Articles by Alessandro Di Ludovico

In a recently published study, a textual dataset encoding a group of scenes depicted on Mesopotamian cylinder seals from the third millennium was submitted to Procrustes Analysis, considering Correspondence Analysis variations due to progressive reductions of the forms involved. The results seemed to indicate that a slight reduction in the number of forms used to describe the raw data would improve the Correspondence Analysis results. Indeed, the actual impact of each reduction on the outcome of the analyses could not be adequately identified if the forms were not considered as elements forming segments, i.e., sub-images of the scenes. In this paper, the results of the same methodology are presented, this time applied to repeated segments within the same dataset, i.e., sequences of textual forms that may describe sub-images of the described scenes. The comparison between the progressive reductions of repeated segments showed relevant differences between small (around 10% of the rarest segments) and large reductions. Indeed, the latter may undermine a consistent interpretation of the different finding sites, yet well represented keeping 90% of segments. Moreover, a reduction performed by hand and not on the frequency of occurrences provided better results.

In ancient Western Asiatic studies glyptic has been historically the preferred subject for quantitative experiments and investigations. In most cases this led to stimulating and complex challenges which deserve to be critically discussed and analysed in order to find a proper use in the field of recently developed technologies and models. Cylinder seals in particular compel the scholars to face the close connection between the development of an optimal representation of the artefacts in primary publications and the building of strategies for their quantitative investigation. A synthesis of past experiences and present issues is presented here.

The use of Textual Correspondence Analysis to investigate a corpus of iconographic compositions carved on Mesopotamian cylinder seals proved to be very useful to understand the peculiarities of the specimens from the points of view of geographic origin, typology and inner chronology. The presence of a relatively high number of rare forms in the data set – besides the hapax – led to think, however, that the extraction of the factors – so the outcomes of the analyses – could have been influenced heavily by them. For this reason, looking for an optimal composition and for the most effective encoding of the data set, a reduction of its rarest forms was performed to find the threshold which could allow to reconcile the need for keeping the useful encoded information with the best possible reduction of elements producing high inertia. Adopting the methodology known as Procrustes, the data table was thus progressively reduced, and each time investigated: the results so obtained were then used to reach a global assessment about how much each reduced data set could correspond to the optimized one.

The statistical technique known as Textual Correspondence Analysis has been used here to study the late third millennium Mesopotamian figurative languages which were used to produce the so-called presentation scenes in Ur III glyptic. For this investigation the authors prepared a data set that collected the codings of a corpus of Ur III presentation scenes known from cylinder seals or ancient seal impressions on administrative documents. In this paper we first offer a summary and the discussion of the aims, strategies and first results of this investigation, then the iconography of presentation scenes is interpreted through the classification of the scenes on the basis of the analysis of the forms and of their external features. The paper concludes with a general summing-up of the results and their meaning.

A sample of administrative texts from the Early Syrian state archives of Ebla were coded and processed through the model known as Auto-Contractive Map (Auto-CM). The results of this study led us to focus on some basic issues related to the structure of the Eblaite administrative records which deal with transactions of textiles. This first step is oriented toward the development of a methodology which would allow us to outline some concrete proposals for reconstructing the content of badly preserved tablets.

The integration of different approaches based on Artificial Neural Networks models has here been adopted to draw the guidelines of a map of a Mesopotamian administrative system. Two data sets concerning two different classes of findings have been contemporarily investigated using different models and procedures: a corpus of glyptic presentation scenes and group of administrative tablets from the archives of Umma. Both corpora are witnesses to the inner logics of late third millennium Mesopotamian state administration, and the investigations into them gave interesting contributions to the development of sound hypotheses for a general outline of the Ur III state bureaucratic culture. In fact, the results, obtained through different methodologies, show a large number of points of convergence, and the same features were recognized as "basic" both by Auto-CM and PST. In summary, through research on heterogeneous documents related to Ur III administrative communication, such as the relics of visual languages and traces of writing and sealing procedures, this work demonstrates how proper data mining techniques can partly reveal the very cultural background of some ancient centralized organizations and stimulate the development of new ways of considering the use and perception of those products.