FUZZFARM
Modelling of the early agricultural spread in south of the Eastern Europe

The project aims at the reconstruction of the prehistoric land exploitation. Early farmers faced various ecological, economic and social constraints in order to select a certain micro-region for colonization.

These conditions will be studied in the course of the project by means of database approach for the whole south of Eastern Europe (roughly modern south-eastern Poland, Ukraine, Moldova, and eastern Romania); taking additional samples for research on paleo-soils in the three focus microregions which evidenced several waves of early agricultural colonization. The criteria will be formulated for a site selection by Neolithic farmers.

They will be incorporated into agent-based model "Fuzzy Farmers" using a fuzzy sets approach to combine the criteria of various character in a single model (for example, type of soil needed and a need of a similar site in geographical proximity for exchange of marital partners).

Agents will be represented by communities of early agriculturalists. The model will simulate the process of early agricultural expansion in actual geographic space (modelled in GIS). I plan to seek the conditions of ceasing the expansion pace and in such a way try to explain the frontiers of early farmers' spread known from archeological record of the south Eastern Europe.

Early farming groups rapidly moved across different landscapes. The way they moved across and settled in many territories of Europe has been largely debated especially during the last 30 years.

However, the reasons why its spread stopped at a certain point is difficult to understand. Several theories were put forward to explain limits of the first agricultural spread. The available data support the first arrival of early farmers in the region around 5800-5700 y. BC.

Only in a second step, from 5250-5100 y. BC, did the Neolithization process cover the vast areas of the Podillia and Volhynia, up to rivers of Southern Buh and Teterev. The Linear Pottery culture groups founded over 150 sites in the region till the date of 5100 BC.

The third wave of agricultural colonization is that of the Trypillia-Cucuteni people that took place during the fifth millennium BC when they reached and crossed the Dnieper river and settled in the Central Ukrainian upland.

So, at least for two millennia the easternmost fringe of Neolithic world moved across through the plains of south of Eastern Europe, sometimes stopping for several centuries without obvious geographic barriers (mountains, seas, major rivers etc.). Why did they stop? This project is aimed to answer this question.

Recently the important methodological achievements were reached in the modelling of early agricultural spread on the pan-European scale. Several innovative approaches were employed: evolutionary, punctuated equilibria model, agent-based modelling etc.

However, the empirical basis for these novel models usually omits the data on early farmers in the Eastern Europe and vice versa, the archaeological record of the Eastern Europe remains virgin for the interpretation by the means of innovative formal (including fuzzy logics and agent-based modelling) tools.

As such it is usually explained by non-formal models sometimes deeply rooted in the local nationalistic or autochtonists narratives. The modern up-to-date methodological study on the Neolithic of south of the Eastern Europe is required in order to include it in a general European picture of the early agricultural societies establishment throughout the continent.

I hope that this project will fill this gap, by an application of the unified innovative approach to the archaeological record of the region in question.