Aggregation and cooperation as socioeconomic strategies developed by hunter-gatherers in the Beagle Channel

CARO, J.; ZURRO, D.; BRIZ, I.; ALVAREZ , M.; GALÁN, J.; SANTOS, I.; IZQUIERDO, L.

Congreso; 10th CHAGS; 2013

Universidad de Liverpool

Every society develops the mechanisms to improve solutions when facing to multiple social and environmental situations. In this sense, hunter-gatherer groups are not an exception: social conflicts, scarcity of resources or environmental fluctuations have been confronted by different innovative strategies. We think that cooperation is a social mechanism that could emerge as an extremely valid socioeconomic strategy in order to assure the survival of the social network. In fact, at present there are many cases worldwide where cooperation becomes an efficient way to solve problems. In this paper we focus on hunter-gatherer-fisher societies that inhabited the southernmost region of America till the 30?s of the last century. This part of the world presents some exceptional characteristics such as extreme latitude and a very hard climate. Within this context, cooperation processes produced through aggregation events would have allowed managing resource variability, not only in risky situations due to scarcity, but also when an extraordinary amount of resources would have taken place, such as the stranding of a whale. In order to advance in the study of how cooperation would be promoted and sustained within these societies, we show our current research developed using Social Simulation.