Hasil untuk "Prehistoric archaeology"

Chairi Kiourt, Vassilis Evangelidis, Dimitris Grigoropoulos

Understanding mobility, movement, and interaction in archaeological landscapes is essential for interpreting past human behavior, transport strategies, and spatial organization, yet such processes are difficult to reconstruct from static archaeological evidence alone. This paper presents a multi-agent-based modeling framework for simulating archaeological mobility in uneven landscapes, integrating realistic terrain reconstruction, heterogeneous agent modeling, and adaptive navigation strategies. The proposed approach combines global path planning with local dynamic adaptation, through reinforcment learning, enabling agents to respond efficiently to dynamic obstacles and interactions without costly global replanning. Real-world digital elevation data are processed into high-fidelity three-dimensional environments, preserving slope and terrain constraints that directly influence agent movement. The framework explicitly models diverse agent types, including human groups and animal-based transport systems, each parameterized by empirically grounded mobility characteristics such as load, slope tolerance, and physical dimensions. Two archaeological-inspired use cases demonstrate the applicability of the approach: a terrain-aware pursuit and evasion scenario and a comparative transport analysis involving pack animals and wheeled carts. The results highlight the impact of terrain morphology, visibility, and agent heterogeneity on movement outcomes, while the proposed hybrid navigation strategy provides a computationally efficient and interpretable solution for large-scale, dynamic archaeological simulations.

Zehao Jin, Yuxi Lu, Yuan-Sen Ting et al.

Galactic archaeology--the study of stellar migration histories--provides insights into galaxy formation and evolution. However, establishing causal relationships between observable stellar properties and their birth conditions remains challenging, as key properties like birth radius are not directly observable. We employ Rank-based Latent Causal Discovery (RLCD) to uncover the causal structure governing the chemodynamics of a simulated Milky Way galaxy. Using only five observable properties (metallicity, age, and orbital parameters), we recover in a purely data-driven manner a causal graph containing two latent nodes that correspond to real physical properties: the birth radius and guiding radius of stars. Our study demonstrates the potential of causal discovery models in astrophysics.

Nivedita Sinha, Bharati Khanijo, Sanskar Singh et al.

In this paper, we describe a multi-modal search system designed to search old archaeological books and reports. This corpus is digitally available as scanned PDFs, but varies widely in the quality of scans. Our pipeline, designed for multi-modal archaeological documents, extracts and indexes text, images (classified into maps, photos, layouts, and others), and tables. We evaluated different retrieval strategies, including keyword-based search, embedding-based models, and a hybrid approach that selects optimal results from both modalities. We report and analyze our preliminary results and discuss future work in this exciting vertical.

Raveerat Jaturapitpornchai, Giulio Poggi, Gregory Sech et al.

Deep learning methods in LiDAR-based archaeological research often leverage visualisation techniques derived from Digital Elevation Models to enhance characteristics of archaeological objects present in the images. This paper investigates the impact of visualisations on deep learning performance through a comprehensive testing framework. The study involves the use of eight semantic segmentation models to evaluate seven diverse visualisations across two study areas, encompassing five archaeological classes. Experimental results reveal that the choice of appropriate visualisations can influence performance by up to 8%. Yet, pinpointing one visualisation that outperforms the others in segmenting all archaeological classes proves challenging. The observed performance variation, reaching up to 25% across different model configurations, underscores the importance of thoughtfully selecting model configurations and LiDAR visualisations for successfully segmenting archaeological objects.

Honglin Pang, Yi Chang, Tianjing Duan et al.

Archaeological catalogs, containing key elements such as artifact images, morphological descriptions, and excavation information, are essential for studying artifact evolution and cultural inheritance. These data are widely scattered across publications, requiring automated collection methods. However, existing Large Vision-Language Models (VLMs) and their derivative data collection methods face challenges in accurate image detection and modal matching when processing archaeological catalogs, making automated collection difficult. To address these issues, we propose a novel archaeological catalog collection method based on Large Vision-Language Models that follows an approach comprising three modules: document localization, block comprehension and block matching. Through practical data collection from the Dabagou and Miaozigou pottery catalogs and comparison experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, providing a reliable solution for automated collection of archaeological catalogs.

