Karsten Lambers

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Full) at Leiden University

Within archaeological prospection, Deep Learning algorithms are developed to detect objects within large remotely sensed datasets. These approaches are generally tested in an (ideal) experimental setting but have not been applied in different contexts or ‘in the wild’, that is, incorporated in archaeological prospection. This research explores the...

The amount of archaeological literature is growing rapidly. Until recently, these data were only accessible through metadata search. We implemented a text retrieval engine for a large archaeological text collection (∼ 658 Million words). In archaeological IR, domain-specific entities such as locations, time periods, and artefacts, play a central ro...

Full text available at https://www.sidestone.com/books/digital-archaeology Archaeology has gone digital for some time now! Topics such as GIS databases, 3D models, drone photography, meta- and para-data, semantic mapping, text mining, simulation, and social network analysis have become commonplace in archaeological discourse and practice. Digital...

Lambers, K. (2024). The many challenges of digital and computational archaeology. Inaugural lecture, Leiden University, 9 September 2024. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4054691

Volunteers are a key part of the archaeological labour force and, with the growth of digital datasets, these citizen scientists represent a vast pool of interpretive potential; yet, concerns remain about the quality and reliability of crowd-sourced data. This article evaluates the classification of prehistoric barrows on lidar images of the central...

Current climate and environmental changes have brought unprecedented rates of change to mountain ecosystems. These changes are impacting the provisioning of ecosystem services. Despite the increase in academic publications on ecosystem services, research on cultural ecosystem services (CES) and their availability in mountain regions has largely bee...

A summary of our experience with the graduate programme Digital Archaeology, introduced in 2016 at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University as part of the MSc programme Archaeological Science. Plus, an introduction to the edited volume 'Digital Archaeology: Promises and Impasses' (Leiden 2023).

The National Museum of Raqqa in Syria has suffered immensely from the ongoing violence since 2011. Much of its valuable collection of movable archaeological heritage (ca. 6000 items) is considered lost. Starting from 500 of the most precious objects of the museum stored in the Raqqa Central Bank and stolen from there in 2013, the pilot project Focu...

We present results from a systematic interdisciplinary study on (pre‐)historic rural settlement and landscape development in an upland region of northern Bavaria, Germany. The archaeological and geoarchaeological investigations—supported by radiocarbon dating, optically stimulated luminescence dating, and palaeoecological analysis—were performed to...

The publication at hand are the proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Archaeological Prospection held between March 28 and April 1, 2023, in Kiel, Germany. The content of the articles ranges from local to large-scale case studies all over the world and from various archaeological times, over methodological improvements, new processing...

This paper presents AGNES, the first information retrieval system for archaeological grey literature, allowing full-text search of these long archaeological documents. This search system has a web interface that allows archaeology professionals and scholars to search through a collection of over 60,000 Dutch excavation reports, totalling 361 millio...

This paper presents WODAN2.0, a workflow using Deep Learning for the automated detection of multiple archaeological object classes in LiDAR data from the Netherlands. WODAN2.0 is developed to rapidly and systematically map archaeology in large and complex datasets. To investigate its practical value, a large, random test dataset—next to a small, no...

In this paper, we present the development of a training dataset for Dutch Named Entity Recognition (NER) in the archaeology domain. This dataset was created as there is a dire need for semantic search within archaeology, in order to allow archaeologists to find structured information in collections of Dutch excavation reports, currently totalling a...

The narrow desert wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes in South America is one of the most arid and inhospitable regions in the world. Yet it is also a striking example of human interaction with extreme environments. Geoglyphs-man-made markings of the ground surface in naturalistic or geometric shapes-cover portions of the desert in Chile...

The question of the origin of Alpine farming and pastoral activities associated with seasonal vertical transhumance and dairy production in the Silvretta Alps (Eastern Switzerland) has recently benefitted from renewed interest. There, pastoral practises began during the Late Neolithic (2300 BC), but alpine dairy farming was directly evidenced so fa...

Within and beyond development-led archaeological frameworks, strategizing archaeological prospection approaches that incorporate geophysical methods remains a daunting task for many archaeologists and managing agencies. While national and international guidelines provide useful support, decisions on a site-specific level often remain difficult to m...

