ABSTRACT
Agent-based modelling can be a useful aid to historical explanations, in the sense that it can help test hypotheses and yield new insights through the process of model-building. All it takes are a limited number of causal factors for the analysis, good source availability, stable conditions and well-defined hypotheses. While today modelling is more common in Archaeology than in any other historical discipline, the case studies show that there are no limitations regarding the time spans considered or the historical data used. Agent-based modelling and other computational methods in the historical disciplines bear the potential to be combined with counterfactual history in that both seek to open up opportunities to study historical events that could have happened and thus help scholars sharpen their analyses.
