Occupation and settlement through time: Applying the human existence potential model to European societies

The rising number of climate reconstructions of the past utilizing both proxy data and climate models enable further numerical model based research of human occupation and settlement patterns. In conjunction with statistical, numerical or machine learning powered spatial downscaling methods, spatial resolutions can be achieved that better fit with the scale of human-landscape interactions. This study gives an overview of combinations of archaeological site distribution data with paleoclimate reconstructions and additional environmental data by using the Human Existence Potential (HEP) model. The focus lies on European societies starting from the first hunter-gatherer occupation of modern humans in Europe roughly 50k years before present to the earliest farming societies that settled down around 7.5k years ago. The resulting potential fields allow occupation and settlement pattern analysis as well as further use for other applications within the “Our Way” Framework of population dynamics modeling. This framework includes an agent-based model for small scale dynamics and a density based model for continental scale dispersal.