Simulating Patagonian territoriality in prehistory : Space, frontiers and networks among hunter-gatherers

Abstract

In the last 40 years, the very idea of ethnicity has evolved from a static and essentialist classification of human groups according to their immutable “nature” to a relational frame of reference used by groups of people to consider themselves “similar” or to be explicitly differentiated by others. Nevertheless, the growing importance of variability analysis of mitochondrial DNA and other biological markers in modern prehistoric studies, with their emphasis on the identification of geographic patterns in genetic and phenotypic diversity of prehistoric populations is going in the opposite direction, as if the existence of genetic variability in the past would be comparable to what is inferred about cultural variation in the present. In this paper we have built a computer simulation of economic processes causing social aggregation, territoriality and ethnogenesis among Patagonian hunter-gatherers. We argue that cultural similarity and the constriction of groups to a restricted geographical area are not necessarily ethnic markers. Our model suggests that the more inter-generational knowledge transmission among socially aggregated individuals in the past, the greater the similarity in the social activity performed by agents in the present, and the same for their territoriality and the way frontiers and social networks were negotiated. Our computer simulation intends to answer the question “Why did human groups modify their traditional residence mobility and dispersal patterns?” In ancient Patagonia, at the extreme south of South America, from 12,000 BC until nineteenth century AD, this social transformation seems to coincide with slow changes in subsistence economy and technology. However, there are historical and archaeological sources that suggest this process was related with increased social complexity: wars and conflicts between different indigenous groups would have preceded this new scenario, even before European contact.