A central challenge in the study of historical civilizations is the construction of evidence-based narratives describing complex processes of change that affected and shaped past societies. Archaeological evidence stems from multiple sources, such as excavations or complementary records on climate and other environmental factors. It is often fragmentary and has been subject to prior transformations, displacements, and preservation processes. Owing to the inherent difficulties of inferring the underlying spatio-temporal change processes from the data, their interpretation constitutes a prime subject for advanced mathematical modeling and formalized reasoning. Today, “agent-based models” (ABMs) are used to model processes involving human behaviour. This project aims to increase the explanatory power of ABMs in application to historical change processes including their validation and calibration against complex data. We are particularly interested in ABMs for innovation spreading processes in ancient cultures, incorporating geographic, climatic, and cultural aspects, community building and trading. Another focus is on efficient simulation of such models, in particular on high performance computing infrastructures.

 

SheepInnovationSpread

 

Figure 1: Snapshot of one realization of the wool-bearing sheep innovation spreading in ancient times.

Publications

2021
Deterministic and Stochastic Parameter Estimation for Polymer Reaction Kinetics I: Theory and Simple Examples Macromolecular Theory and Simulations, Vol.30, 2021 Niklas Wulkow, Regina Telgmann, Klaus-Dieter Hungenberg, Christof Schütte, Michael Wulkow BibTeX
DOI
Modeling and Simulation of Innovation Spreading in Ancient Societies
From interacting agents to density-based modeling with stochastic PDEs Communications in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science, 16(1), pp. 1-32, 2021 (preprint available as ZIB-Report 19-21) Luzie Helfmann, Natasa Djurdjevac Conrad, Ana Djurdjevac, Stefanie Winkelmann, Christof Schütte PDF (ZIB-Report)
BibTeX
arXiv
DOI
Modeling and Simulation of Innovation Spreading in Ancient Societies
Memory-Based Reduced Modelling and Data-Based Estimation of Opinion Spreading Journal of Nonlinear Science, Vol.31, 2021 Niklas Wulkow, Péter Koltai, Christof Schütte BibTeX
DOI
Modeling and Simulation of Innovation Spreading in Ancient Societies
2020
The Furnace and the Goat—A spatio-temporal model of the fuelwood requirement for iron metallurgy on Elba Island, 4th century BCE to 2nd century CE PLOS ONE, Vol.15, pp. 1-37, 2020 Fabian Becker, Natasa Djurdjevac Conrad, Raphael A. Eser, Luzie Helfmann, Brigitta Schütt, Christof Schütte, Johannes Zonker BibTeX
DOI
Modeling and Simulation of Innovation Spreading in Ancient Societies
2018
Human mobility and innovation spreading in ancient times: a stochastic agent-based simulation approach EPJ Data Science, 7(1), 2018 Natasa Djurdjevac Conrad, Luzie Helfmann, Johannes Zonker, Stefanie Winkelmann, Christof Schütte BibTeX
DOI
Modeling and Simulation of Innovation Spreading in Ancient Societies
Mathematical modeling of the spreading of innovations in the ancient world eTopoi. Journal for Ancient Studies, Vol.7, 2018 Natasa Djurdjevac Conrad, Daniel Fuerstenau, Ana Grabundzija, Luzie Helfmann, Martin Park, Wolfram Schier, Brigitta Schütt, Christof Schütte, Marcus Weber, Niklas Wulkow, Johannes Zonker PDF
BibTeX
DOI
Modeling and Simulation of Innovation Spreading in Ancient Societies
Stochastic Modeling of Interacting Agent Systems Master's thesis, Freie Universität Berlin, Christof Schütte, Natasa Djurdjevac Conrad (Advisors), 2018 Luzie Helfmann PDF
BibTeX
URN
Modeling and Simulation of Innovation Spreading in Ancient Societies
2017
Modelling the Spread of Innovations by a Markov Process in a Bayesian Framework Master's thesis, Freie Universität Berlin, Christof Schütte, Marcus Weber (Advisors), 2017 Niklas Wulkow PDF
BibTeX
URN
Modeling and Simulation of Innovation Spreading in Ancient Societies