Recreating The Past Using Agent-Based Modeling:
An Example From The Nortamerican Southwest
George Gumerman, Senior Scholar, School of American Research; The Santa Fe Institute
Archaeology, like other historical sciences such as paleontology and cosmology, has the disadvantage of being unable to test hypotheses by experimentation. Agent-based modeling, however, permits researchers to test the fit between the archaeological data and retrodicted environmental landscapes against simulations using various rules about how agents interact with one another and with their natural environment. By altering demographic, cultural, and environmental conditions, as well as the rules of agent interaction and comparing the results with the reconstructed archaeological situation it is possible to understand the relative importance of the natural and cultural variables that are observable in the archaeological record of the prehistoric people of the American Southwest
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