An Agent-Based Model to Explore the Relationship between Archaeological Assemblages, Past Social Networks, and Cultural Dynamics

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The need to relate static archaeological sites to the dynamic processes responsible for their formation is central to the utility of archaeological data for testing hypotheses about the lives of prehistoric humans, and how ecological and social changes affected them. Here we use an agent-based simulation to investigate how different factors influence the ability of researchers to reconstruct prehistoric social networks from artifact stylistic similarities, as well as the overall diversity of cultural traits observed in archaeological assemblages. Given that cultural transmission and evolution are affected by multiple interacting phenomena, our model is unique in that it allows us to simultaneously explore different sets of factors that may condition how social networks relate to shared culture between individuals and groups. These include factors relating to (1) the structure of social groups, (2) selection pressures acting on cultural traits, (3) individual learning strategies, (4) the context in which different types of cultural traits are learnt, and (5) the specific method used to reconstruct ancient social networks. Whilst the archaeological record offers a unique glimpse on cultural changes happening over long temporal scales, our model will shed light on how to relate patterns observed in the archaeological record to past social dynamics.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32809