Resources for the study of Mesoamerican cities

Dec. 7, 2017

The Social Reactors Project team archives most of the data analyzed in project publications with The Digital Archaeological Record , a digital data repository housed at Arizona State University. Recently, we posted two datasets dealing with Mesoamerican cities, compiled by Michael Smith and his students: plaza areas and population estimates...

New resources for investigating the ancient Roman economy

Nov. 17, 2017

The Oxford Roman Economy Project is a long-term effort to compile, analyze and interpret quantitative datasets related to the ancient Roman economy and its evolution. The project has recently made available a series of databases containing information on a variety of economic indicators for the ancient Roman world, including SRP...

New evidence for a division of labor in the ancient world

Nov. 17, 2017

In a recent paper published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface , Social Reactors Project researchers present evidence that the division of labor expanded with city size in the ancient Roman world in the same way it expands in contemporary cities. The data for this analysis derive primarily from...

Settlement Scaling in Middle Range Societies

Sept. 24, 2017

One of the key challenges involved in making archaeology relevant for contemporary issues is a theoretical approach that can accommodate the vast differences in scale between the small-scale societies that created much of the archaeological record and the modern nations that most people live in today. In a recent paper...

Urbanization without growth in the ancient world?

July 8, 2017

This July, the Social Reactors Project team is convening an international conference at the British School at Rome focusing on the relationship, if any, between urbanization and economic development in the ancient Mediterranean world. The inspiration for this meeting derives from recent research on urbanization and socio-economic development in in...

SRP team member to lead a new center for urban innovation

March 7, 2017

The Social Reactors Project's own Luis Bettencourt has recently been named inaugural director of the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation at the University of Chicago. You can read the official announcement here . Congratulations Luis!

Reception at the SAAs in Vancouver

March 7, 2017

The Social Reactors Project will host a happy hour reception with cash bar in the Stanley Room, on the 34th floor of the Hyatt Regency Vancouver, from 4-6pm on Saturday, April 1, during the Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting. Stop on by for panoramic views of the city, to...

See us at the SAAs in Vancouver

Dec. 14, 2016

The Social Reactors Project team has organized a half-day symposium entitled "Settlement scaling in Archaeology--not just modern, not just urban," that will take place on Saturday, April 1, 2017, 8AM. We are also planning to host a reception that evening to give people a chance to meet and talk informally...

Historical evidence from Medieval European cities

Oct. 6, 2016

In an article that just appeared in PLOS ONE, Rudy Cesaretti and other Social Reactors Project researchers analyze a new dataset that combines census records, maps, and archaeological studies of 13th century cities from across Western Europe to show that, despite substantial differences in social and economic organization, these cities...

Social Reactors Project datasets available at tDAR

Aug. 13, 2016

The Social Reactors Project team has set up project page at The Digital Archaeological Record ( www.tdar.org ) to archive project datasets. Interested researchers can now download datasets analyzed in project publications for use in their own research. All you need to do is set up a tDAR account. We...

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