Sander Van Der Leeuw - Modelling the socio-environmental evolution of the Rhone basin (1000 BP-AD 1000)

The objective of this project is to study the coupled socio-ecological dynamics of the Rhone Valley through time, specifically focusing on how environmental changes impacted the socio-economic organization and vice-versa. We plan to do this through computa-tional modelling of the intricate and complex webs of interactions that existed in the Mediterranean across space and time. In order to keep the project feasible, we will in first instance focus on the Marseille region and its interactions with the Mediterranean Basin. We will cover the last three millennia with emphasis on the Iron Age, the Roman period, and the transition from the Medieval to the Little Ice Age periods. The project will combine differential-equation modeling of environmental changes with agent-based modelling of societal dynamics.