Simulating demic-diffusion processes in the expansion of archaeological cultures in South America

12 апреля 2021 г. состоялось заседание Американского семинара МАЭ, ИЭА и СПбИИ РАН, на котором с докладом “Simulating demic-diffusion processes in the expansion of archaeological cultures in South America” выступил Jonas Gregorio de Souza, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. In this talk, I examine the expansion of archaeological cultures of widespread distribution in lowland South America, most of which originated in or around the Amazon basin and spread during the late Holocene with the practice of tropical forest agriculture. Spatial gradients in radiocarbon dates of each culture are analysed through space-time regressions. To further assess the feasibility of demic diffusion as the process behind the archaeological expansions in question, agent-based simulations were run with demographic parameters derived from the ethnography of tropical forest farmers. While some expansions can be realistically modeled as demographic processes, others are not easily explainable in the same manner