Theme:
4. People of the Present – Peopling the Past
Title:
Archaeo-Riddle: The Ultimate Challenge
Content:
Archaeo-riddle is a collaborative project aiming to evaluate the robustness of archaeological inference through the quantitative analyses of a simulated, virtual archaeological dataset. The project started with the creation of a virtual world (called Rabbithole) where a population of farmers (the Poppychewers) expands and replaces an incumbent population of hunter-gatherers (the Rabbitskinners) while generating a virtual archaeological dataset.
This replacement process follows a set of rules and parameters which are known only by the organisers of the session. The project has been thought of as a game, but also an opportunity for international collaboration to understand the robustness and the inferential power of different current theoretical and methodological approaches under a controlled environment.
The goal of the game is for archaeologists to propose their own methodological solutions to answer specific questions about how the farming population replaced the hunter-gatherers in the simulated world. These questions are available on the website of the project.
The game has already been launched in this year's annual meeting of the Computational Archaeologists Association. Researchers can download the dataset through the website and explore it using their own methods until June 2023 when they will have to submit their answers to the question with the scripts and tools they developed and used to reach these answers. Before this final stage, the project will be presented in other scientific meetings and engaging audio-visual content will be advertised on social media, to enhance participation. This workshop will mark the end of the project, where the selected participants will be able to showcase their solutions, and discuss them. Finally, out of this workshop, a publication will be prepared with all the interested participants, which intends to be both an assessment of current archaeological methods and an open declaration of support to collaborative work.
Keywords:
Archaeo-riddle, Spread processes, Archaeological inference, Simulation, Collaborative archaeology
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Alfredo Cortell-Nicolau (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
Simon Carrignon (United Kingdom) 1
Enrico Crema (United Kingdom) 1
Xavi Rubio-Castillo (Spain) 2
Affiliations:
1. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. University of Cambridge
2. Universitat de Barcelona
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