As anthropologists, we’re uniquely interested in understanding how sociality evolves and how it impacts behavior and health. However, because of the complexity inherent to social systems, we often struggle to disentangle the mechanisms underlying the origin of these systems or their biological ramifications. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is one tool which can help in this regard, by representing the emergence of group-, population-, or species-level phenomena from the behavior of the individual. Moreover, ABM can test and compare potential interventions within a simulated system, making it invaluable for applied anthropology. In this talk, I will review some of my past and current ABM projects, including an investigation into how the costs of sociality vary with ecology for primate foragers, and recent work exploring how to mitigate the spread of drug-resistant gonorrhea in the US. Future directions within public health and evolutionary medicine will also be discussed.
