Volume 66, Issue 6 - Special Issue: Kleine Fächer Digital; Guest Editors: Tessa Gengnagel, Hubert Mara and Christian Schröter

Motivated by the question of understanding the roots of tool making by anatomically modern humans and coexisting Neanderthals in the Paleolithic, a number of shape classification methods have been tested on photographs and drawings of stone tools. Since drawings contain interpretation and photographs fool both human and computational methods by color and shadows on the surface, we propose an approach using 3D datasets as best means for analyzing shape, and rely on first open access repositories on lithic tools. The goal is to not only analyze shape on an artifact level, but allow a more detailed analysis of stone tools on a scar and ridge level. A Morse-Smale complex (MS complex) extracted from the triangular mesh of a 3D model is a reduced skeleton consisting of linked lines on the mesh. Discrete Morse theory makes it possible to obtain such a MS complex from a scalar function. Thus, we begin with Multi-Scale Integral Invariant filtering on the meshes of lithic artifacts, which provides curvature measures for ridges, which are convex, and scars, which are concave. The resulting values on the vertices can be used as our discrete Morse function and the skeleton we get is build up from lines that will coincide with the ridges and, implicitly, contains the scars as enclosed regions of those lines on the mesh. As this requires a few parameters, we provide a graphical user interface (GUI) to allow altering the predefined parameters to quickly find a good result. In addition, a stone tool may have areas that do not belong to the scar/ridge class. These can be masked and we use conforming MS complexes to ensure that the skeleton keeps these areas whole. Finally, results are shown on real and open access datasets. The source code and manually annotated ground truth for the evaluation are provided as Open Access with a Creative Commons license.

In this paper we present a number of digital approaches in the field of Byzantine sigillography conducted in two projects currently running at the University of Cologne. We describe how technologies and methodologies from the Digital Humanities can help overcome some of the limitations in Byzantine sigillography that result from and contribute to its status as a ‘rare subject’. Building on a long tradition and leveraging methods and techniques from the Digital Humanities, this paper describes some important steps already taken towards a digital renewal of the discipline. We are well aware that it takes much more than a locally organised group of scholars to establish any discipline anew, and so this paper aims to be a stimulus to future work.

Digital technologies allow to connect more closely collections of machines in museums and universities to machines in historic monuments. The article discusses why digital collections should be established (1), how the digital models should be produced (2) and how the virtual models could be used by historians of technology as well as trainers of machine builders (3).

One of the most significant problems in cuneiform studies is the process of identifying unknown signs, which often involves a tedious page-by-page search through a sign list. This paper proposes a new “recursive encoding” for signs, which represents the arrangement of strokes in a way that computers can process. A series of new algorithms then offers scholars a new way to look up signs by any distinctive component, as well as providing new ways to render signs and tablets electronically. ACM CCS Applied computing → Document management and text processing → Document preparation → Format and notation.

The search for patterns in archaeological contexts is crucial to understanding ancient civilizations, including the organization of their societies and economies. This study focuses on the interdisciplinary application of mathematical logical data analysis to Egyptology, particularly examining food production in the Workmen’s Village of Amarna. The introduction provides historical context about Amarna, founded by Pharaoh Akhenaten, and outlines the settlement structure and excavations of the Workmen’s Village. The research utilizes archaeobotanical and archaeological data, along with digital humanities tools, to identify activity areas related to food production. The findings reveal spatial patterns in the distribution of tools such as mortars, pestles, and ovens, providing insights into the self-sufficiency and daily life of the villagers. Logical data analysis helps in finding rules and patterns in a dataset which are not visible otherwise, predicting the distribution of unexcavated areas and thus in this case enhancing our understanding of ancient Egyptian food production practices in state-planned settlements. ACM CCS Applied computing → Art and humanities.

Digital and Computational Archaeology (DCA) is a rapidly evolving field in Germany, and this paper aims to provide a comprehensive introduction to the term and its usage in the German context. The second part of the paper examines the state of higher education in DCA in Germany, analyzing the available courses and academic positions. The paper is supported by a statistical overview of German DCA courses, compiled using data from the IANUS research data center. We then provide a critical analysis and contextualization of the teaching hotspots and developments over the last 10 years. Finally, we present recent developments to provide an outlook on the future of the DCA landscape in Germany. ACM CCS Applied computing → Arts and humanities.