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.