“Speaking Types into Being: Language Acts, Typological Persistence and Performing Archaeological Land” by Piraye Hacıgüzeller (2025) is a contribution to a forthcoming volume on the role of typology and type-thinking in current archaeological theory and praxis. This volume is edited by the recommenders, and Hacıgüzeller’s contribution is recommended based on two independent expert evaluations. 

A GIS specialist in archaeology, Hacıgüzeller offers a range of critical reflections on categorization and representation of archaeological space. She illustrates how specific spatial types and categories, in general and the “site” category in particular, shape archaeological praxis, notably spatial analysis and imagination. As rightly stressed by the author, spatial categories suffer from issues of vagueness in their definition that are even greater compared to, say, the categorisations used to handle more obviously bounded objects such as artifacts.

As a result, the foundational vagueness of spatial categories makes it vital to pay critical attention to how and why certain concepts persist in, and continue to shape, archaeological discourses despite mounting theoretical critique and what may be termed “empirical resistance”. Hacıgüzeller here points out that mere “usefulness” in organizing archaeological materials and framing archaeological knowledge-production projects does not provide a complete, particularly relevant or satisfying answer, suggesting that spatial types and categories should instead be regarded as “language acts” (p. 5-6).

Based on this recognition, the author develops a constructivist, practice-oriented approach to archaeological concepts, arguing that “types do not merely describe material realities; they are constitutive of them”  (p. 1). All concepts are human products. This in turn leads to the desideratum to carefully examine “typological language acts” and “the role ‘language acts’ play in the materialisations of archaeological types” vis-à-vis tangible contexts of archaeological analysis and interpretation. Generalizing types as categories, Hacıgüzeller thereby examines two linguistics aspects of categorization operations in particular:

1. Drawing on Gavin Luca’s (2019) work — and echoing his chapter included in the same edited volume (Lucas 2022) — Hacıgüzeller advocates for approaching archaeological spatial types not as “stable classifications” but as “relational entities — assemblages that are always in the process of becoming”;
2. Addressing the implications of large language models (LLMs) for her “language act” approach to spatial archaeological categories, drawing in current scholarship in discourse analysis in archaeology and beyond, for example a recent edited volume on Discourse and Argumentation in Archaeology: Conceptual and Computational Approaches (Gonzalez et al. 2023).

Framed as a “position paper”, Hacıgüzeller’s contribution certainly offers much food for thought and will be of interest to all those who are interested in meta-archaeological questions. Firmly grounded in postmodern and gender studies, it raises awareness about the risks and challenges of categorisation as a praxis — more generally and for archaeology in particular. She notably cautions against the risk of excessive stabilisation and fixation, and points to some of related consequences of drawing exaggeratedly on generative intelligence and artificial intelligence-based (computing) technologies. In doing so, Hacıgüzeller’s helps to re-activate, and thereby expand and re-situate, Austin’s (1962) original theory of speech acts for contemporary archaeological concerns, tapping into its potential to illuminate archaeology as a situated “cultural praxis” (Assimakopoulos 2025) and resonating with recent work on the “literary archaeologist” (Lucas 2019).

References

Austin J . L. 1962. How to Do Things With Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Assimakopoulos, S. 2025. Speech Act Theory: Between Narrow and Broad Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009378376.

Gonzalez-Perez, C., Martin-Rodilla, P. and Pereira-Fariña, M. (eds). 2023. Discourse and Argumentation in Archaeology: Conceptual and Computational Approaches, Cham: Springer International Publishing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37156-1.

Hacıgüzeller P. 2025. “Speaking Types into Being: Language Acts, Typological Persistence and Performing Archaeological Space”, Zenodo, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18152352.

Lucas, G. 2012. Understanding the Archaeological Record. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lucas, G. 2019. Writing the Past: Knowledge and Literary Production in Archaeology. London: Routledge.

Lucas, G. 2022. “Archaeology, Typology and Machine Epistemology”, Zenodo, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7622162.