Camilla Mazzucato, Michele Coscia, Ayça Küçükakdağ Doğu et al.

Recent advances in archaeogenomics have granted access to previously unavailable biological information with the potential to further our understanding of past social dynamics at a range of scales. However, to properly integrate these data within archaeological narratives, new methodological and theoretical tools are required. Effort must be put into finding new methods for weaving together different datasets where material culture and archaeogenomic data are both constitutive elements. This is true on a small scale, when we study relationships at the individual level, and at a larger scale when we deal with social and population dynamics. Specifically, in the study of kinship systems it is essential to contextualize and make sense of biological relatedness through social relations, which, in archaeology, is achieved by using material culture as a proxy. In this paper we propose a Network Science framework to integrate archaeogenomic data and material culture at an intrasite scale to study biological relatedness and social organization at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük. Methodologically, we propose the use of network variance to investigate the concentration of biological relatedness and material culture within networks of houses. This approach allowed us to observe how material culture similarity between buildings gives valuable information on potential biological relationships between individuals and how biogenetic ties concentrate at specific localities on site.

Victor Lundström, David Simpson, Peter Yaworsky

At the end of the Pleistocene as temperatures warmed, new habitats opened up to human occupation as the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet receded. Along the west coast of modern-day Norway, human populations of coastal foragers slowly transitioned from short-term settlement patterns in the Early Mesolithic (ca. 11,500–10,000 cal BP), to more lasting ones during the Late Mesolithic (8500-6000 BP) and Early Neolithic (ca. 6000–5200 BP) as climatic conditions improved and stabilized. Here, using spatially and temporally resolved archaeological observations, paleoclimate data, and a spatiotemporal species distribution model, we test whether a) improvements in climate resulted in expansion of the available human niche space allowing for human population growth, and b) whether increasing population densities and ensuing deprecation of habitat suitability pushed people into occupying successively lower ranked habitats as predicted by the Ideal Free Distribution model. We find that a) climate gradually improved and stabilized during the Holocene, with the effect of improving general habitat suitability, which in turn led to an increase in human population size, b) that immediate proximity to sheltered coastal areas was central to settlement decisions but that c) increasing populations did not drive dispersal patterns into lower ranked habitats. The latter is likely attributable to the general improvements in habitat suitability due to the warming climate and the relative abundance of coastal habitats found in Norway.

Rixin Zhou, Jiafu Wei, Qian Zhang et al.

The archaeological dating of bronze dings has played a critical role in the study of ancient Chinese history. Current archaeology depends on trained experts to carry out bronze dating, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive. For such dating, in this study, we propose a learning-based approach to integrate advanced deep learning techniques and archaeological knowledge. To achieve this, we first collect a large-scale image dataset of bronze dings, which contains richer attribute information than other existing fine-grained datasets. Second, we introduce a multihead classifier and a knowledge-guided relation graph to mine the relationship between attributes and the ding era. Third, we conduct comparison experiments with various existing methods, the results of which show that our dating method achieves a state-of-the-art performance. We hope that our data and applied networks will enrich fine-grained classification research relevant to other interdisciplinary areas of expertise. The dataset and source code used are included in our supplementary materials, and will be open after submission owing to the anonymity policy. Source codes and data are available at: https://github.com/zhourixin/bronze-Ding.

Chuntao Li, Ruihua Qi, Chuan Tang et al.

We develop an AI application for archaeological dating of bronze Dings. A classification model is employed to predict the period of the input Ding, and a detection model is used to show the feature parts for making a decision of archaeological dating. To train the two deep learning models, we collected a large number of Ding images from published materials, and annotated the period and the feature parts on each image by archaeological experts. Furthermore, we design a user system and deploy our pre-trained models based on the platform of WeChat Mini Program for ease of use. Only need a smartphone installed WeChat APP, users can easily know the result of intelligent archaeological dating, the feature parts, and other reference artifacts, by taking a photo of a bronze Ding. To use our application, please scan this QR code by WeChat.

David Garcia-Casas, David Rodríguez-Antón, Xavier Costa-Badia et al.

