From bits of history to bytes of data: AI and the study of the ancient Near East
- Submission status
- Open
- Submission deadline
This Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 04 - Quality Education.
In the past decades, the study of the ancient and pre-modern world has experienced enormous change, thanks to the exponential growth of digital technologies. These resources enable the computational study of ancient landscapes, materials, and texts, and they reshape our ability to understand ancient human experiences. The use of digital tools and computational methods, such as generative AI, is increasing in the humanities and studies of the human past. We are now witnessing a qualitative shift in how these technologies are reshaping fundamental research questions and methodological frameworks.
This collection aims at examining the computational and digital study of “greater Western Asia” and its epistemological implications. Embracing the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East or even “Eurasia”, this area represents the longest continuously known historical and archaeological record, as it stands at the crossroads between cultural, linguistic, and material traditions that span at least three modern continents and four millennia, with no clear-cut boundaries. At the same time (and perhaps for this reason), the disciplines that study these areas share common challenges.
It turns out that ancient data, often thought of as missing, damaged, or partial, can still be “big data” when enough of it is digitally available, which opens the doorway to having statistically significant results or training and fine-tuning deep neural networks. But how to establish meaningful conclusions from a humanistic perspective based on the results of such models is still up for debate, and more case-studies are needed in order to find shared patterns in ancient sources.
This Collection seeks to:
- Foster SOTA-policy guidelines for digitizing and working with ancient data, by encouraging the use of FAIR and CARE principles, and interoperable technologies such as linked open data (LOD) across the subfields of Ancient and Medieval Near Eastern studies
- Map the theoretical implications of hermeneutical digital approaches for knowledge production in the study of ancient societies
- Demonstrate through case studies how computational methods can problematize, rather than replace, established analytical frameworks
- Discuss how to effectively communicate the results of such research, particularly that done with generative AI, to scholarly and public communities
We invite contributions that are related to data covering a large geographical area from the Iranian highlands to the Eastern Mediterranean including Egypt and the Sudan, and chronologically from the origins of writing until 1500 CE. We also particularly encourage contributions from scholars directly working in these regions.
We invite contributions that consider one or more of the following methodologies for the digitization or computational study of ancient data, while answering or providing case studies to dive into epistemological questions:
- 3D documentation and visualization of artifacts (e.g. in extended reality environments)
- Ancient language processing and computational linguistics
- Digital database design and implementation
- Digital paleography and epigraphy
- GIS and spatial analysis
- Paleogeography and Paleoenvironment
- Population history and DNA
- Graph theory and network analysis
- Knowledge organization and linked data systems
The contributions should reveal how digital methodologies are not just tools but gateways to deeper questions about human organization, creativity, and cultural transmission in the ancient world. They should showcase how the true power of digital approaches lies not in the technology itself, but in its ability to illuminate the richly textured fabric of ancient human experience.
