Session: #346

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
4. Polis, Empire, League and Beyond – Living in Interconnected Societies
Session format:
Regular session

Title & Content

Title:
Bringing Roman Coarse Ware to the Point: The Challenge of a Common Approach
Content:
Material culture impacts the world in which people live, their interactions with each other and the social structure they build and coarse wares, with their enormous informative potential for the recontruction of social-economic changes, are among the most interesting indicators. Despite being the most attested class in excavations of every regional and temporal horizon, they still represent a challenge, especially because of the preponderance of the local productions, that are prevalent in the contexts.
Nevertheless, researches carried out in the Mediterranean area show that the morphological repertoire is also composed of forms that can be traced back to a craft tradition of medium to wide range, in a horizon that goes beyond the chronological and territorial barriers and is based on strictly functional characteristics, linked to usages.
An integrated approach includes morphological classification, distinction of mixtures, selection for analysis and the recognition of production areas with a distinction between local and external production centers. Each step implies criticalities and the amount of potential data is enormous. The time is ripe for a management based on automatic systems of recognition that exploit complex algorithms, so far developed to recognize similar shapes and therefore very well applicable to highly standardized productions.
The new technologies and the collaborative work approach impose a reflection and sharing of best practices, guiding principles, lexicons, structures.
The aim of this session is to create a moment of dialogue in which the traditional typological approach can find a synthesis with the modern technologies of AI and the new frontiers opened by Social Network Analysis.
Expected papers may include but are not limited to:
- Presentation of excavations and findings.
- Analysis of traditional typological classifications.
- Use of AI in Roman coarse wares classifications.
- The contribution of Social Network Analysis to the study of Roman coarse wares.
Keywords:
Roman archaeology, Coarse ware, Classification, Digital Archaeology
Session associated with MERC:
yes
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
yes
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:

Organisers

Main organiser:
Caterina Venditti (Italy) 1
Co-organisers:
Maria Taloni (Italy) 1
Thomas Froehlich (Germany) 2
Eugenio Polito (Italy) 3
Affiliations:
1. Ministry of Culture (Italy)
2. German Archaeological Institute
3. University of Casinum and Southern Latium