Programing Human Behavior. Towards a Library of Universal Algorithms The case of Hunting-Gathering and Farming.

DEL CASTILLO, FLORENCIA; BARCELÓ, JOAN ANTON

Cracovia

Conferencia; 47th Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Conference; 2019

Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology International Organization

Artificial societies and agent-based models are being used in archaeology with increasing success. We can find Applications in many different domains, from evolution theory and the hominization process to the formation of complex societies. However, much of the effort in programming those simulations of human life is lost because the discoveries and innovations made in one project cannot be ?reused? in another simulation. In this paper we suggest a library of re-usable algorithms about different social mechanisms. It exists something similar in some parallel domains, like the simulation of pedestrian movement: if you model includes agents that should walk, you can use some already tested algorithms. We suggest to do the same in the case of ?universal? social mechanisms: ?Hunting?, ?Gathering?, ?Cultivating cereals?, ?Animal breeding?, ?tool making?, etc. As a preliminary work in this direction, we have investigated the models library in the Netlogo site (thousands of examples) and organized thematically a library of scripts implementing different social mechanisms that can be of interest to archaeologists and social scientists. In the paper, we discuss the theoretical aspects of social mechanisms from the point of view of analytical sociology, and we also discuss the troubles that different alternative implementations of the same mechanism may generate.