Introduction to Simulating the Past

This is the introduction to a special issue of Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory focusing on modelling and simulation in archaeology. Archaeology is a discipline based on abductive reasoning, where the premises do not guarantee the conclusions. In other words, hypotheses in archaeology are generated on the basis of an incomplete set of observations, and the discovery or the acquisition of new information can modify the previously developed hypotheses. Abductive reasoning is a useful tool for developing explanations that are adequate to describe an J Archaeol Method Theory DOI 10.1007/s10816-014-9209-8