“The role of heritage databases in typological reification: a case study from the Final Palaeolithic of southern Scandinavia” by Felix Riede (2023) is a chapter contribution to an upcoming edited volume on the role of typology and type-thinking in current archaeological theory and praxis. This volume is edited by the recommenders and by Riede himself. This being said, the present recommendation is grounded in, and based on, the independent evaluations of two reviewers. 

At the core of the paper lies an effort to document a series of conceptual slippages that regularly occur when archaeological objects are transformed into archaeological data, scrutinized and discussed based on the case of handling a specific type of lithic object from the Terminal Pleistocene - the iconic large tanged point - in 20th century Danish prehistoric archaeology. Namely, the author shows how 1) stratigraphic distinctions were readily aligned with ethnic categories and distinctions; and how 2) type definitions were eagerly, and typically uncritically, transferred between different archaeological specializations and object categories, for example from Metal Ages objects to the “often significantly more variable artifact classes of the Palaeolithic”. In addition, the paper illustrates the role of particular ways of doing archaeology in stabilizing particular type-concepts, i.e. how “the registration protocol of a national register reified previous typological assumptions”.

Written by a prehistoric archaeologist with a strong data-driven research background, this paper demonstrates how several disciplinary perspectives can be fruitfully and critically combined to shed light on how the use of particular kinds of databases, and specific data infrastructures and ecologies more generally, feeds into and therefore directly shapes archaeological knowledge production: a) the history of science (with a particular focus on scientific publishing methods and formats), b) empirical Palaeolithic archaeology, and the c) digital-computational archaeology . It successfully brings these three, too-often separared fields of research into productive conversation and is accordingly of interest to a broad interdisciplinary readership. As such – prehistoric archaeology being situated at the crossroads of the natural sciences, the humanities, and museology – the paper adds to a growing body of scholarship on the history and consequences of data infrastructures in the natural sciences (Hine 2006), museum practices (cf. e.g. the seminal paper by Star and Griesemer 1989), and the nascent digital humanities (cf. Lejeune 2025 for a case study in medieval history).

References

• Hine C. 2006. “Databases as Scientific Instruments and their Role in the Ordering of Scientific Work”, Social Studies of Science, vol. 36 (2), p. 269-298, https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312706054047.
• Lejeune E. 2025. “From Sources to Data: Medievalists, Demographers, and Computer Scientists Producing a Database from a Quattrocento Census (1964–1978)”, History of Humanities, vol. 10 (2), p. 397-425, https://doi.org/10.1086/737038
• Riede F. 2023. “The role of heritage databases in typological reification: a case study from the Final Palaeolithic of southern Scandinavia”. Zenodo, ver.2 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8372671
• Star S.L., J.R. Griesemer. 1989. “Institutional Ecology, Translations and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–1939”, Social Studies of Science, vol. 19 (3), p. 387–420, https://doi.org/10.1177/030631289019003001.

Positioned as a proof-of-concept, this paper explores the integration of multiple heterogeneous datasets from the Big Exchange project (Kerig et al. 2023; Thor Straten 2025) into a heterogeneous information network (HIN), with the goal of demonstrating the utility of such data for cross-dataset comparison. The authors should be lauded for this approach, which, through its method and HIN data organization, enables comparison of material distributions across multiple spatial scales, broadly addressing Knappett’s (2011) call for linking multiple scales of analysis in archaeology. In this study, the authors incorporate the PathSim similarity measure, including its spatial extension, as an added metric for exploring spatial relationships and potential social connections reflected in the integrated dataset. One of the larger questions posed in this article is whether HINs and spatially extended similarity measures can meaningfully capture cross-dataset structures or expose relational patterns otherwise obscured by dataset heterogeneity. Through a few examples, they show how PathSim captures degrees of overlap between raw material distributions at multiple spatial scales, highlighting potential zones of contact. Their results demonstrate how some distributions (e.g. Rijckholt Flint and Actinolite-Hornblende Schist) exhibit strong similarity across scales, while others remain isolated unless larger distance thresholds are applied. More interestingly, I think, they use PathSim to evaluate whether absences in their dataset (e.g. Spondylus in the Rijckholt zone) reflect true social patterning or taphonomic processes, an important consideration when working with archaeological datasets that are often incomplete and biased.

