Modeling Ancient Urban Trajectories and Land-Use Dynamics

Ancient cities did not exist in isolation---they were shaped by land use, environmental factors, and infrastructure networks. This project integrates field data with computational modelling to reconstruct the long-term coevolution of urbanization and landscape dynamics at Koh Ker and Polonnaruwa.

A key focus is the application and extension of Settlement Scaling Theory (SST) to evaluate how urbanization processes at these sites compare to broader cross-cultural patterns in ancient city growth and land use. By integrating empirical data with Bayesian Causal Network modelling, we will assess the long-term feedback relationships between population density, resource management strategies, and environmental change. Our modelling approach will allow us to distinguish between different causal mechanisms shaping urban sustainability and decline, providing a more rigorous, process-driven understanding of ancient urban trajectories that can be compared to regional environmental data and provide a quantitative basis for comparative studies on ancient urbanism.