What Makes a Forager Turn Coastal? An Agent-Based Approach to Coastal Foraging on the Paleoscape of South Africa

Long-term and broad-scale landscape perspectives on human foraging behavior may be simulated with a computational approach known as agent-based modelling. This chapter describes the PaleoscapeABM which simulates the aggregated effects of foraging, using optimal foraging theory logic, on a reconstructed habitat landscape set on the Cape South Coast of South Africa during the Later Stone Age and Middle Stone Age. Through simulated foraging for shellfish, mammal, and plant resources, the PaleoscapeABM’s results illustrate the complex inter-relationships between diet, mobility, population density, human cognition, and occupied coastal landscapes. This agent-based modelling approach provides a conceptual bridge between the local-scale understanding of human decision making from optimal foraging theory and the longer-term and broader-scale patterns represented in the archaeological record.