What remains challenging, albeit still a goal worth pursuing, is the integration of multiple other heterogeneous datasets into a “global, interoperable network,” something that the authors indeed acknowledge (Thor Straten et al. 2025). Still, this application of HIN analysis to archaeology seems to be the first of its kind, highlighting the potential for future analyses that combine multiple, heterogeneous datasets. The value of this approach lies in its potential for integrating multiple material categories for cross-data comparisons that preserve their semantic distinctions that might be otherwise lost in traditional network approaches that homogenize data. Overall, this study offers an accessible proof-of-concept that opens new avenues for analysing interaction and exchange in archaeology. The reproducibility and accessibility of the dataset and code make it a valuable addition to the archaeological analysis toolkit.

References

Kerig, T., Hilpert, J., Strohm, S., Berger, D., Denis, S., Gauthier, E., Gibaja, J. F., Mallet, N., Massa, M., Mazzucco, N., Nessel, B., Pelegrin, J., Pétrequin, P., Sabatini, S., Schumacher, T. X., Serbe, B. and Wilkinson, T. (2023). Interlinking research: the Big Exchange project. Antiquity 97, e22. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.78.

Knappett, C. (2011). An Archaeology of Interaction: Network Perspectives on Material Culture and Society. (Oxford University Press). https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199215454.001.0001.

Thor Straten, M. (2025). Big Exchange HIN (CAA 2025). (Zenodo). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17019270.

Thor Straten, M., Strohm, S., Hilpert, J., Serbe, B., Kerig, T. and Renz, M. (2025). A Network View on the Big Exchange Project: Integrating and Analysing Heterogeneous Datasets. Zenodo, ver.2 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Archaeology https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17856414

A growing number of examples show that archival photographs can be repurposed to create 3D models of archaeological features and sites. Even though archival photographs are rarely, if ever, optimal for photogrammetry, it often is possible to create coherent 3D models that are useful for various purposes (e.g., Bischoff and Allison 2023; Discamps et al. 2016; Reinhard 2016; Tharandt 2024). Models constructed from archival data are not without challenges, however. Older photographs are often taken with a variety of settings,  lack metadata, and/or provide incomplete coverage of the features of interest. Therefore, models constructed from these suboptimal photographs will lack accuracy or distort geometry, and it is difficult to estimate their accuracy.

Panagiotopoulou et al. (2025) compare two 3D models to evaluate changes in the Omega House, a residential complex on the Athenian Agora that covers about 1,800 square meters. One model was created from archival photos dating to the 1972 excavation of the complex; the second model was created in 2017 from photographs taken specifically for photogrammetry. Not surprisingly, the recent model is highly accurate, but it is difficult to evaluate the accuracy of the earlier model. Comparisons to fixed check points unlikely to have changed between 1972 and 2017 indicate that horizontal position of the earlier model is correct with submeter accuracy (to approximately 33-34 cm in easting and northing). The vertical position is less accurate, approximately 1.8 meters. How much the earlier model distorts the geometry of the building is difficult to evaluate.

In an earlier paper, the same authors compared distance, surface area, and volume differences between the two models for a number of specific locations within the complex (Panagiotopoulou et al. 2023). That comparison showed that, overall, the structure of the Omega House complex was preserved between 1972 and 2017 but changes in volume in some areas could represent deterioration of walls, removal of debris, or addition of fill.  Some of the largest differences between the models were around the edges of the structure were photographic coverage for the 1972 model was sparse. Thus, it is possible that some of the observed differences between the models reflect inaccuracies in the earlier model rather than physical changes to the site.

