Abstract
Multi-agent simulation was used to study several styles of leadership in small societies. Populations of 50 and100 agents inhabited a bounded landscape containing a fixed number of food sources. Agents moved about the landscape in search of food, mated, produced offspring, and died either of hunger or at a predetermined maximum age. Leadership models focused on the collection and redistribution of food. The simulations suggest that individual households were more effective at meeting their needs than a simple collection-redistribution scheme. Leadership affected the normative makeup of the population: altruistic leaders caused altruistic societies and demanding leaders caused aggressive societies. Specific leadership styles did not provide a clear advantage when two groups competed for the same resources. The simulation results are compared to ethnographic observations of leadership in Pacific island societies.
Highlights
1.1 Chiefdoms represent an intermediate step between our presumed egalitarian past and the nation states that dominate the modern world ( Carneiro 1970, 1981)
6.1 Four principal conclusions can be drawn from the simulations: 1. Leadership did not significantly improve the percentage of agents who lived to old age but some leader characteristics improved social cohesion
7.1 A closer interaction between computer simulation and observational anthropology may improve our understanding of indigenous cultures
Summary
1.1 Chiefdoms represent an intermediate step between our presumed egalitarian past and the nation states that dominate the modern world ( Carneiro 1970, 1981). The authority and power of chiefs varied widely with the size and culture of the group, from nearly-egalitarian bands to highly structured bureaucracies. This paper uses multi-agent simulation to examine some features of leadership in small indigenous societies using the islands of Oceania as ethnographic comparisons. 1.2 Anthropologists identify several types of leadership and social stratification in the Pacific (Cordy ( 1986), Goldman (1955, 1970), and Sahlins ( 1958, 1963). Cordy (1986) uses the levels of bureaucratic organization to characterize stratification in Micronesia. Goldman (1955, 1970) focuses on the means by which a leader assumes and maintains power, whether by traditional inheritance, open competition, or through a highly stratified bureaucracy. All recognize the basic distinction between ascribed leadership, where a person is nominated to a defined position, and achieved leadership, where personal characteristics are the justification for authority
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