Hello!
 
I'm Nick Gessler, completing a Doctorate at UCLA Anthropology in Archaeology.
 After spending a decade and a half doing Archaeology on the Northwest Coast
and building two museums, I deceded to finish my degree.  My interest now is
focused on computational modeling of evolving cultural systems, adapting the
paradigm in Artificial Life towards building theory for what I call
"Artificial Culture."  The ideas is that "Artificial Cultures" are modeled as
grid-based systems of interacting mobile autonomous agents in a world
containing a "real artificial" physics in which behaviors and social patterns
are free to emerge as the society is free to evolve.  One then does
ethnographies or archaeologies on these artificial worlds.  The programming
is at the "proof of concept" stage and there's plenty more to do.  I'll be
attending a workshop at the Santa Fe Institute on building this type of
computational platform, and will be presenting a paper at Artificial Life IV
at MIT in July.  I see this work as articulating well with "cultural
materialism," and "processual archaeology."
 
"Fugawiland, look out!"
 
Nick Gessler
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UCLA - Anthropology
c/o 11152 Lucerne Avenue
Culver City, CA  90230-4244
Phone/FAX 310-559-6661