Big data in archaeology: archaeological seshat and beyond
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 16/08/2018

The paper aims to discuss the relevance and potential of Big Data in archaeology. In particular, it will present the foundations and character of Archaeological Seshat, an innovative tool for collecting, storing and manipulating a large body of archaeological data. It was created within the framework of Seshat Global History Databank, which is an international initiative of social science scholars to build an open repository of expert-curated historical time-series data. Its main goal is to record geo-temporal datasets describing how hundreds of variables describing social complexity changed with time and space. Seshat is one of the use case of the international ALIGNED project, funded by Horizon 2020. ALIGNED develops models and tools to convert Big Data sources into structured knowledge, using the Linked Data approach. The paper will present preliminary results of applying Archaeological Seshat for explaining different trajectories of development of prehistoric communities in the period stretching from the Early Neolithic until Late Chalcolithic in the area from the Near East to Central Europe. It will further demonstrate a potential of Archaeological Seshat for testing various hypotheses related to the developments of human groups in SW Asia and Europe.

Author: Filipowicz, Patrycja - Adam Mickiewicz University (Presenting author)
Co-Author: Krueger, Marta - Adam Mickiewicz University; Prof. Marciniak, Arkadiusz - Adam Mickiewicz University