> What we can do, however is uncover the lives of these peasant households through modeling.

> So the models we’re going to set up are going to be most applicable in that space: towards the end of antiquity in the Mediterranean.

> I’ll try to be clear as we move what elements of the model are which are more broadly universal and which are very context sensitive

The author addresses this in the first paragraphs before getting in to the meat of it.