Die Seminare finden vierzehntägig dienstags (ab 16:00 Uhr c.t.) im Zentrum Grundlagenforschung Alte Welt der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften statt.
Das Seminar 2024/25 legt einen Schwerpunkt auf Visualisierungen in der Altertumsforschung.
Das Seminar wird generell digital übertragen. Vortragende werden zum Teil vor Ort sein. Zoom-Link: https://hu-berlin.zoom-x.de/j/62272165290?pwd=DmvBO97b3JAJIutndWU2bBILGaJ3AX.1
| Datum | SprecherInnen | Titel | Vortragende anwesend? | Materialien |
| 14.10.2025 | Florian Thiery (Zentrum für Archäologie, Mainz) | Citizen Science trifft Linked Open Data: Potenziale und Grenzen digitaler Methodik | ja | abstract |
| 21.10.2025 | Julio C. Ruiz (Rheinische Wilhelm-Friedrichs-Universität Bonn) | 3D and Virtual Reality Technologies applied to Classical Sculpture: a review of methods, potential, and ongoing challenges | ja | abstract |
| 24.10.2025 (Freitag!) | Adam Anderson | Evaluating Cuneiform in the World Wide Web: fantastic use cases and where to find them | ja | abstract |
| 18.11.2025 | Sabine Feist, Matthias Lang, Phillipe Pathé (Rheinische Wilhelm-Friedrichs-Universität Bonn) | Digitale Zwillinge in der Archäologie – Potenziale und Grenzen am Beispiel der Krypta von San Marco in Venedig | ja | abstract |
| 02.12.2025 | Lily Grozdanova (Sofia University), Ulrike Peter, Claus Franke, Tim Westphal (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften), Margareth Warburton (Swiss Inventory of Coin finds) | The ACCSN Initiative: Discovering the Potential of Digital Methods by facing their Limits | ja | abstract |
| 16.12.2025 | Raffaele Rizzo (University of Salent), Michele Pirro Leo (Sapienza University of Rome), Vincenzo Ria (Italian Ministry of Culture) | From Shovels to Servers: Three Perspectives on the Potentials and Limits of Digital Archaeology | ja | abstract |
| 06.01.2026 | Stylianos Chronopoulos (University of Ioannina) | Capturing performance in graphs? Visualizing networks of Ancient Greek Comedy | ja | abstract |
| 20.01.2026 | Felipe Cinelli Barbosa (Pontifical University of Rio de Janeiro) | Network Science for the Interpretation of Ancient Texts: Prospects and Challenges Based on Two Biblical Test Cases | ja | abstract |
| 03.02.2026 | Eleni Bozia (University of Florida) | AI-driven Classics: Potentials and Limits of Generative Methods | ja | abstract |
Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities / Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften
Unter den Linden 8, Lise-Meitner-Saal (Gebäude der Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Eingang Unter den Linden) (07W04, gegenüber der Leihstelle der Akademiebibliothek)
10117 Berlin
Three-dimensional digitization has become a crucial tool for documenting, preserving, and analysing cultural heritage, with growing impact on classical sculpture. Key methodologies include laser scanning, valued for precision; photogrammetry, accessible though less detailed; and structured light, which balances accuracy and efficiency. Hybrid approaches are increasingly used to optimize results.
Applications extend from iconographic and stylistic studies to material analysis and polychromy reconstruction, integrating diverse data into coherent 3D models. These enable virtual visualization of original appearances, analysis of production techniques, and reconstruction of damaged sculptures through digital restoration and 3D printing. Such practices enrich research, education, and museum narratives without endangering the originals.
Challenges remain, particularly the lack of standardized protocols and the high costs of high-resolution technologies. Yet, advances like smartphone-based photogrammetry are making digitization more accessible. Overall, 3D technologies are transforming the study and preservation of Greco-Roman sculpture, though broader impact depends on affordable, standardized, and widely shared methodologies.
