Evaluating simulation platforms to describe ancient work processes

DEL CASTILLO, FLORENCIA; GONZÁLEZ BAGUR, IVANA; BARCELÓ, JOAN ANTON

Tübingen

Conferencia; Human history and digital future; 2018

Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA)

Computer simulation of ancient work processes has become central for the design of microsimulation models. Better computational methods and more efficient software tools are constantly being developed to provide more accurate archaeological inferences. Using analytical data from Patagonia ethnographical hunter gatherers work processes: hunting, processing, consumption and discard, we implemented this work flow in three different platforms: Flexim, Netlogo and Repast. These simulations tools have been evaluated through the amount of data that they provided, their sequencing time and the cost of increased error rates. We proposed this platform comparison to highlight their distinct functionality, requirements and potential applications and to gain experience on which one can be useful to represents and fix better with real archaeological scenarios.