TERRSOC

The multi-disciplinary project, “TERRSOC: ‘Reading’ Ancient Landscapes”, is funded by DFG. TERRSOC investigates the role that agricultural terraces played in society, and how social and economic systems together stood behind the decision to build, maintain, and restore terraces, on the one hand, and abandon them, on the other. By integrating data sets with high chronological resolution within an agent-based model (ABM) framework, we test hypotheses regarding human behavior and decision-making, comparing the ways peasants invested in their land in medieval Islamic, Byzantine, and Iron Age. At the center of the study is the excavation of the extensive Mamluk-era settlement of Khirbet Beit Loya and its agricultural terraces.

The project is funded under the DFG's Middle East Cooperation competition. It is a partnership between the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit of the University of Bonn and the Institutes of Archaeology at Tel Aviv and Hebrew Universities in Israel. IAMO is responsible for the development of the agent-based models in the project. 

• Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology
• Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology

• DFG (German Research Foundation)

Further information on the project can be found here on the website of the University of Bonn.