PhD student ‘Simulating Globalisation in the Roman Empire’

at  Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

YOUR FUNCTION

The Roman Empire was one of the principal globalised political entities in history. In its constituent regions, globalisation induced profound, complex and variable societal changes, emerging from the interplay between local conditions (environment, demography, subsistence economy) and ‘global’ factors, including epidemics, climate change and power struggles within the Empire.
The project will employ cutting-edge computational methods for ‘big data’ analysis and simulation modelling to integrate bottom-up, data-driven archaeological analyses with top-down, theory-driven socio-economic models of globalisation. As a case study, it focuses on the Dutch part of the Lower Rhine region, which played a crucial role in protecting the Empire’s military and economic interests between the 1st-3rd century CE.
Three main elements will be investigated: 1) the integration of the local (‘rural’), regional (‘provincial’) and supra-regional (‘imperial’) socio-economic system, 2) the role of taxation, appropriation of natural resources and military investment by the Roman Empire in shaping and maintaining this system, and 3) the effects of external, ‘global’ events on its long-term socio-economic resilience.

For this, the project will pursue two integrated lines of research:

• Synthesising high volumes of archaeological data on demography and economy to analyse their trajectories at regional and imperial scale, and integrating these with environmental and other data sources.
• Using simulation techniques in a High-Performance Computing (HPC) environment to formalise, model and test existing and new hypotheses on the effects of globalisation on the socio-economic system.

The project will also develop transferable and open methods for modelling large-scale questions on past economies applicable to other regions and timeframes.

The PhD student will be responsible for the collection and analysis of the available archaeological and palaeo-environmental data of the study region, focusing on economic and demographic indicators of globalization, in order to answer the following research questions:

• What was the demographic trajectory of the region, and how does this compare to the Roman Empire at large?
• How did the region’s economy develop over time?
• How can we detect the impact of globalisation on regional socio-economic dynamics?What were the key drivers of globalisation in the Lower Rhine region? How can we transfer these findings to other regions?

Tasks:

• review archaeological (grey) literature for relevant datasets and approaches to analyze the economy and demography of the Lower Rhine region
• collect, update and manage relevant datasets in a bespoke geo-database system
• apply GIS, statistical methods and network analysis to extract economic and demographic indicators of globalization, in particular from finds assemblages from settlements and funerary contexts
• describe, contextualize and interpret the analysis results within the framework of globalization in the Lower Rhine region
• closely collaborate with the project team members and external partners
• participate in project meetings
• present research results in international conferences
• publish research results in international, peer-reviewed journals
• publish data and methods in Open Access repositories
• contribute to the development of educational resources

ABOUT US

The department Art & Culture, History and Antiquity is part of the Faculty of Humanities and has over 90 academic staff (including PhD students) divided into three clusters. The position will be in the cluster Antiquity, which covers the fields of Ancient Studies, Classics and Archaeology. The department is an established research centre for Roman archaeology in the Lower Rhine region with experts on settlement archaeology, metal finds, numismatics and epigraphy, as well as critical approaches towards interconnectivity, colonization and networks in the ancient world. It is part of CLUE+, the VU interfaculty research institute that brings together researchers from a wide variety of academic disciplines to jointly investigate culture, cognition, history and heritage and to reflect upon and formulate strategies towards societal challenges. It also participates in the VU Network Institute, that studies the digital society in an interdisciplinary approach.

The PhD student will be responsible for the collection and analysis of the available archaeological and palaeo-environmental data of the study region, focusing on economic and demographic indicators of globalization, in order to answer the following research questions:

• What was the demographic trajectory of the region, and how does this compare to the Roman Empire at large?
• How did the region’s economy develop over time?
• How can we detect the impact of globalisation on regional socio-economic dynamics?What were the key drivers of globalisation in the Lower Rhine region? How can we transfer these findings to other regions

Tasks:

• review archaeological (grey) literature for relevant datasets and approaches to analyze the economy and demography of the Lower Rhine region
• collect, update and manage relevant datasets in a bespoke geo-database system
• apply GIS, statistical methods and network analysis to extract economic and demographic indicators of globalization, in particular from finds assemblages from settlements and funerary contexts
• describe, contextualize and interpret the analysis results within the framework of globalization in the Lower Rhine region
• closely collaborate with the project team members and external partners
• participate in project meetings
• present research results in international conferences
• publish research results in international, peer-reviewed journals
• publish data and methods in Open Access repositories
• contribute to the development of educational resource