The Computer Simulation of Social Dynamics and Historical Evolution. The case of “Prehistoric. Patagonia”

BARCELO, J.A; DEL CASTILLO, M.F; MAMELI, L; MORENO, E

Barcelona, España

Workshop; Proc. of the 2nd Workshop on Social Simulation and Artificial Societies Analysis (SSASA'08); 2008

CEUR Workshop Proceedings

. We introduce here our research project on the simulation of the historical trajectory of Patagonian societies since 13000 BP until the present. It pretends to be an explanatory simulation model whose aim is to identify yet unknown relationships and interactions that could have been present in the history of those societies, but we do not have any documentary source about them. In that sense, we start with a theory about hunter-gatherer societies and we try to show the plausibility of this theory using agent-based simulation methods and techniques. It is also a predictive simulation because it is built on historical, ethnological and archaeological knowledge available at the necessary level of detail. We pretend to build a simulation model that enables to predict how historical societies behave in the past under certain conditions. The general framework of agent-based simulation in the study of prehistoric societies is also presented.