Diese Studie adressiert die digitale Repräsentation der Keilschrift als frühester mehrsprachiger Orthographie und zeigt, wie deren historische Polyvalenz und Formatheterogenität reproduzierbare Forschung bis heute erschweren. Aufbauend auf einem UC-Berkeley-Discovery-Projekt (seit 2021) wird ein zweistufiger Ansatz vorgestellt: (1) eine dokumentorientierte Pipeline zur strukturerhaltenden, auditierbaren Umwandlung von Transliteration nach Unicode, und (2) eine zeichenbasierte Pipeline für großskalige NLP-Szenarien. Auf Basis systematischer Vergleiche zentraler digitalen Zeichenlisten (u. a. OSL, Nuolenna, CuneiML, Text-Fabric, Akkademia) entsteht eine harmonisierte Ontologie mit transparenter Provenienz und Publikation der Zeichenwerte als Linked Data in Wikidata. Wörterbuchgestütztes Matching und Fehleranalysen generieren priorisierte Korrekturlisten und Qualitätsmetriken; identifizierte Inkonsistenzen werden hinsichtlich ihrer Auswirkungen auf Downstream-Aufgaben (z. B. maschinelle Übersetzung) evaluiert und fließen in Regelverfeinerungen und Unicode-Vorschläge ein. Zu den Ergebnissen zählen ein Quality-Assurance-Harness für Keilschrift-Rendering, die Integration von Schriftvarianten sowie ein offenes, testbares Rahmenwerk zur Zeichennormalisierung, das philologische Genauigkeit mit Maschinenverarbeitbarkeit verbindet. Insgesamt wird gezeigt, wie born-digital Workflows eine belastbare, nachnutzbare Infrastruktur für die computergestützte Assyriologie schaffen.
The current lecture focuses on the concepts developed by the Ancient Coins Counterfeits Scientific Network for the prevention of a dangerous phenomenon. The spread of counterfeits of ancient numismatic items presents a multifaceted issue that results in historical, social, legal and identity distortions of hard-to-predict mass and consequences.
The presentation elaborates on the challenges the ACCSN team encountered while working on innovative digital concepts as the digitisation of numismatic objects identified as non-original, in the specialised scientific collection of the Coin cabinet of the Royal Library of Belgium, and scientifically presenting them alongside originals entered in Corpus Nummorum platform, adhering to the FAIR principles and the LOD concept. A further task involves processing and publishing the counterfeit info cards collection, “The Callataÿ’s file of counterfeit Greek coins”, as linked open data and digital heritage objects. As the cards are approached as multimodal sources, the process included implementing language model processing, Tesseract OCR, as well as image recognition. The examples clearly reveal both the limitations and the potential of the digital research environment and methods.
English Summary
This presentation critically examines the use of network analysis in digital humanities, focusing specifically on Ancient Greek comedy. While platforms like DraCor have advanced this field, our research highlights significant methodological issues, such as segmentation based on large structural units and the misrepresentation of unique dramatic events like the splitting and merging of the chorus. To address these issues, we introduce an experimental annotation schema and a new analytical tool. This tool, developed with the assistance of large language models, serves as a proof-of-concept. It enables a more nuanced, performance-oriented segmentation of the text, moving beyond simple co-presence to model discrete “stage events.” The tool’s visualizations are presented not as objective truths but as a means to discuss fundamental questions about the epistemic value of data. Ultimately, this analysis reveals the tension between computational precision and humanistic interpretation. We highlight the fact that the value of digital tools lies not in their perceived objectivity but in their ability to make interpretative assumptions explicit. The goal is to create tools that facilitate critical scholarly judgment, enhancing rather than replacing humanistic understanding of dramatic texts.
Deutsche Zusammenfassung
Der Vortrag beleuchtet die Netzwerkanalyse von Dramen im Kontext der Digital Humanities, mit einem besonderen Fokus auf die altgriechische Komödie. Die Plattform DraCor hat dieses Feld maßgeblich vorangebracht. Unsere Untersuchung befasst sich mit einigen signifikanten methodische Fragen zur Behandlung des Korpus der griechischen Komödie in DraCor. Dazu gehören die Segmentierung auf Grundlage großer struktureller Einheiten und die unzureichende Darstellung einzigartiger dramatischer Phänomene wie der Aufspaltung und Zusammenführung des Chors. Um diese Probleme zu adressieren, stellen wir ein experimentelles Annotationsschema sowie ein neues analytisches Werkzeug vor. Dieses Tool, das mithilfe großer Sprachmodelle entwickelt wurde, dient als Konzeptnachweis. Es ermöglicht eine differenziertere, performance-orientierte Segmentierung des Textes, die über Ko-Präsenz von Personen in langen strukturellen Einheiten hinausgeht und diskrete „Bühnenereignisse“ modelliert. Die Visualisierungen des Tools werden nicht als objektive Wahrheiten präsentiert, sondern als Mittel zur Diskussion grundlegender Fragen über den epistemischen Wert von Daten. Letztlich offenbart diese Analyse das Spannungsfeld zwischen rechnerischer Präzision und geisteswissenschaftlicher Interpretation. Wir betonen, dass der Wert digitaler Werkzeuge nicht in ihrer vermeintlichen Objektivität liegt, sondern in ihrer Fähigkeit, interpretative Annahmen explizit zu machen. Ziel ist es, Werkzeuge zu schaffen, die eine kritische wissenschaftliche Beurteilung erleichtern und das geisteswissenschaftliche Verständnis von dramatischen Texten bereichern, anstatt es zu ersetzen.
