Between paleodemographic estimators and “LBK” colonization in Central-Western Europe (c. 5,550-4,950 BCE): A tribute to the theoretical and methodological trajectory of Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel in the study of the first farmers of the “Old World”

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Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel has reintroduced and renewed the demographic issue in Prehistory, particularly in the analysis of the processes of diffusion of the agro-pastoral economy in the “Old World,” through his deconstruction/reconstruction approach of paleodemography (Bocquet-Appel and Masset 1982, 1996) and his research on the Neolithic/Agricultural Demographic Transition (ADT), carried out on a European (Bocquet-Appel 2002; Bocquet-Appel and Dubouloz 2003, 2004) and intercontinental scale (Bocquet-Appel and Bar-Yosef 2008; Bocquet-Appel 2009). The emphasis on a strong demographic growth linked to establishing a production economy was, therefore, the first stage of Jean-Pierre’s interest in this scientific question (Bocquet-Appel 2008).This research was the seed of his later investigations into the nature and pace of the diffusion of the agricultural system in Europe (LBK), first through 14C radiometric dating analysis, then through the analysis of the systemic conditions of this process (Bocquet-Appel et al. 2009, 2012). The construction of descriptive models articulating the apparent expansion of LBK with its environmental, technical, sociological, and cultural components was, therefore, the second expression of his commitment to this highly debated subject. This opened the way to an even more integrative advance, the theoretical modeling and computer simulation of past anthropological processes. Given the good archaeological evidence, the emblematic, self-evident case chosen for this approach was the diffusion of the Linear Pottery Culture (LBK) - the prehistoric period which corresponds to the introduction of the agricultural system in central and central-western Europe during the 6th and early 5th millennia before the Common Era (BCE). Since we have been involved in this endeavor from the early 21st c. and have contributed closely to several of these projects between 2002 and 2018, we shall present the essential elements of this multi-agent approach, the simulated products directly relevant to Neolithic archaeology, as well as the limits of this first simulation.