Die hier dargestellten Ergebnisse zeigen eindrücklich, dass durch kombinierte Anwen-dungen von geophysikalischen und geoarchäologischen Methoden wichtige Ergebnis-se für die archäologische Forschung gewonnen werden können. Erste Einblicke in den Untergrund wurden durch die geoelektrische Tomographie und durch das Georadar ermöglicht. Vorteile diese...

With the proliferation of online learning, the future of classroom teaching has been called into question. However, the unfaltering popularity of brick-and-mortar courses indicates that direct access to expert knowledge and face-to-face engagements remain key considerations for students. Here we showcase a combination of these two worlds in a Small...

Although the history of automated archaeological object detection in remotely sensed data is short, progress and emerging trends are evident. Among them, the shift from rule-based approaches towards machine learning methods is, at the moment, the cause for high expectations, even though basic problems, such as the lack of suitable archaeological tr...

Computer-aided methods for the automatic detection of archaeological objects are needed to cope with the ever-growing set of largely digital and easily available remotely sensed data. In this paper, a promising new technique for the automated detection of multiple classes of archaeological objects in LiDAR data is presented. This technique is based...

In this paper, we present the results of user requirement solicitation for a search system of grey literature in archaeology, specifically Dutch excavation reports. This search system uses Named Entity Recognition and Information Retrieval techniques to create an effective and effortless search experience. Specifically, we used Conditional Random F...

In this paper, we present first results of an interdisciplinary, multi-year research project on Bronze and Iron Age (approx. 2100-30 BC) settlement patterns and landscape development in the Northern Franconian Jura, Bavaria, Germany. Despite the presence of Metal Age hillforts, ritual sites and burial mounds, this part of the German Central Uplands...

Although hillforts, ritual sites and burial mounds have been in existence in various regions, the German Central Uplands have largely been considered void of rural occupation during the Bronze and Iron Ages (approx. 2100-30 B C). The presence of these sites, combined with mounting evidence from geoarchives of human impact on the landscape since the...

Recent archaeological research at Palpa, in the northern Nasca region, has shed new light on the origins, development and meaning of the famed Nasca geoglyphs in the desert on the south coast of Peru.

(Full text available at https://hdl.handle.net/1887/57483) Remote sensing has a long and successful track record of detecting and mapping archaeological traces of human activity in the landscape. Since the early twentieth century, the tools and procedures of aerial archaeology evolved gradually, while earth observation remote sensing experienced m...

This essay, written in German, is a summary of what we currently know about the geoglyphs of Nasca and Palpa in south Peru based on recent archaeological research. It attempts to answer the questions how the geoglyphs were made, when and by whom, and what function and meaning they had. The essay is published in the catalogue of the Nasca exhibition...

The archaeological site of Epe-Niersen in the central Netherlands consists of a 6km long linear arrangement of barrows dating to the 3rd and 2nd Millennium BC (Bakker 1976; Bourgeois 2013). In total, no less than 50 burial mounds of this alignment are still preserved within the modern-day landscape. At the start of the 20th century the curator of p...

This essay, written in Spanish and English, is a summary of what we currently know about the geoglyphs of Nasca and Palpa in south Peru based on recent archaeological research. It attempts to answer the questions how the geoglyphs were made, when and by whom, and what function and meaning they had. The essay is published in the catalogue of the Nas...

Sediment dynamics in river catchments are controlled by extrinsic and intrinsic processes on various spatio-temporal scales. In central Europe, earliest societies started in the Neolithic (c. 5.5 ka BCE), turning natural landscapes into cultural landscapes which triggered soil erosion and thus further altered sediment dynamics in geomorphic systems...

En el presente artículo se exponen los resultados de las excavaciones realizadas en varias estruc­turas asociadas a sitios con geoglifos, los cuales se localizan en la parte norte de la cuenca del Río Grande, en la provincia de Palpa, departamento de lea. Los geoglifos fueron construidos sobre las laderas y mesetas que se encuentran entre y a lo la...

www.ag-caa.de/workshop2017/

The applications of automated object detection in remote sensing archaeology have grown considerably in the last few years. This reading list has been compiled as a contribution to consolidating current perspectives at September 2016, and in support of the preceding paper on the broader issues of human and computer vision in archaeological prospect...

