Working with Artificial Hunter-Gatherers

When analysing the issue of hunter-gatherer mobility, we try to base explanations on observable patterns of human adaptation to the natural environment, often with an emphasis on resource distribution.

However, material remains documenting mobility are very limited and potential social and cultural factors affecting mobility are difficult to reconstruct. At this point we may ask: Is there something to be learned about the social and cultural features of hunter-gatherer mobility by looking at artificial societies?

This question is currently an important issue within the E3 project, in which Martin Solich, as a social anthropologist, applies the agent-based modelling approach to simulate probable effects of social and cultural norms on hunter-gatherer mobility. Environmental factors are therefore combined with different norm-sets structuring mobility behaviour in a frame of a simplified artificial hunter-gatherer society.

The structure of this artificial society and the norm-sets are derived from ethnographic data of contemporary hunter-gatherers. Finally, the resulting diverse scenarios are run repeatedly and compared with simulation runs of models that do not integrate a social and cultural dimension. The aim of this approach is to gain a better understanding of the potential and the limits of environmental models describing hunter-gatherer mobility.

 

E3-Solich_Fig-1-lhk_500px
Simulating mobility patterns of an artificial hunter-gatherer group in NetLogo 4.1.

Project

Prov. Ogooué-Ivindo, northeastern Gabon. A tale fr...

Prov. Ogooué-Ivindo, northeastern Gabon. A tale from the field

The Baka are tropical foragers living in the rainforests of central Africa. In the course of the last 150 years, the Baka have bee...

Gidicho Island, southwestern Ethiopia: An ethnogra...

Gidicho Island, southwestern Ethiopia: An ethnographic experience from Lake Abaya

The Haro are hunters from Gidicho Island (32 km2) in Lake Abaya (1200 km2), the second largest lake in Ethiopia.

Working with Artificial Hunter-Gatherers

Working with Artificial Hunter-Gatherers

When analysing the issue of hunter-gatherer mobility, we try to base explanations on observable patterns of human adaptation to th...

Being a Hunter-Gatherer in Namibia – Blurring the...

Being a Hunter-Gatherer in Namibia – Blurring the Lines

Over the course of his PhD fieldwork, E3 project member Charlie Goodwin has been investigating two communities in the North-Centra...

E3 Kick-off Workshop “Perspectives on spatial mobi...

E3 Kick-off Workshop “Perspectives on spatial mobility of hunter-gatherers”, 14th–15th December 2017

During the current phase of the E3 Project (2017–2021), the researchers aim at a cross-cultural comparison of internal models of h...

Exploring Demography and Mobility using Agent-Base...

Exploring Demography and Mobility using Agent-Based Modelling

Human mobility and demography are intrinsically related. Most prominently is the idea that human migration is driven by population...

Workshop "Mapping the unmappable?"

Workshop "Mapping the unmappable?"

On December 5-6, 2019, the E3-Project organized the international workshop "Mapping the unmappable? African hunter-gatherer relati...

logo qsga small new

logo koeln schrift 120x120 transparent

     logo uni bonn 153x40      dfg logo transparent
 

RWTH Aachen University

  logo geoverbund small 2 

logo koeln schrift 120x120 transparent

  logo Twitter
Copyright © 2021 CRC 806 - Our Way to Europe