Creating Alternative Cultural Histories in the Prehistoric Southwest: Agent-Based Modeling in Archaeology

The object of the workshop was to discuss and demonstrate the modeling of artificial societies and to suggest its potential for extending our knowledge about the prehistoric Southwest. Our efforts are part of the much larger questions anthropologists have asked for generations concerning how culture and cultures evolve. Traditional study of human social change and cultural evolution has resulted in many useful generalizations concerning the trajectory of change through prehistory and classifications of types of organization. It is increasingly clear, however, that four fundamental problems have hindered the development of a powerful, unified theory for understanding change in human social norms, behaviors, and institutions over long periods of time.