The (slow) emergence of semi-automated or supervised detection techniques to identify anthropogenic objects in archaeological prospection using remote sensing data has received a mixed reception during the past decade. Critics have stressed the superiority of human vision and the irreplaceability of human judgement in recognising archaeological tra...

Agro-pastoral activities in the past act as environmental legacy and have shaped the current cultural landscape in the European Alps. This study reports about prehistoric fire incidents and their impact on the flora and vegetation near the village of Ardez in the Lower Engadine Valley (Switzerland) since the Late Neolithic Period. Pollen, charcoal...

(Full text available at https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3156937) We develop an approach for the detection of ruins of livestock enclosures (LEs) in alpine areas captured by high-resolution remotely sensed images. These structures are usually of approximately rectangular shape and appear in images as faint fragmented contours in complex background. We...

In unserem Beitrag geht es um erste Ergebnisse einer geoarchäologischen Feldkampagne in Dzehkabtún, einer früh-bis postklassischen (ca. 300-1100 n. Chr.) Maya-Siedlung auf der Halbinsel Yucatán, Mexiko. Dieser Fundort wird bereits seit einigen Jahren archäologisch untersucht. Ziel des geoarchäologischen Forschungsprojekts ist die kleinräumige Unter...

We develop an approach for detection of ruins of livestock enclosures in alpine areas captured by high-resolution remotely sensed images. These structures are usually of approximately rectangular shape and appear in images as faint fragmented contours in complex background. We address this problem by introducing a new rectangularity feature that qu...

The beginnings of the continuous human presence and of pastoral activities in the high mountainous region of Central Europe have recently become a frequently discussed topic in both archaeology and palaeoecology. In extreme environments such as the high Alpine main ridge and adjacent areas, highly adaptive subsistence strategies were required to ex...

In a high altitude region such as the Silvretta Alps (Switzerland/Austria), past and extant settlement activities are known to have had large influences on the alpine flora and vegetation. The Silvretta Massif harbors more than 230 archaeological sites above 2000 m a.s.l. on a total area of 550 km2, from the Mesolithic period to Modern Times, but r...

This paper describes the results of initial archaeological and geoarchaeological fieldwork in the Northern Franconian Jura between the cities of Bayreuth and Bamberg. Our research aims at the reconstruction of settlement patterns and strategies of land use during the Metal Ages (Bronze Age and Iron Age) in the catchment area of the river Weismain....

This paper reviews the challenges and prospects of woodland archaeology across Europe and proposes a European network to safeguard archaeological heritage in woodlands. Woodlands and forests cover important parts of the European landmass but are often uncharted territory on the archaeological map since traditional methods of archaeological survey d...

We present a morphological texture contrast (MTC) operator that allows detection of textural and non-texture regions in images. We show that in contrast to other approaches, the MTC discriminates between texture details and isolated features and does not extend borders of texture regions. A comparison with other methods used for texture detection i...

We introduce an approach for the detection of approximately rectangular structures in gray scale images. Our research is motivated by the Silvretta Historica project that aims at automated detection of remains of livestock enclosures in remotely sensed images of alpine regions. The approach allows detection of enclosures with linear sides of variou...

Recently, we introduced a morphological texture contrast (MTC) operator that allows detection of textural and non-texture regions in images. In this paper we provide comparison of the MTC with other available techniques. We show that, in contrast to other approaches, the MTC discriminates between texture details and isolated features, and does not...

Since 2007, the Silvretta Archaeological Project in the high Alps on the Swiss-Austrian border has been investigating the prehistoric origins of alpine pasture economy. In an area of about 540 km2 more than 20 well-preserved archaeological sites associated with alpine pastoralism have been recorded, the earliest of them dating to the Iron Age (Reit...

In this paper we report on a new archaeological project in the central Alps, titled Silvretta Historica, in which satellite-assisted archaeological surveying is intended to play a key role. Following an overview of the Silvretta study area on the Swiss-Austrian border and its archaeology, we present the first results of recent archaeological fieldw...

