Andreas Angourakis

Research Associate

ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9946-8142
Email: Andreas.Angourakis@ruhr-uni-bochum.de

Short biography

Dr Angourakis is a computational archaeologist with a strong background in Humanities and Social Sciences specialising in simulating socio-environmental systems in the past. He has ten years of experience with quantitative analyses and simulation modelling, particularly agent-based modelling, in archaeology.

Research interests

His research focuses specifically on how social behaviour reflects long-term historical processes, especially those concerning food systems in past small-scale societies. Among the aspects investigated through simulation are competition for land use between sedentary farmers and mobile herders, cooperation for food storage, origins of agriculture and domestication of plants, the sustainability of subsistence strategies and resilience to climate change. His contributions to quantitative methods in archaeology include works in multivariate statistical analyses applied to archaeometry of pottery and others involving the application of machine learning and various datasets.

Selected publications

 

  • Angourakis, A., Alcaina-Mateos, J., Madella, M., & Zurro, D. (2022). Human-Plant Coevolution: A modelling framework for theory-building on the origins of agriculture. PLOS ONE, 17(9), e0260904. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260904

 

  • Angourakis, A., Bates, J., Baudouin, J.-P., Giesche, A., Walker, J. R., Ustunkaya, M. C., Wright, N., Singh, R. N., & Petrie, C. A. (2022). Weather, Land and Crops in the Indus Village Model: A Simulation Framework for Crop Dynamics under Environmental Variability and Climate Change in the Indus Civilisation. Quaternary, 5(2), 25. https://doi.org/10.3390/quat5020025

 

  • Angourakis, A., Bates, J., Baudouin, J.-P., Giesche, A., Ustunkaya, M. C., Wright, N., Singh, R. N., & Petrie, C. A. (2020). How to ‘downsize’ a complex society: An agent-based modelling approach to assess the resilience of Indus Civilisation settlements to past climate change. Environmental Research Letters, 15(11), 115004. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abacf9

 

  • Angourakis, A., Martínez Ferreras, V., Torrano, A., & Gurt Esparraguera, J. M. (2018). Presenting multivariate statistical protocols in R using Roman wine amphorae productions in Catalonia, Spain. Journal of Archaeological Science, 93, 150–165. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JAS.2018.03.007

 

  • Angourakis, A., Salpeteur, M., Martínez Ferreras, V., Gurt Esparraguera, J. M., Ferreras, V. M., & Gurt Esparraguera, J. M. (2017). The Nice Musical Chairs Model: Exploring the Role of Competition and Cooperation Between Farming and Herding in the Formation of Land Use Patterns in Arid Afro-Eurasia. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 24(4), 1177–1202. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-016-9309-8

Selected projects

  • «Resources in Transformation» (ReForm). Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus. IP (coord.): Thomas Stoellner (Ruhr University Bochum-German Mining Museum). 05/2020-05/2025 Miembro de equipo. Rol: Investigador asociado postdoctoral.

 

  • TwoRains – Winter Rain, Summer Rain. Adaptation, Climate Change, Resilience and the Indus Civilisation. European Research Council. IP: Cameron A. Petrie (University of Cambridge). 01/09/2015-31/08/2021. Miembro de equipo. Rol: Investigador asociado postdoctoral.

 

  • Las sociedades antiguas complejas de Asia Central a través de la cerámica. Entre la tradición nómada y las influencias mediterráneas (CERAC). Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad. IP: Verònica Martínez Ferreras (Universitat de Barcelona). 01/2017-12/2020. Miembro de equipo. Rol: Investigador miembro del equipo.

 

  • Social and environmental transitions: Simulating the past to understand human behaviour (SimulPast). Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (CSD2010-00034). IP (coord.): Marco Madella (Institución Milá y Fontanals – CSIC). 01/2011-06/2017. Miembro de equipo. Rol: asistente de investigación (2011-2013); investigador predoctoral miembro del equipo (2014-2017).

 

  • Caracterización y modelización de los procesos tecnológicos en la fabricación de cerámica de sociedades antiguas de Asia Central. Del helenismo al Islam (CAMOTECCER). Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad. IP: Verònica Martínez Ferreras (Universitat de Barcelona). 01/2013-12/2015. Miembro de equipo. Rol: estudiante de doctorado con beca asociada al proyecto.