A common challenge faced by historians and exegetes is interpreting the meaning of words or sentences according to what the texts were originally communicating. A hallmark of this challenge is biblical interpretation, which is hindered not only by time and cultural distance but also by religious presuppositions. The lack of appropriate tools for handling numerous sources often leads to reliance on heuristic categories—such as “Greco-Roman,” “pagan,” “early Jewish”—which aggravates the problem: they fail to capture the complex web of connections between beliefs, texts and material evidence in times like the Second Temple period (Fredriksen 2022, 362). Moreover, inferring meaning through “the lens” of a seemingly coherent group of sources based on shared features (such as beliefs or language) risks confirmation bias and the neglect of alternative possibilities. For example, the same language of “not to a god but to daimonia” in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 10:20) and in “Greco-Roman” philosophers such as Plutarch has led scholars to infer that those authors shared the concept of daimonia as lower pagan gods (Sharp 2022), overlooking the fact that similar language occurs also in Jubilees (Jub. 22:16–17, 10:3), where demons are the souls of the dead Nephilim of Genesis (Gen 6:1–4). The broad extension of the term daimonia across centuries calls for a timeline view to determine whether, in a given period or context, the term bore a more specific meaning or functioned as a superordinate term. For instance, a recent study of the diverse uses of daimon and daimonion in different LXX books proposes that they “cannot be reduced to a single plot point on the way to the NT and Christianity” but “an interconnected constellation with synchronic clusters of concern” (Reed 2023, 345). Therefore, I will:
i. Present the cognitive value of constructing a network using directed graphs that take sources as nodes and ideas—that is, the meaning of words, expressions or sentences of interest—as features to manage multiple sources and construct a history of interpretation or intellectual history. This will be illustrated through a test case: the interpretation history of the “sons of Elohim” and “the Nephilim” of Gen 6:1–4 (Tal 2016, 91*–93*), which can be part of a bigger network of the history of the idea of angels and demons in antiquity.
ii. Explore how network science, “a technique in search of a theory” (Chiesi 2001), can be applied to infer missing information in nodes (sources) based on their network connections. This will be illustrated through the problem of Paul’s cosmological stance on demons (1 Cor 10:20), to assess the extent to which Gen 6:1–4 may have influenced his idea of demons. I will discuss possible network constructions and measures, evaluating benefits and limitations in comparison with a phylogenetic network used to display genealogical connections in European folktales (Tehrani and d’Huy 2017) and a semantic network of “angels” in Augustine’s works (Vrangbæk and Vrangbæk 2025). Finally, the study will highlight prospects and challenges for future research.
References
Aland, Kurt et al., eds. 2012. Novum Testamentum Graece. 28th ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.
Chiesi, Antonio M. 2001. “Network Analysis” in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, edited by Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier, p. 10500.
Fredriksen, Paula. 2022. “What Does It Mean to See Paul ‘within Judaism’?” JBL 141.2: 359–
380.
García Martínez, Florentino, and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, eds. 2000. The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition. Leiden: Brill.
Hess, Richard S. 1992. “Nephilim” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman et al., v. 4, pp. 1072–1073.
Lang, T. J. 2022. “Cosmology and Eschatology,” pp. 507–526 in The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies, edited by M. Novenson and R. Matlock, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reed, Annette Yoshiko. 2023. “When Did Daimones Become Demons? Revisiting Septuagintal Data for Ancient Jewish Demonology,” HTR 116.3: 340–375.
Sharp, Matthew. 2022. “Courting Daimons in Corinth: Daimonic Partnerships, Cosmic Hierarchies and Divine Jealousy in 1 Corinthians 8–10,” pp. 112–129 in Demons in Early Judaism and Christianity: Characters and Characteristics, edited by H. Patmore and J. Lössl, AGJU 113, Leiden: Brill.
Tal, Abraham, ed. 2016. Genesis, BHQ, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.
Tehrani, Jamshid J., and Julien d’Huy. 2017. “Phylogenetics Meets Folklore: Bioinformatics Approaches to the Study of International Folktales,” pp. 91–114 in Maths Meets Myths: Quantitative Approaches to Ancient Narratives, edited by Ralph Kenna, Máirín MacCarron, and Pádraig MacCarron. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
Vrangbæk, Eva, and Christian Vrangbæk. 2025. “Modelling the Semantic Landscape of Angels in Augustine of Hippo,” Open Theology 11: 1–11.
Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften
Digital Classicist Seminar
© 2018-2025