Seit 2007 untersucht ein internationales Forschungsprojekt in der Silvretta zwischen der Schweiz und Österreich die Spuren der ersten Hirten. Dabei wird immer mehr die hohe Anzahl und Qualität alpiner Denkmäler aus mittlerweile 11 Jahrtausenden deutlich - von Lagern steinzeitlicher Jagdgruppen bis zur ältesten Alphütte der Schweiz.

Short report about a public project conference with excursion of the Silvretta Historica research project, September 2012, Gaschurn, Montafon, Austria.

We develop a transformation based on morphological filters that measures the contrast of image texture. This transformation is proportional to texture contrast, but insensitive to its specific type. Though the transformation provides a high response in textured areas, it suppresses individual high contrast features that stand apart from textured ar...

This paper discusses human response to environmental change in the Silvretta Alps since the Bronze Age.

This paper deals with geoglyphs from Palpa and Nasca (Southern Peru) in a spatial and social context. In one of the first phases, the Paracas Period, geoglyphs were predominately situated on slopes, and their repertoire of motifs (mainly anthropomorphic beings) was taken from other media. These depictions must have been constructed in connection wi...

Die archäologische Erforschung der Silvretta hat zur Entdeckung zahlreicher bisher unbekannter Fundstellen geführt, deren Untersuchung tiefe Einblicke in die Geschichte dieser Region erlaubt. Doch woher wissen Archäologen, wo sie etwas finden? Die Suche und Identifizierung von archäologischen Fundstellen, die sogenannte Prospektion, ist ein wichtig...

We report on recent research undertaken in the framework of the Silvretta Archaeological Project, in which we are developing methods to detect certain types of archaeological ruins in remotely sensed images in order to assist archaeological survey. Our approach aims at assessing the probability of the presence of objects of our interest based on ge...

Introduction to DEM generation and use in archaeological research (in German). Part of best practice guidelines on research data management in archaeology issued by IANUS Berlin. Available at https://www.ianus-fdz.de/it-empfehlungen/node/95.

As part of a long-term project to investigate the cultural history of the Nasca region in southern Peru, the famous Nasca lines, or geoglyphs, have been documented since 1997 in a joint effort by archaeologists and geomatic engineers. The project aims on the one hand at a new interpretation of the geoglyphs based on solid field data. On the other h...

This paper is intended to give an overview on current surveying techniques that use remotely sensed data, and their applications in archaeology. The focus is on optical 3D measurement techniques based on image and range sensors. Data and methods are briefly reviewed, whereas data processing and related problems are only touched on in passing. For t...

This paper summarizes papers given at a session on applications of satellite remote sensing in archaeological prospection held at the 2009 Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Conference (CAA) in Williamsburg VA in March 2009. The overview of the contributions is followed by a general discussion of the state of the art of s...

In this chapter we report on the GIS-based analysis of the Nasca geoglyphs of Palpa, Peru, undertaken in the course of the Nasca–Palpa Archaeological Project. We focus here on the analysis of spatial relationships between the geoglyphs and the surrounding landscape in terms of visibility and orientation. Our motivation for this contextual analysis...

This volume contains the proceedings of the 35th Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) Conference, held April 2–6, 2007, in Berlin, Germany.

This paper describes the 3D modelling of Pinchango Alto, Peru, based on a combination of image and range data. Digital photogrammetry and laser scanning allow archaeological sites to be recorded efficiently and in detail even under unfavourable conditions. In 2004 we documented Pinchango Alto, a typical site of the hitherto poorly studied Late Inte...

In this paper we describe a new system for the recording of archaeological sites based on an autonomous UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) that has recently been employed in the framework of the Nasca-Palpa Archaeological Project on the south coast of Peru. In the vicinity of Palpa, the prehispanic site of Pinchango Alto is an attractive, yet difficult...

The Nasca geoglyphs in southern Peru are today usually viewed from the air. This has led to the false impression that they are only visible from above. In contrast, archaeological evidence shows that a continuous and manifold chain of activities took place on geoglyph sites during the Nasca period (200 BC - AD 650), involving large parts of the anc...

In the present work, the results of an extensive fieldwork realized over the geoglyphs of Palpa are presented, the second biggest concentration of geoglyphs registered in the Palpa-Nasca region in the northern part of the basin of the Rio Grande. These geoglyphs were established over tilts and tableland between and lengthways of the valleys of the...