The new preprint (Panagiotopoulou et al. 2025) improves on the earlier analysis by focusing on the south-central parts of the Omega House where the 1972 model has the best photographic coverage and should be most accurate.  Focusing analytical attention there minimizes the uncertainty about the accuracy of the earlier model, which allows for more confidence that the differences between the two models reflect real physical changes between 1972 and 2017. The authors divide the area into seven subareas and point to one subarea that shows substantial decreases in model volume, suggesting deterioration due to natural decay or erosion. Two areas display substantial increases in surface area and volume, perhaps indicating (undocumented?) restoration work.

The preprint is valuable for several reasons. At the Omega House, specifically, it demonstrates heterogenous changes in the monument that call for targeted preservation work. More generally, the paper provides a quantitative framework for comparisons between 3D models that will be useful to other conservation projects. It also provides a good example of the value of retrospective photogrammetry and of the usefulness of comparing 3D models created at different times to detect changes in surface, area and volume.

References

Robert Bischoff and James R. Allison (2023). Using Nonoptimal or Archival Photographs for Constructing 3D Models. In Human History and Digital Future: Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, edited by Matthias Lang, Volker Hochschild, and Till Sonnemann, pp. 104-116. Tübingen University Press, Tübingen, Germany. http://dx.doi.org/10.15496/publikation-87770

Emmanuel Discamps, Xavier Muth, Brad Gravina, François Lacrampe-Cuyaubère, Jean-Pierre Chadelle, Jean-Philippe Faivre, and Bruno Maureille (2016). Photogrammetry as a tool for integrating archival data in archaeological fieldwork: Examples from the Middle Palaeolithic sites of Combe–Grenal, Le Moustier, and Regourdou. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 8:268–276. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.06.004

Antigoni Panagiotopoulou, Colin A. B. Wallace, Lemonia Ragia, and Dorina Moullou (2023). Change Detection between Retrospective and Contemporary 3D Models of the Omega House at the Athenian Agora. Heritage  6(2):645-1679. https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage6020088

Antigoni Panagiotopoulou, Colin A. B. Wallace, Lemonia Ragia and Dorina Moullou (2025) Detection of temporal changes of the Omega House at the Athenian Agora. Zenodo, ver.2 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Archaeology https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15739599

Jochen Reinhard (2016). Structure-from-Motion-Photogrammetrie mit Agisoft PhotoScan. Erste Erfahrungen aus der Grabungspraxis, In 3D-Anwendungen in der Archäologie: Computeranwendungen und quantitative Methoden in der Archäologie, edited by Undine Lieberwirth and Irmela Herzog, pp 17-44,  Edition Topoi, Berlin, Germany. https://doi.org/10.17171/3-34

Louise Tharandt (2024). 3Duewelsteene - A website for the 3D visualization of the megalithic passage grave Düwelsteene near Heiden in Westphalia, Germany, https://3duewelsteene.github.io/, Zenodo, 7948379, ver. 4 peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Archaeology. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7948379

In their article Bédécarrats and colleagues have generated new high resolution incremental dentine isobiographies (δ13C/ δ15N/δ34S) of Neolithic individuals from France, but what this study is truly centred on is refining statistical methods for aligning incremental sampling with tooth development models. This is a topic which has plagued human incremental isotope studies for some time now, with the tension between the practicalities of incremental sampling being hard to reconcile with the physiological realities and complexities of dental tissue formation (e.g. Beaumont and Montgomery 2015; Czermak et al. 2020).

Incremental dentine (and enamel) studies of both archaeological humans and fauna have been steadily on the rise in recent years, with laboratory method development becoming more or less standardised and openly reported recently (see Cheung et al. 2022 for a good overview) allowing for a proliferation of new data. However, as mentioned above and in this study, there is still debate in the field around which dental maturation reference frames to use (i.e. they compare AlQahtani et al. 2010; and Moorrees et al. 1963 a and b), and how best to apply these to incremental isotopic profiles and align the longitudinal models to capture the non-linear process of tooth mineralisation and the age ranges captured in the isotopic increments.

