SIG Chrono

CAA Special Interest Group on Chronological Modelling

Archaeometry Special Issue

Archaeometry Special Issue on Chronological Modelling

1. Foreword – Archaeometry special issue on chronological modeling | Thomas Huet, Eythan Levy
2. A Bayesian alternative for aoristic analyses in archaeology | Enrico R. Crema
3. Bayesian radiocarbon modelling for beginners | Caitlin E. Buck, Miguel A. Juárez
4. The stratigraphic biography of an archaeological site. Timing depositional events | Vasiliki Andreaki, Juan Antonio Barceló
5. Representing time in documentation using the CIDOC CRM | Stephen D. Stead
6. A new conservative and robust Bayesian approach for the event date model in chronology building | Komlan Midodzi Noukpoape, Philippe Lanos, Philippe Dufresne
7. Prerequisites for a computational approach to Minoan chronology | Diamantis Panagiotopoulos, Martina Trognitz
8. Genealogies and oral histories as chronological networks: interfacing whakapapa (Māori genealogies) with Gregorian calendar year archaeological radiocarbon dates | Isaac H. McIvor, Alan Hogg, Tom Roa, Waikaremoana Waitoki, Gretel Boswijk, Warren Gumbley, Atholl Anderson, Rowan McBride
9. Data complexity and computer assisted chronology: Methods and discoveries | David A. Falk
10. Temporal relations in archaeology: a survey and a new typology | Eythan Levy

1. Thomas Huet, Eythan Levy | Introduces the Special Issue.
   
2. Enrico Crema | Introduces a Bayesian alternative to traditional aoristic analysis for handling chronological uncertainty in archaeological data. Implemented in the R package baorista.
   
3. Caitlin Buck, Miguel Juárez | Introduces Bayesian analysis; first published in Spanish (2020), edited by Juan Antonio Barceló and Berta Morell.
   
4. Vasiliki Andreaki, Juan Antonio Barceló | Proposes a framework to study how archaeological sites form and change over time, using multiscale 3D geometry and depositional events to reconstruct their chronological sequence.
   
5. Stephen Stead | Describes the key concepts in the CRM family of standards for documenting temporal data.
   
6. Komlan Midodzi Noukpoape, Philippe Lanos, Philippe Dufresne | Revises the “event date model” of Lanos and Philippe (2017) and proposes improvements to it.
   
7. Diamantis Panagiotopoulos, Martina Trognitz | Reviews the state of the art in Minoan chronology and proposes guidelines, best practices, and formalisms to improve it.
   
8. Isaac McIvor et al. | Applies the ChronoLog software—used for Chronological Network Analysis—to the study of Māori genealogies (whakapapa), combining oral histories and radiocarbon data.
   
9. David Falk | Presents and applies the Groundhog software—another Chronological Network Analysis tool—for improved reconstruction of Ancient Near Eastern chronologies.
   
10. Eythan Levy | Proposes a new typology of temporal relations tailored for archaeological applications.
    

CAA 2026

S35: Chronological Modelling III: a Round Table on Time in Computational Archaeology

A round table, 4 topics [2h30]

1. Epistemology of archaeological time
2. Archaeological time in practice: cross dating, anchor dates, cultural periods
3. Formats, standards and interoperability
4. Mathematics, algorithms and software

This round table aims to discuss the current challenges and future perspectives in modeling time in archaeology. Each of the following topics will be discussed for 30 minutes and chaired by a different scholar (Joan Antonio Barceló, Keith May and/or James Taylor, Florian Thierry, Joe Roe).

1. Epistemology of archaeological time | What is the nature of archaeological time (in comparison to historical time)?
   
2. Archaeological time in practice: cross dating, anchor dates, cultural periods | How do archaeologists effectively align multi-sourced chronological data (stratigraphic layers, artifact seriations, etc.)?
   
3. Formats, standards and interoperability | On reference systems, thesauri, data fusion, etc.
   
4. Mathematics, Algorithms and Software | On existing IT-based methods for computing temporal data and emerging challenges.

A final 5–10 minute session will be dedicated to start a discussion on the possibility (or not) of developing a Temporal Information System (T.I.S, similar in concept to a GIS for geographical data).

Agenda

• Presentation of SIG Chrono
• GitHub discussions & mailing list
• Vote for the SIG committee:
  • Convener: candidate: Eythan Levy
  • Vice Convener: TBD
  • Secretary: candidate: Thomas Huet
• Next meeting: proposal: every two months (next: Monday 15/12, 10AM CET ?)
• Other