The Nasca lines or geoglyphs in southern Peru are known as one of archaeologys greatest mysteries. Since the 1980s, however, new approaches have helped to better understand their function and meaning. The recent photogrammetric recording of 1 500 geoglyphs in the vicinity of Palpa enabled for the first time a GIS-based analysis. Geoglyph visibility...

In this article, we present the results of the excavations conducted in several structures that were found in association with geoglyphs located in the Palpa Province, within the northern side of the Rio Grande Basin. The geoglyphs were built over slopes and plateaus that are placed within and long the Río Grande, Palpa and Viscas Valleys. The repo...

The Geoglyphs of Palpa, Peru is a revision of the author´s Ph.D. thesis. In this study, the famed geoglyphs of the Paracas and Nasca cultures on the south coast of Peru are investigated in order to better understand their function and meaning. Combining aerial photogrammetry, archaeological fieldwork, and GIS-based analysis, more than 600 geoglyphs...

Report about the 2004 field season of the Nasca-Palpa Archaeological Project at Palpa, Peru (in German)

In this paper we describe a new system for the recording of archaeological sites based on an autonomous UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) that has recently been employed in the framework of the Nasca-Palpa Archaeological Project on the south coast of Peru. In the vicinity of Palpa, the prehispanic site of Pinchango Alto is an attractive, yet difficult...

Gegenstand dieser Arbeit ist eine Untersuchung der weltbekannten Geoglyphen von Nasca an der Südküste Perus (400 v. Chr. - 600 n. Chr.) mit dem Ziel, neue Erkenntnisse über ihre Funktion und Bedeutung zu gewinnen. Ein bisher undokumentierter Korpus von über 600 Geoglyphen in der Gegend von Palpa wurde erstmals mit modernen Methoden der Geomatik, wi...

The famous Nasca lines and geoglyphs in the desert on the south coast of Peru are a constitutive part of the Nasca cultural landscape of the Early Intermediate Period (approx. 200 BC – AD 600). Vast desert zones, largely uninhabited and unused in other epochs, were marked and altered on a large scale according to the cultural concepts, needs and be...

Preliminary report on the photogrammetric recording, 3D modelling and archaeological analysis of the Nasca geoglyphs of Palpa, Depto. Ica, Peru (in German and Spanish)

The Nasca Lines or geoglyphs in the desert of south Peru are among the most famous cultural heritage sites in the world. Unfortunately, their investigation and interpretation has been hampered for a long time by the lack of an accurate documentatio n. Based on aerial imagery that was especially acquired for this purpose, we produced a virtual D mod...

Preliminary report of the 2001 field season of the Nasca-Palpa Archaelogical Project in Palpa, Depto. Ica, Peru (in German)

Preliminary report of the 2000 field season of the Nasca-Palpa Archaeological Project in Palpa, Depto. Ica, Peru (in German)

This study investigates the Terminal Classic to Postclassic transition at the Maya site of Xkipché, Yucatán, Mexico. At Xkipché, this transition is marked by a series of unfinished stone buildings in the Terminal Classic Puuc style followed by smaller buildings that combine traits of foundation braces with reused stones from earlier buildings. Many...

Résumé Depuis longtemps, les investigations archéologiques entreprises au sujet des géoglyphes aux environs de Nasca (Pérou) ont été perturbées en raison de l'absence d'une méthode d'enregistrement efficace. Dans le présent article, il est décrit l'utilisation de procédés photogrammétriques qui permettent d'enregistrer deux importantes concentratio...

The Nasca-Palpa Archaeological Project, conducted since 1997 by the German Archaeological Institute (DAI, KAAK Bonn), the Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry of ETH Zurich, and further project partners from Peru, Switzerland, Germany and Austria, aims at a comprehensive investigation of the prehispanic cultural history of the Nasca and Palpa re...

On the south coast of Peru, the famous geoglyphs carved into the desert surface of the Nasca region constitute a dominant feature in the prehistoric landscape. In a joint archaeological-geodetic project we used photogrammetry to map more than 1 000 of these ground drawings around Palpa, to the north of Nasca, which we later on revised in detail in...