Digital Archaeology is concerned with digital data for for archaeological research, and the computational methods and tools required to collect, analyse and manage it.

The Digital Archaeology research group manages two computer laboratories with different purposes: the teaching lab (F1.01) and the research lab (A1.13a).

New name of the Computer Applications group

Since 2013, the National Natural History Museum of the Netherlands, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, is unearthing the largest bonebed of the horned dinosaur Triceratops discovered so far. In order to answer questions about sedimentology, taphonomy and palaeobiology, palaeontologists and geologists collaborated…

The Centre for Digital Heritage undertakes collaborative international research in the field of Digital Heritage. It is an initiative of the University of York.

This study presents an agent-based simulation model exploring the patterns of presence and absence of Late Pleistocene Neanderthals in western Europe.

The Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University is a partner in the new university-wide Data Science research programme that advocates the use of data science in various fields of research.

Karsten Lambers was interviewed by the Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz, where he was a post-doctoral research fellow from 2008 to 2010. Read about his career, his fascinations, and his experience with combining fieldwork with digital applications.

In several Mediterranean regions archaeological sites have been mapped by fieldwalking surveys, producing large amounts of data. These legacy site-based survey data represent an important resource to study ancient settlement organization. Methodological procedures are necessary to cope with the limits…

PhD candidate Alex Brandsen, working in the Digital Archaeology research group has recently received a grant from the Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities. This grant will be used to further develop and improve AGNES, the search engine for excavation reports that Brandsen is building.

The Faculty of Archaeology has been one of the main initiators in the development of a digital data archive for Dutch archaeologists. Modern archaeological research results in a substantial amount of digital documents. This digital documentation ranges from simple text documents, through large databases,…

New digital methods and a data explosion are radically changing archaeological research. Karsten Lambers, Associate Professor of Archaeological Computer Science, tells us all about it.

On the occasion of the find of Mayan cities in the jungles of Guatemala by means of remote sensing techniques, expert Karsten Lambers was interviewed by De Telegraaf.

The Digital Archaeology chairgroup is currently still involved in a project related to EDNA project (national data archive for archaeology). Although this time the focus on innovative research in Computer applications is much stronger. All the archaeological projects in the e-archive are documented…

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The annual Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) conference is the most important scientific event in the field of digital archaeology.

Simulation is a formal scientific method used to develop, compare and test hypotheses (models). In the last few decades the use of simulation has increased dramatically in virtually all scientific disciplines, but is still limited in archaeology due to the technological barrier – coding skills. Starting…

Scientists remain puzzled by the sudden extinction of Neanderthals, some 40,000 years ago. New research by scientists from Eindhoven University of Technology, Leiden University and Wageningen University now suggests we might have been too quick in attributing the demise of Neanderthals to invasions…

Conference, Digital Archaeology and Water

Wouter Verschoof-van der Vaart has developed a way to use Deep Learning and geography software to rapidly and systematically map prehistoric barrows, Celtic fields, and medieval charcoal kilns. This innovative method has been tested on high-resolution elevation maps from the Veluwe, the Netherlands.…

The Faculty of Archaeology experiments with innovating their teaching methods, using 3D scans and visualisation technology to enable active learning. 'It makes archaeological material more accessible. Especially when it comes to fragile materials, it allows nearly anybody to analyse them.'

The precolonial inhabitants of the Caribbean islands communicated, travelled, and exchanged objects and ideas along an expansive inter-island network. New methods of computer modeling shed light on these networks. Emma Slayton is set to discuss her work on this topic at her Defense on the 12th of Se…

In this project we develop algorithms to automatically detect a particular type of archaeological sites in satellite images of the Alps.

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Conference, Digital Archaeology Group Meeting

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Wouter Verschoof-van der Vaart is refining an artificial intelligence system that can detect and classify archaeological objects on digital images. Such a system is desperately needed because human archaeologists around the world are being flooded with data.

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Within the space of a few months, the Heritage Quest citizen science project, whereby volunteers scan elevation maps of the Veluwe area for burial mounds and other prehistoric remains, has already led to groundbreaking new insights. Hundreds of burial mounds have been found, as have a huge number of…

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