SIMULPAST

SimulPast was a five-year interdisciplinary research project started in January 2011 and funded by the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation (CSD2010-00034) within the framework of CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010, part of the Spanish National Program for Fundamental Research.

The aim of the project was to develop an innovative and interdisciplinary methodological framework to model and simulate ancient societies and their relationship with environmental transformations.

The project included 11 Research Groups from 7 different Institutions with more than 60 researchers from several fields (archaeology, anthropology, computer science, environmental studies, physics, mathematics and sociology). The leader institution was the IMF-CSIC in Barcelona.

The combination of archaeological data (including environmental and climatic data), together with the supercomputer-based feedback process was the most powerful approach for methodological development in social simulation. The strength of this approach was the feedback loop: the constant update of the starting hypothesis and the subsequent formalized models as they are applied to specific case studies.