UNSEEN · Unseen Artefacts: Estimating Diversity in Ancient Near Eastern Material Culture

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Project objective

Modern museum collections shape our view of the ancient world, yet their representativeness is uncertain: what has survived, what was lost, and what has been distorted by modern collecting practices? Unseen Artefacts: Estimating Diversity in Ancient Near Eastern Material Culture (UNSEEN) tackles this problem by applying statistical tools from ecology, in particular Unseen Species Modelling (USM), to quantify hidden biases in ancient evidence. The project pursues two case studies. 1) It examines Babylonian divination texts, a cuneiform corpus spanning 1,500 years, to measure how diversity changed over time and estimate the number of lost compositions. 2) It analyses “Luristan bronzes,” many of which entered museums via the antiquities market, to distinguish genuine ancient diversity from patterns shaped by modern taste and forgery. By building a database of c.4,000 manuscripts and analysing a major museum collection of bronzes, UNSEEN will reveal survivorship biases that structure current understandings of ancient culture. Although historians have long acknowledged the fragmentary nature of their sources, quantitative methods for assessing loss have not yet been applied in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. UNSEEN breaks new ground by integrating qualitative expertise with statistical modelling, advancing the state of the art and offering a transferable methodology for other cultural domains. The fellowship includes an 8-month secondment at the University of Antwerp, where I will train in Python and computational statistics with Prof. Kestemont, a pioneer of USM in cultural history. This interdisciplinary training, together with collaboration at Leiden University and the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities, will enhance my digital, management, and communication skills. By its conclusion, I will be positioned to lead future research at the intersection of history, data science, and cultural heritage, while broadening career opportunities in academia and the GLAM sector.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

• UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN · LeidenCoordinatorNetherlands
• UNIVERSITEIT ANTWERPEN · AntwerpenBelgium

Links

• View on CORDIS
• DOI: 10.3030/101281159