Conference Bochum 14-16 May: Resources and Complex Systems

This event might be of interest to readers of this blog.

Via Frederik Schaff:

Dear colleagues,

 

In the attachment, please find an invitation to the ReSoc conference Resources and Transformation in pre-modern Societies, which takes place in Bochum from 14th to 16th of May 2020.

The conference is organised by the Leibniz Post-Doc School “Resources in Society” (ReSoc) hosted by the Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB) and the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum (DBM). The aim of the conference is to provide a forum for a transdisciplinary discourse on transformation of knowledge, culture and landscapes in relation to resources. In three sessions, with two distinguished keynote speakers each, we will cover aspects with a multitude of different methodological and theoretical perspectives.

In this mailing-list, we wish to highlight especially the third session on “Resources and Complex Systems”. Here, we will focus especially on agent-based modelling (or similar) approaches to gain a deeper understanding of transformation processes in a given geographical area over a long time span (typically several hundred years).

In order stimulate a lively and fruitful debate, we highly welcome proposals in the form of an abstract (until February 29^th) that:

·         formally cope with issues of complexity and resources by means of simulation models,

·         theoretically derive the practical relevance of a resource-based viewpoint to issues of complexity in an archaeological context,

·         review critically and/or comprehensively the existing literature on complexity and archaeology with the aim to understand the relevance of resources in the different approaches,

·         empirically (based on, e.g., ethnographic studies) determine and analyse such drivers of spatiotemporal human dynamics that are directly connected to concepts of resources,

·         or fit in any other way well within the context of the session.

All information is also available at the conference page: https://conference.resoc.de.

Please forward this email to interested colleagues.

Please excuse any cross-positings.

We hope to see many of you in Bochum.

Best wishes, on behalf of the organising committee,

Frederik Schaff