GLAMorous AI TL;DR — November 2025

Welcome back to GLAMorous AI, your bite-sized roundup of what’s new, strange, and signal-shifting in the world of AI + Cultural Heritage.

This month: from Babylonian numerals to rock art detection, machine learning is quietly redrawing the boundaries of archaeological practice.

⚙️Pattern Recognition: From Pixels to Potsherds

AI is doing what archaeologists have always done; only faster.

🧠 Buchanan, Hamilton & Walker introduce a new method for classifying dart and arrow points — blending typology with ML precision.
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🪙 Pekel Özmen uses AI to sort ancient coins, even when the data is messy.
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🗡️ Kim & Yu design a model to study Bronze Age dagger shapes and spot regional differences.
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📜 Alzubaidi, Ahmed & Nahdi use AI to read Babylonian numerals, reanimating one of humanity’s oldest scripts.
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🧩 Seeing the Invisible

From underground Pompeii to prehistoric rock art, AI is mapping what eyes can’t.

🎨 Macieira et al. apply deep learning for detecting and classifying prehistoric rock art paintings.
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🌳 Lercari et al. combine laser scanning and AI to map Mediterranean landscapes.
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🧭 Huang et al. train AI to find ancient stone walls from high-res elevation (DEM) data.
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📡 Jaxy et al. explore how AI can find archaeological sites when data is scarce.
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🐾 Reading Traces, Writing Stories

AI isn't just finding artefacts; it's helping rewrite human history.

🦴 Domínguez-Rodrigo et al. use AI to rethink predator-prey dynamics around early humans.
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✋ Jalandoni et al. employ ML to determine sex in Palaeolithic finger flutings (marks), bridging art and anatomy.
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🕹️ Condorelli revives ancient games from single images — playful AI meets heritage conservation.
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🐾 Arriaza et al. blend virtual reconstruction and experiment to study early tool use.
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🧠 Ethics, Explainability & Energy

The conversation is shifting from capability to accountability.

🎛️ Nerantzis et al. measure the energy cost and bias of AI in textile identification.
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🔍 Mauro et al. test AI for ceramic classification while exploring how it makes decisions.
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🧵 Roy, Singh & Padun merge augmented reality + AI to revive tribal fabric traditions.
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🪶 Ganeriwala & Mitra use AI to read ancient scripts with very little training data.
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💡 Koleth explores AI for detecting buried archaeological features using ground-penetrating radar
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📚New on the Bookshelf

🪄 Graham, S. — Practical Necromancy for Beginners: A Short, Incomplete, Opinionated Introduction to Artificial Intelligence for Archaeology.
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🏛️ Wu, Z.: 3D documentation and AI analysis of Pompeii’s subterranean spaces.
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❓Big Question

💬About

I’m Alfie, a researcher and archaeologist exploring where heritage, ethics, and AI meet.

This digest keeps things short, critical, and useful; no jargon, no hype.

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👉 Share your new papers, projects, or provocations for the December roundup