Este artículo trata sobre los sitios arqueológicos de época medieval descubiertos en el Parque Nacional de Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici, que se localiza en el Pirineo occidental catalán. A través del análisis arqueológico, combinado con los estudios paleoambientales, se discute sobre el rol histórico de la ganadería estacional en los valles pirenaicos de alta montaña y cómo esta actividad, juntamente con la agricultura, estructuró el territorio y modificó el paisaje. Asimismo, se presentan algunas hipótesis que contextualizan históricamente la materialidad arqueológica expuesta en este trabajo. En definitiva, se pone en valor el estudio arqueológico de las zonas de alta montaña para las investigaciones sobre el pastoreo en época medieval y los orígenes de la trashumancia.

Traci N. Billings, Traci N. Billings, Barbara Cerasetti et al.

Southern Central Asia witnessed widespread expansion in urbanism and exchange, between roughly 2200 and 1500 B.C., fostering a new cultural florescence, sometimes referred to as the Greater Khorasan Civilization. Decades of detailed archeological investigation have focused on the development of urban settlements, political systems, and inter-regional exchange within and across the broader region, but little is known about the agricultural systems that supported these cultural changes. In this paper, we present the archaeobotanical results of material recovered from Togolok 1, a proto-urban settlement along the Murghab River alluvial fan located in southeastern Turkmenistan. This macrobotanical assemblage dates to the late 3rd - early 2nd millennia B.C., a time associated with important cultural transformations in southern Central Asia. We demonstrate that people at the site were cultivating and consuming a diverse range of crops including, barley, wheat, legumes, grapes, and possibly plums and apples or pears. This, together with the associated material culture and zooarchaeological evidence, suggest a regionally adapted mixed agropastoral economy. The findings at Togolok 1 contribute to the ongoing discussion of dietary choices, human/landscape interactions, and the adaptation of crops to diverse ecosystems in prehistoric Central Asia.

David G. Anderson, Thaddeus G. Bissett, Stephen J. Yerka et al.

The impact of changing climate on terrestrial and underwater archaeological sites, historic buildings, and cultural landscapes can be examined through quantitatively-based analyses encompassing large data samples and broad geographic and temporal scales. The Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) is a multi-institutional collaboration that allows researchers online access to linked heritage data from multiple sources and data sets. The effects of sea-level rise and concomitant human population relocation is examined using a sample from nine states encompassing much of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the southeastern United States. A 1 m rise in sea-level will result in the loss of over >13,000 recorded historic and prehistoric archaeological sites, as well as over 1000 locations currently eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), encompassing archaeological sites, standing structures, and other cultural properties. These numbers increase substantially with each additional 1 m rise in sea level, with >32,000 archaeological sites and >2400 NRHP properties lost should a 5 m rise occur. Many more unrecorded archaeological and historic sites will also be lost as large areas of the landscape are flooded. The displacement of millions of people due to rising seas will cause additional impacts where these populations resettle. Sea level rise will thus result in the loss of much of the record of human habitation of the coastal margin in the Southeast within the next one to two centuries, and the numbers indicate the magnitude of the impact on the archaeological record globally. Construction of large linked data sets is essential to developing procedures for sampling, triage, and mitigation of these impacts.

Steven T. Goldstein

Addressing big questions in African archaeology increasingly requires integrating datasets from many different regions, countries and time-periods. Thinking about human origins, migrations, subsist...

