The birth and historical development of computational intelligence applications in archaeology

Joan A. Barceló

«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 2009, 20, 95-109

Abstract

Twenty years after the consolidation of a true professional archaeology in search of a "scientific" dream, mathematics and computers made their appearance in the discipline. In the same way, the first essays dealing with "automatic archaeology" appeared in the 1950s, looking for standardization of archaeological description and statistical reasoning, but we had to wait for another 30 years until the appropriate technology was available. At the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, Expert Systems were considered as a true promise towards the independence of archaeological reasoning from subjectivity. Nevertheless, the rise of postmodernism and the radical critique, with its emphasis on subjectivity and situational context of the research effort generated considerable turmoil that, in appearance, buried the dream of an automatic archaeology. Research efforts in these domains of computational intelligence continued, however, especially in the domains of remote sensing and archaeometry. Modern technological developments like 3D scanning are responsible for a revival of interest in computational intelligence methods. Today, we are still far from the early dream of an automatic archaeology, but it is no longer a "nightmare". It is a technological reality that will contribute to a more professional and scientific-based archaeology.

Preview