Combining ABM and GIS to investigate hunter-gatherer dispersal in São Paulo State

• Grant number: 24/19273-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: February 02, 2025
• End date: August 01, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Archeology - Prehistoric Archaeology
• Principal Investigator: Camilo Rodrigues Neto
• Grantee: Letícia Cristina Correa
• Supervisor: C Michael Barton
• Host Institution: Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades (EACH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Arizona State University, Tempe (ASU), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/01972-8 - Using agent-based modeling as a method to infer about human occupation of prehistoric foraging groups in the State of São Paulo, BP.PD

Abstract

Although archaeological research in São Paulo State has been taking place since the 1960s, which has considerably expanded the data about pre-colonial societies, less change happened in the theoretical approaches and methods of analyzing the data. The traditional way of understanding the relationship between space and time, based on the analysis of collections, dating of sites and comparisons, has pointed out spaces occupied by distinct cultural groups, but understanding possible routes and time of dispersion still seems far from being a reality, especially for hunter-gatherers groups. Considering that landscape configuration influence decisions about human mobility and that the organization of these different societies equally affects the interaction between them, this project aims to use geodiversity data from São Paulo State by combined with Geographic Information System (GIS) with the Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) method, resulting from the ongoing project (under FAPESP funding 2023/01972-8). The objective is to understand the dispersal of hunter-gatherer groups during the late Pleistocene and Holocene from real spatial data. For the continuity of the model, parameters obtained from the ethnographic literature are being considered as a way to enhance the modeling of human behavior.