ArchAIDE – revolutionizing archeology with machine learning

Date: May 4, 2022, 13:00–15:00
Place: Bergsmannen, Aula Magna, Stockholm University
To register, send an e-mail to petter@dsv.su.se

Welcome to a DHV seminar with Gabriele Gattiglia, University of Pisa. The topic is digital cultural heritage and novel technology.

Digital cultural heritage is a frequently recurring topic, with steadily increasing contributions to research on the entire wealth of human culture and history. It involves collecting data – including physical artefacts – to classifying, analyzing, and making finds and findings available and accessible for future research as well as for the general public.

We are very pleased to welcome Gabriele Gattiglia, PhD. He is an associate professor in archeology at the University of Pisa, and coordinator for the €2.5M EU Horizon 2020 project ArchAIDE, recently concluded. The aim of the ArchAIDE project was to use machine learning algorithms to assist archeologists in recognizing shapes and decorations on pottery sherds. This is in many ways similar, but far from identical to perhaps more well-known efforts in using artificial intelligence for reading and storing historical hand written text sources digitally.

Pottery is of fundamental importance for the comprehension and dating of archaeological contexts, and for understanding the dynamics of production, trade flows, and social interactions. Today, characterization and classification of ceramics is carried out manually, through the expertise of specialists and the use of analogue catalogues held in archives and libraries. The ArchAIDE project strived to economize and effectivize this process, from automatic object recognition to linking and documenting objects, and making them available online to all.

Most welcome to a cross-disciplinary seminar that we hope will spark much discussion and ideas – including participants from related areas in digital cultural heritage and computer science. This seminar is organized by DHV-hub at Stockholm University.

About the speaker

Gabriele Gattiglia, PhD, is an associate professor in archeological methods at the University of Pisa. He leads the MAPPA Lab, which manages the MOD (Mappa Open Data), the Italian repository for Open Archaeological Data. He is a medieval and post-medieval archaeologist devoted to digital application in archaeology. His recent work includes artificial intelligence, open data and big data issues in archaeology. Gabriele Gattiglia is a member of the scientific committee of the Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) association.

Links to more information

More info on Gabriele Gattiglia
More info on MAPPA Lab
More info on the ArchAIDE project

Welcome!