Metal Trade, Empires and War: New Data and Methods in Ancient Economic History

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Markus Ludwig; Professor Dr. Lorenz Rahmstorf
• Subject Area: Economic and Social History ; Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 566467096

The research project "Metal Trade, Empires and War: New Data and Methods in Ancient Economic History" investigates the impact of long-distance metal trade during the Bronze Age on societal development. The Bronze Age, spanning approximately 5,000 to 3,000 years ago, was a transformative period characterized by the emergence of states, organized warfare, and technological advancements. This project aims to examine three central questions: first, whether metal trade networks were correlated with the rise of organized warfare; second, how these networks influenced the expansion of territorial states and empires; and third, how trade fostered the development and spread of weighing technologies, a critical innovation for ancient economies. The project adopts an interdisciplinary approach, combining economic history, archaeology, and computational science. A key innovation lies in the application of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract structured, quantitative data from qualitative historical and archaeological sources. This involves creating large-scale datasets on conflicts, trade routes, and political entities. Additionally, geospatial and econometric analyses will be used to map trade networks, identify key bottlenecks, and assess their role in state formation and empire expansion. The project will estimate transport costs based on historical trade connections, enabling the reconstruction of Bronze Age trade networks that linked distant mining regions with major population centers. Using these reconstructed networks, we test our key hypotheses, such as whether regions with significant transit trade activity were more likely to experience conflicts or territorial expansion. Additionally, the project will examine the spread of weight systems, a pivotal technological innovation that supported and facilitated trade during this period. The anticipated outcomes include new insights into the relationship between trade, conflict, and state-building, as well as publicly available datasets and machine learning tools for analyzing historical sources. The findings will contribute to the fields of ancient economic history, archaeology, and political science, shedding light on the foundational processes of long-term economic and societal development.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Wolf-Tilo Balke