Modelling the co-evolution of trade and culture in past societies

This paper presents a new framework to study the co-evolution of cultural change and trade. The design aims for a trade-off between the flexibility necessary for the implementation of multiple models and the structure necessary for the comparison between the models implemented. To create this framework we propose an Agent-Based Model relying on agents producing, exchanging and associating values to a list of goods. We present the key concepts of the framework and two examples of its implementation which allow us to show the flexibility of our framework. Moreover, we compare the results obtained by the two models, thus validating the structure of the framework. Finally, we validate the implementation of a trading model by studying the price structure it produces.Funding for this work was provided by the ERC Advanced Grant EPNet (340828) and the SimulPast Consolider Ingenio project (CSD2010-00034) of the former Ministry for Science and Innovation of the Spanish Government. The model was created using Pandora (Rubio-Campillo 2014). R was used for figures and statistical analysis (R Development Team 2012). The estimation of the a parameters have been computed with the R package poweRlaw (Gillespie 2015). The simulations have been done in the supercomputer MareNostrum at Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (The Spanish National Supercomputing Center). The source code of the model is licensed under a GNU General Public License.Peer Reviewe