the Northern and Southern regions of the Valencian Bronze Age show that the Southern Region’s social structure was less stable through time. The Southern Region’s social structure consisted of competing cores of exchange. This type of competition often leads to power imbalances, conflict, and instability. Strong dependencies on the neighboring Argaric during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages and contributed to the Southern Region’s inability to maintain social stability after the Argaric collapsed. Furthermore, the Southern Region participated in the exchange of more complex technology—bronze. Complex technologies produce networks with hub and spoke structures highly vulnerable to collapse after the destruction of a hub. The Northern Region’s social structure remained structurally cohesive through time, promoting social stability.

The recent emergence of global ‘megafires’ has made it imperative to better understand the role of humans in altering the size, distribution, and seasonality of fires. The dynamic relationship between humans and fire is not a recent phenomenon; rather, fire has deep roots in our biological and cultural evolution. Because of its long-term perspective, archaeology is uniquely positioned to investigate the social and ecological drivers behind anthropogenic fire. However, the field faces challenges in creating solution-oriented research for managing fire in the future. In this dissertation, I originate new methods and approaches to archaeological data that enable us to interpret humans’ long-term influences on fire regimes. I weave together human niche construction theory and ecological resilience, creating connections between archaeology, paleoecology, and fire ecology. Three, stand-alone studies illustrate the usefulness of these methods and theories for charting changes in land-use, fire-regimes, and vegetation communities during the Neolithic Transition (7600 - 3800 cal. BP) in eastern Spain. In the first study (Ch. II), I analyze archaeological survey data using Bayesian methods to extract land-use intensities from mixed surface assemblages from a case study in the Canal de Navarrés. The second study (Ch. III) builds on the archaeological data collected computational model of landscape fire, charcoal dispersion, and deposition to test how multiple models of natural and anthropogenic fire activity contributed to the formation a single sedimentary charcoal dataset from the Canal de Navarrés. Finally, the third study (Ch. IV) incorporates the modeling and data generated in the previous chapters into sampling and analysis of sedimentary charcoal data from alluvial contexts in three study areas throughout eastern Spain. Results indicate that anthropogenic fire played a significant role in the creation of agricultural landscapes during the Neolithic period, but sustained, low-intensity burning after the late Neolithic period maintained the human created niche for millennia beyond the arrival of agro-pastoral land-use. With global fire activity on the rise, it is vital to incorporate perspectives on the origins, development, and maintenance of human-fire relationships to effectively manage fire in today’s coupled social-ecological landscapes.

The South African Middle Stone Age (MSA), spanning the Middle to Late Pleistocene (Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 8-3) witnessed major climatic and environmental change and dramatic change in forager technological organization including lithic raw material selection. Homo sapiens emerged during the MSA and had to make decisions about how to organize technology to cope with environmental stressors, including lithic raw material selection, which can effect tool production and application, and mobility.

This project studied the role and importance of lithic raw materials in the technological organization of foragers by focusing on why lithic raw material selection sometimes changed when the behavioral and environmental context changed. The study used the Pinnacle Point (PP) MSA record (MIS6-3) in the Mossel Bay region, South Africa as the test case. In this region, quartzite and silcrete with dramatically different properties were the two most frequently exploited raw materials, and their relative abundances change significantly through time. Several explanations intertwined with major research questions over the origins of modern humans have been proposed for this change.

Two alternative lithic raw material procurement models were considered. The first, a computational model termed the Opportunistic Acquisition Model, posits that archaeological lithic raw material frequencies are due to opportunistic encounters during random walk. The second, an analytical model termed the Active-Choice Model drawn from the principles of Optimal Foraging Theory, posits that given a choice, individuals will choose the most cost effective means of producing durable cutting tools in their environment and will strategically select those raw materials.

An evaluation of the competing models found that lithic raw material selection was a strategic behavior in the PP record. In MIS6 and MIS5, the selection of quartzite was driven by travel and search cost, while during the MIS4, the joint selection of quartzite and silcrete was facilitated by a mobility strategy that focused on longer or more frequent stays at PP coupled with place provisioning. Further, the result suggests that specific raw materials and technology were relied on to obtain food resources and perform processing tasks suggesting knowledge about raw material properties and suitability for tasks.

This dissertation examines the various factors and processes that have been proposed as explanations for the spread of agriculture in the west Mediterranean. The expansion of the Neolithic in the west Mediterranean (the Impresso-Cardial Neolithic) is characterized by a rapid spread of agricultural subsistence and material culture from the southern portion of the Italian peninsula to the western coast of the Iberian peninsula. To address this unique case, four conceptual models of Neolithic spread have been proposed: the Wave of Advance, the Capillary Spread Model, the Maritime Pioneer Colonization Model and the Dual Model. An agent-based model, the Cardial Spread Model, was built to simulate each conceptual spread model in a spatially explicit environment for comparison with evidence from the archaeological record. Chronological information detailing the arrival of the Neolithic was used to create a map of the initial arrival of the Neolithic (a chronosurface) throughout the study area. The results of each conceptual spread model were then compared to the chronosurface in order to evaluate the relative performance of each conceptual model of spread. These experiments suggest that both the Dual and Maritime Pioneer Colonization models best fit the available chronological and spatial distribution of the Impresso-Cardial Neolithic.

For the purpose of informing agent movement and improving the fit of the conceptual spread models, a variety of paleoenvironmental maps were tested within the Cardial Spread Model. The outcome of these experiments suggests that topographic slope was an important factor in settlement location and that rivers were important vectors of transportation for early Neolithic migration. This research demonstrates the application of techniques rare to archaeological analysis, agent-based modeling and the inclusion of paleoenvironmental information, and provides a valuable tool that future researchers can utilize to further evaluate and fabricate new models of Neolithic expansion.

Early weaning, slow somatic and dental growth, and late age at reproduction are all part of a suite of energetic trade-offs that have shaped human evolution. A similar suite of energetic trade-offs has shaped the evolution of the indriid-palaeopropithecid clade, though members of this clade exhibit extremely fast dental development and nearly vestigial deciduous teeth. The development and functional occlusion of the primary postcanine dentition (i.e., deciduous premolars and molars) coincides with several life history parameters in great apes and indriids. This dissertation explored great ape dental macrowear, molar development in indriids, and molar size in lemurs with a broader goal of improving reconstructions of life history profiles in extinct primates. To this aim, macrowear and dental development were analyzed in apes and lemurs, respectively. Occlusal casts (six great ape species; N=278) were scanned to track mandibular fourth deciduous premolar (dp4) macrowear. Utilizing dental topographic analyses, changes in occlusal gradient and terrain were quantified. A subset of the great ape data (four species; n=199) was analyzed to test if differences in dp4 wear correlate with age at weaning. Using dental histology, molar development was reconstructed for Indri indri (n=1) and Avahi laniger (n=1). Life history and molar size data were collected from the literature. The results of this dissertation demonstrate that most great apes exhibited evidence of topographic maintenance, suggesting dp4s wear in a manner that maintain functional efficiency during growth and development; however, the manner in which maintenance is achieved (e.g., preservation of relief or complexity) is species specific. Dp4 macrowear is not correlated with age at weaning in great apes and is probably unreliable to reconstruct age at weaning in hominins. The pace of molar development in members of the indriid- palaeopropithecid clade did not correlate with body or brain size, an association present in several other primates. Associations of molar size with age at weaning suggest that expanding other developmental models (e.g., the inhibitory cascade) to life history is worth consideration. The broad variation in macrowear, dental development, and size highlights how the primary dentition may correlate with different life history parameters depending on the species and ecological setting, an important consideration when using teeth to reconstruct life history profiles.