The authors have provided extremely detailed and well-researched backgrounds here to incremental isobiographies, childhood in prehistory, and (incremental) age estimation from tooth development, which provide readers with ample context to both their data, methods and the issues at hand. Currently direct comparisons between individual incremental δ13C, δ15N and δ34S isotopic profiles is extremely limited, and largely confined to descriptions of broad trends and directionality as the propagated uncertainties due to laboratory and graphical methods limit most conventional quantitative approaches; and caution must be used when relating any one micro-sample to a particular formation age, again due to many sources of error and uncertainty, further limiting interpretational power. However, here Bédécarrats et al. (2025) not only compare the AlQahtani and Moorrees but also compare these mineralisation scaffolds within two different modelling approaches - linear models (LM) and generalised additive models (GAM), with their results showing that GAMs using Moorees et al.’s data perform best on their samples, however tooth choice and sex of the individuals will dictate model choice so this should be taken into account before applying these models - and I would perhaps add to their suggestions that if studying juveniles with these methods researchers should seriously considering including sexing via enamel peptides or aDNA where possible to enable better age estimates using their prescribed statistical methods.

This paper should serve as an exemplar for anyone undertaking destructive analysis on archaeological remains as it details and provides their pre-sampling recording and 3D models - something which is often absent in biomolecular studies but is becoming more common (see Bédécarrats et al. 2025, Esposito et al. 2024 and Haponava et al. 2025 for examples of best practice). Furthermore they provide clear, thorough and replicable laboratory and computational methods (see their extensive provided supplementary material for their R code, csv files etc.), which ensures this work is highly adoptable and adaptable. Their insightful case study lays the foundations for further studies whether new or utilising previously published incremental data, to further test/validate the modelling methods proposed here. I hope to see this adopted and tested widely by studies on a variety of time periods and teeth.  

References

AlQahtani, S.J., Hector, M.P., Liversidge, H.M., 2010. Brief communication: The London atlas of human tooth development and eruption. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 142, 481–490. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.21258.

Beaumont, J., Montgomery, J., 2015. Oral histories: a simple method of assigning chronological age to isotopic values from human dentine collagen. Annals of Human Biology 42, 407–414. https://doi.org/10.3109/03014460.2015.1045027.

Bédécarrats, S., Le Roy, M., Sayle, K.L., Blaizot, F., Couvrat, M., Gleize, Y., Leduc, G., Rottier,S., Goude, G., 2025. Isobiography of the first farmers: effects of age-estimating referential and statistical models on reconstructing infant life. Zenodo, ver.2 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Archaeology https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16362830.

Cheung, C., Fernández-Crespo, T., Mion, l., et al., 2022. Micro-Punches versus Micro-Slices for Serial Sampling of Human Dentine: Striking a Balance between Improved Temporal Resolution and Measuring Additional Isotope Systems. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry 36, e9380. https://doi.org/10.1002/rcm.9380.

Czermak, A., Fernández-Crespo, T., Ditchfield, P.W., Lee-Thorp, J.A., 2020. A guide for an anatomically sensitive dentine microsampling and age-alignment approach for human teeth isotopic sequences. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 173, 776–783. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24126.

Esposito, C., Higgins, O.A., Galbusera, A., et al., 2024. NOthing Goes to WASte (NOWA): A Protocol to Optimise Sampling of Ancient Teeth. Journal of Archaeological Science 171: 106087. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2024.106087.

Haponava, V., Fibiger, L., Butler, I.B., Pickard, C., 2025. Towards Responsible Destructive Analysis: A Guide to the Recording of Archaeological Tooth Samples with Laboratory Process Visualisation. Internet Archaeology 69. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.69.4.

Moorrees, C.F.A., Fanning, E.A., Hunt, E.E., 1963a. Age Variation of Formation Stages for Ten Permanent Teeth. Journal of Dental Research 42, 1490–1502. https://doi.org/10.1177/00220345630420062701.

Moorrees, C.F.A., Fanning, E.A., Hunt Jr., E.E., 1963b. Formation and resorption of three deciduous teeth in children. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 21, 205–213. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.1330210212.