Archaeologists aim to understand past societies. But it is a daunting task to reconstruct these from the fragments of pots and the trash they have left behind. Archaeology is hard!
This is an explorable explanation to introduce archeologists to an approach that can help us untangle the complexities of past human behaviour: computational modelling. It allows us to focus on individual phenomena like trade, individual preference or political regulation. By simulating their theories about these things, archaeologists can identify what evidence they would find if their theory was true, and they can test hypotheses related to their theories by comparing simulated archaeology with real excavated archaeology.
- The Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project
- Ceramics in Context Project
- Project MERCURY
- The Oxford Roman Economy Project
This explorable explanation is the result of an internship in project MERCURY by Yayoi Teramoto Kimura and Chico Q. Camargo. We thank Line Egelund Hejlskov, Mette Normann Pedersen and Mie Lind for their support and feedback. We thank the directors of the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter project, Prof. Rubina Raja and Prof. Achim Lichtenberger, and the director of the Ceramics in Context project, Prof. Rubina Raja, for their support in creating this resource. The Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter project is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation, H.P. Hjerl Hansens Mindefondet for Dansk Palæstinaforskning, the German Research Foundation (DFG), The Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet) and the EliteForsk initiative. The Ceramics in Context project is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.
The MERCURY project was funded by The Leverhulme Trust as an early career fellowship awarded to Dr Tom Brughmans.