People of Long Now

Dries Daems is an archaeologist who specializes in the development of social complexity, urbanism and economy in the first millennium BCE Mediterranean. In his work, he combines complex systems thinking with in-depth studies of ancient material culture, and innovative digital methodologies such as computational modeling and network science to explore patterns of interaction, connectivity and exchange. He uses this background to think broadly on long-term trajectories of social complexity and human-environment interactions from the past to today, and into the future. He is affiliated with Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey) and KU Leuven (Belgium).