Chimpanzee technological landscapes: Exploring the complexities of the technology, environment, and behaviour triad through agent-based modelling

Abstract

Archaeological assemblages are the product of a dynamic relationship between tool-using primates and their natural environment. As such, understanding how the archaeological record forms can provide important insights into the lifeways of past populations, including patterns of landscape use and resource exploitation. In human origins research, the study of non-human primate stone tool sites has been one important approach towards disentangling these processes. Nevertheless, while research has extensively explored the role of the materials and resources targeted during tool use, comparatively little has been achieved regarding the broader behavioural and environmental contexts. Here, we use agent-based modelling (ABM) to explore how different ecological scenarios may influence the landscape-scale patterns of stone tool use, with a focus on three key resources: food, water, and shelter. Using chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) as our study species, and nut-cracking as our focal behaviour, we developed an empirically derived, spatially-explicit, ABM that aggregates site-specific ecological data (from Bossou, Guinea), species-wide biological and behavioural data, and simulated landscapes. We found that the spatial patterning of nut-cracking did not change with variations in the distribution of resources. However, our results also show that variations in food distribution and water availability had significant effects on other aspects of behaviour such as foraging, travel and fission-fusion dynamics. This suggests that the material traces of tool use may only be able to reveal part of the behavioural multiplex of landscape use, and that there is much about the dynamic relationship between the environment, behaviour and technological landscapes yet to be explored.

Katarina 'Kat' Almeida-Warren

Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

My research focuses on the archaeology of non-human primates to shed light on the behaviours, culture, and technology of our earliest ancestors