CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

This paper presents the theoretical basis and first results of an agent-based model (ABM) computer simulation that is being developed to explore cooperation in hunter-gatherer societies. Specifically, we focus here on Yamana, a hunter-fisher-gatherer society that inhabited the islands of southernmost portion of Tierra del Fuego (Argentina-Chile). Ethnographical and archaeological evidences provide arguments that point to the existence of sporadic aggregation events, triggered by a public call through smoke signals of an extraordinary confluence of resources under unforeseeable circumstances in time and space (a beached whale or an exceptional accumulation of fish after a low tide). During such aggregations, the different social units involved used to develop and improve production, distribution and consumption processes in a collective way. We try to analyse the social dynamics that explain cooperative behaviour and resource sharing during aggregations based on an agent based model of indirect reciprocity. Agents decide based on the success of public strategies of other agents. Fitness depends on the resource captured and the social capital exchanged in aggregation events, modulated by agent?s reputation. Our computational results identify the relative importance of the resource with respect to social benefits, and the easiness to detect, and hence punish, a defector as key factors to promote and sustain cooperative behaviour among population

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