E. Røe

The publishing of The Handbook of The Prehistoric Arctic is nothing less than a milestone within Arctic archaeology. Over three decades have now passed since the previous interregional syntheses of the North American Arctic were written for an academic readership (e.g. Damas 1984, Maxwell 1985). To fill this gap in the literature, editors T. Max Friesen and Owen K. Mason have united current leading researchers working across the field, including the western side of the Bering Strait and Greenland. The handbook delivers a comprehensive and thorough dissemination of knowledge that will stand as a vital work of reference for future research. In the near foreseeable future, it will surely be found on the bookshelves of every serious scholar in the field. The chapters of the handbook are divided among three parts. Part one introduces the reader to the North American Arctic through themes relevant to the entire area and its prehistory, showcasing the potentials of different methodologies such as climatic reconstructions, wood analysis, metallurgy, etc. Parts two and three cover the Western and Eastern Arctic regions respectively, a division that follows clear (but permeable) cultural boundaries throughout prehistory. The narrative structures of the two parts are somewhat different due to the varying complexity of the regions’ prehistories. This pertains to the deeper prehistory and geographic position of the Western Arctic as the gateway to North America, and the extremity of the Eastern Arctic geography and its severe conditions for human adaptation. Although a few themes and regions have evidently been difficult to corral into the format of a comprehensive handbook, the total result is an orderly and forthright volume that is accessible for a general academic readership. The two opening chapters feature recent advances in genomic and isotope science made within Arctic archaeology, introducing the reader to the field through perspectives from cutting-edge research in archaeological science. While innovations in archaeological science have advanced our understanding of culture-historical connections between prehistoric and present demographics of the Arctic, progress has also been made in decolonising archaeology to include Indigenousfocused methodologies and community-oriented research. Historically, the participation of Indigenous populations in Arctic archaeology has often been limited to being represented in ethnographic literature as analogies for prehistoric societies. This situation has changed through recent decades, concurrently with the development of community-based archaeology. The topic is covered in chapter 8 by Natasha Lyons, who thoughtfully challenges perceptions of what makes archaeology relevant for society by reviewing the development and current state of the relationship between archaeology and Indigenous communities of the Arctic. The critical evaluation of past and present research practices can be reflected on the preface discussion by the editors concerning how ethnographic accounts of modern and recent peoples are used in Arctic archaeology. While the use of ethnography in research on Arctic prehistory remains a highly relevant issue throughout the handbook, Lyons looks beyond the use of historical and modern ethnographies towards the actual involvement by local communities in archaeological research. The reader is thus engaged in a discussion of why researchers should be concerned about how they interact with, and how their research impacts, Indigenous stakeholders. Rather than providing a protocol for making research multivocal and accessible, the chapter serves as an intellectual platform for researchers to reflect on the context and

Luca Casini, Marco Roccetti, Giovanni Delnevo et al.

Archaeologists, like other scientists, are experiencing a data-flood in their discipline, fueled by a surge in computing power and devices that enable the creation, collection, storage and transfer of an increasingly complex (and large) amount of data, such as remotely sensed imagery from a multitude of sources. In this paper, we pose the preliminary question if this increasing availability of information actually needs new computerized techniques, and Artificial Intelligence methods, to make new and deeper understanding into archaeological problems. Simply said, while it is a fact that Deep Learning (DL) has become prevalent as a type of machine learning design inspired by the way humans learn, and utilized to perform automatic actions people might describe as intelligent, we want to anticipate, here, a discussion around the subject whether machines, trained following this procedure, can extrapolate, from archaeological data, concepts and meaning in the same way that humans would do. Even prior to getting to technical results, we will start our reflection with a very basic concept: Is a collection of satellite images with notable archaeological sites informative enough to instruct a DL machine to discover new archaeological sites, as well as other potential locations of interest? Further, what if similar results could be reached with less intelligent machines that learn by having people manually program them with rules? Finally: If with barrier of meaning we refer to the extent to which human-like understanding can be achieved by a machine, where should be posed that barrier in the archaeological data science?

Manthan Patel, Aditya Bandopadhyay, Aamir Ahmad

UAVs have found an important application in archaeological mapping. Majority of the existing methods employ an offline method to process the data collected from an archaeological site. They are time-consuming and computationally expensive. In this paper, we present a multi-UAV approach for faster mapping of archaeological sites. Employing a team of UAVs not only reduces the mapping time by distribution of coverage area, but also improves the map accuracy by exchange of information. Through extensive experiments in a realistic simulation (AirSim), we demonstrate the advantages of using a collaborative mapping approach. We then create the first 3D map of the Sadra Fort, a 15th Century Fort located in Gujarat, India using our proposed method. Additionally, we present two novel archaeological datasets recorded in both simulation and real-world to facilitate research on collaborative archaeological mapping. For the benefit of the community, we make the AirSim simulation environment, as well as the datasets publicly available.

Elena A. Hensel, Ralf Vogelsang, Tom Noack et al.

The preservation of archaeological remains and environmental information in a sediment accumulation can vary in caves and rockshelters, depending on external climatic conditions, and the circumstances within the shelter. Several sediment stratigraphies in the Horn of Africa are characterized by erosion layers, discordances and chronological gaps, that create uncertainties about the impact of climatic and environmental shifts on human settlements. Archaeological sites in Ethiopia that preserve information about human occupation during the Upper Pleistocene and Holocene often deal with major gaps during a period corresponding to MIS 2. In this study we present the first results of sedimentological, geochemical analyses and radiocarbon dating at Sodicho Rockshelter (1930 m above sea level) that provide evidence on high altitude settlement during this mentioned chronostratigraphic gap and subsequent time slices. This new archaeological site in the southwestern Ethiopian Highlands hosts a 2-m-long sediment record. So far, a stratigraphy has been excavated that dates back to ∼27 ka, including several settlement phases of Late Pleistocene and Holocene hunter-gatherers and providing information on environmental changes. A multiproxy approach was chosen to establish a first general stratigraphy of the site and to disentangle the sediment composition as well as site formation processes. The results suggest a variation of allochthonous and autochthonous geogenic deposits, and anthropogenic accumulation processes. With the help of radiocarbon dating, anthropogenic layers were dated covering the arid Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ∼21 ± 2 ka). The occupation phases were interrupted in cause of environmental changes. The most prominent is the accumulation of reddish, archaeological sterile deposits that can be chronologically associated with the African Humid Period (AHP, ∼15–5 ka BP). Geochemical records point to dry spells within this humid phase, suggesting correlations with regional climate signals of lacustrine sediments. These sediment accumulations of past wet conditions are covered by alternating layers of Holocene volcanic fallout and sediments with preserved cultural material. Our study provides a preliminary impression of still poorly understood time periods of human occupation in the southwestern Ethiopian Highlands. The data obtained from Sodicho Rockshelter could validate the current state of knowledge and partially reduce the chronostratigraphic gap.

Fabio Bruno, Loris Barbieri, Marino Mangeruga et al.

The Mediterranean Sea has a vast maritime heritage which exploitation is made difficult because of the many limitations imposed by the submerged environment. Archaeological diving tours, in fact, suffer from the impossibility to provide underwater an exhaustive explanation of the submerged remains. Furthermore, low visibility conditions, due to water turbidity and biological colonization, sometimes make very confusing for tourists to find their way around in the underwater archaeological site. To this end, the paper investigates the feasibility and potentials of the underwater Augmented Reality (UWAR) technologies developed in the iMARECulture project for improving the experience of the divers that visit the Underwater Archaeological Park of Baiae (Naples). In particular, the paper presents two UWAR technologies that adopt hybrid tracking techniques to perform an augmented visualization of the actual conditions and of a hypothetical 3D reconstruction of the archaeological remains as appeared in the past. The first one integrates a marker-based tracking with inertial sensors, while the second one adopts a markerless approach that integrates acoustic localization and visual-inertial odometry. The experimentations show that the proposed UWAR technologies could contribute to have a better comprehension of the underwater site and its archaeological remains.

Katarína Kapustka, Małgorzata Winiarska-Kabacińska

This article represents a basic comparison of gouge collections from three different sites (Esh Shaheinab, Fox Hill and Kadero). These sites have produced important collections of lithics from the Early Neolithic period in central Sudan. Gouges were chosen as an important marker of various activities, and these were studied on the basis of examining this type of artefact. This paper presents basic observations on the technology and function of these artefacts.

Alexander P. Ji, Rachel Beaton, Sukanya Chakrabarti et al.

Nearby dwarf galaxies are local analogues of high-redshift and metal-poor stellar populations. Most of these systems ceased star formation long ago, but they retain signatures of their past that can be unraveled by detailed study of their resolved stars. Archaeological examination of dwarf galaxies with resolved stellar spectroscopy provides key insights into the first stars and galaxies, galaxy formation in the smallest dark matter halos, stellar populations in the metal-free and metal-poor universe, the nature of the first stellar explosions, and the origin of the elements. Extremely large telescopes with multi-object R=5,000-30,000 spectroscopy are needed to enable such studies for galaxies of different luminosities throughout the Local Group.