CAA Special Interest Group on chronological modelling (SIG Chrono), caa-chrono-sig
The ambition of the SIG Chrono is to model temporal processes that underlie archaeological features regardless of the accuracy or fuzziness of temporal data. These archaeological features can be archaeological periods, site stratigraphies, object "chaîne opératoires" or personal genealogies. We aim to create bridges with the SSLA SI and the LOD one. To do so, we aim to back our work on standard formats, such as the Extended Date Time Format, formalisms such as Directed Acyclic Graphs, open-source softwares (in construction), time-period gazetteers such as Periodo, and so on, following the LOD and FAIR principles in a collaborative way.
- CAA SIG: https://caa-international.org/special-interest-groups/
- Huet, T., & Levy, E. (eds) (2025). Special issue on Chronological modelling. Archaeometry, 67(S1).
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27 October 2025 at 10am CET time (Paris), total duration: 1h15-1h30, on ZOOM (link - ⬇️.ics)
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Invited talk: "A Computational Approach toward Minoan Chronology: Thoughts on the modelling aspects" [30–40 min], Martina Trognitz (email), Diamantis Panagiotopoulos (email), and Iro Mathioudaki (email)
- Q&A [5–10 min], all participants
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Presentation: Archaeometry "Special issue on Chronological modelling" (link | slide) [5 min] Thomas Huet and Eythan Levy
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Presentation: CAA2026 round table session S35: "Chronological Modelling III: A Round Table on Time in Computational Archaeology (link | slide) [5 min], Thomas Huet, Eythan Levy with the collaboration of Juan Antonio Barcelo, Keith May, James Taylor, Florian Thierry and Joe Roe
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SIG Chrono business [30 min], all participants
15 December 2025 at 10am CET time (Paris), total duration: 1h15-1h30, on Google Meet (link)
- Intro [5 min] Eythan Levy and Thomas Huet
- Invited talk: "Quantifying Uncertainty in Expert Archaeological Dating Evidence" [30 min] Caitlin Buck and Marta Krzyzanska (University of Sheffield, UK):
"In this presentation Caitlin Buck and Marta Krzyzanska (University of Sheffield, UK) will outline their work on the Leverhulme Trust project: Quantifying Uncertainty in Archaeological Expert Dating Evidence (QUEADE). Their work is motivated by the ubiquitous problem faced by post-excavation teams as they seek to integrate finds dates into the overall chronology for the site. In general, such date estimates derive from statements in the reports of finds experts, which take the form of a date range, often with a textual qualifier (e.g. probably 43-410 AD). Typically, such reports offer little or no explanation as to precisely what event has been dated, which dates are most likely in the range or what form any extra uncertainty might take. By tailoring well-established, formal knowledge elicitation methods (already in use in sectors such as drug discovery, nuclear safety and climate science), the QUEADE team has developed a suite of protocols and software that can be used to formalise expert knowledge about the dates of cultural finds (such as coins, pottery, tools and items of personal adornment). The approach allows experts to record their knowledge using probability distributions, thus making the associated date estimates rigorous, consistent, readily archivable and viable for inclusion in Bayesian chronological modelling. The goal is to make it much easier for archaeological finds experts to record their knowledge consistently and to be clear with their colleagues precisely what part of the objects life-cycle has been dated." video
- Q&A [10 min], all participants
- Press review: a review of recent noteworthy publications on chronological modelling [10 min]
- SIG Chrono Vice-convener election [5 min]
- Discussion on the SIG Chrono newsletter [5 min]
- Discussion on SIG Membership [5 min]
- AOB [10 min]
16 February 2026 at 10am CET time (Paris), total duration: xx-xx, on ZOOM (link - ⬇️.ics)
- Intro: Eythan Levy, Martina Trognitz, and Thomas Huet
- Invited talk: "_to be defined" [20 min] Speaker1 (affiliation):
"abstract" video
- Q&A [20 min], all participants
- Press review: a review of recent noteworthy publications on chronological modelling [5 min]
- SIG Chrono Membership [5 min]
- AOB [10 min]
https://2023.caaconference.org/, 2023-04-03/2023-04-06, Amsterdam
Eythan Levy, Thomas Huet, Florian Thiery, Allard W. Mees
- General Introduction to S12: https://historical-time.github.io/caa-chrono-sig/caa/23/s12/intro/pres
- Discussing the need for a new CAA Special Interest Group on chronological modelling: https://historical-time.github.io/caa-chrono-sig/caa/23/s12/discuss/pres
https://2025.caaconference.org/, 2025-05-05/2023-05-09, Athens
Eythan Levy, Thomas Huet
Time and its analysis are at the heart of archaeology: one of the main objectives of the archaeologist is the establishment of a temporal framework for a given layer, site or material culture. But archaeology covers such a wide range of cultures, dispersed both in time and space, that contextual chronological assessments are constructed using very different tools, languages and techniques. It creates as many different temporal and cultural frameworks as there are specialties, with notable differences in approaches depending on whether one is dealing with absolute or relative chronology, laboratory techniques or cultural approaches, deterministic or statistical methods (Buck and Millard 2004).
The principle of a Special Interest Group (SIG) on chronological modelling (SIG-CHRONO) has been approved by the CAA steering committee during the 2024 Annual General Meeting (AGM), and a formal proposal for its creation will be presented at the 2025 CAA conference. The proposed session will be related to this new SIG, in order to explore a wide variety of research tools and techniques related to (semantic) chronological modelling in archaeology and to identify common methodological frameworks and to build bridges between specialties.
We strongly encourage submissions presenting new mathematical models and algorithms for handling chronological data, whether based on deterministic or probabilistic approaches (e.g., Bayesian methods, stratigraphic modelling, temporal logics; see: https://github.com/historical-time/caa-chrono-sig/tree/main/doc). Additionally, we welcome contributions focused on open-source and open-access software. Papers addressing interoperability between different chronological models (or their implementations) are also encouraged. This includes topics such as the use of ontologies (e.g., CRMarchaeo, SKOS), controlled vocabularies and time gazetteers (e.g., PeriodO, ChronOntology), and the application of ISO standards like Date and EDTF, in the framework of Linked Open Data.
Reference Buck, C.E. and Millard, A. 2004. Tools for Constructing Chronologies: Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries. London.
Thomas Huet, Eythan Levy
This round table aims at discussing the current challenges and future perspectives on the modelling of time in archaeology. Duration: 2h30.
Some 30 years ago, the introduction of GIS into the archaeological toolbox sparked a ‘spatial turn’ in the discipline, greatly improving the interoperability of spatial data. However, no such integrated tool exists for managing temporal data. Chronological methods are highly diverse (e.g., seriation, stratigraphy, cross-dating, absolute dating), each typically handled by different software applications and libraries. The lack of interoperability between software outputs, formats and standards hinders the ability to understand cultural developments across different societies. In our view, the time has come to make chronological data more interoperable through the use of standardised formats (e.g., EDTF), relative temporal relationships (e.g., before/after), and specialised software (e.g., OxCal). Such an approach could pave the way for a Temporal Information System (TIS), enabling the calculation of a temporal metric for the rate of human cultural evolution (see our position paper: Huet & Levy, 2025). We invite all interested colleagues to participate in the open-forum discussion at the round table.
Position paper
Huet, T., & Levy, E. (2025). Foreword – Archaeometry special issue on chronological modelling. Archaeometry, 67(S1), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1111/arcm.13095
[5-10 minutes] Thomas Huet and Eythan Levy
[30 minutes] chair: Joan Anton Barcelo
History and Archaeology, sciences of societies in time, are based on the ordering and clustering of events, but differ mainly on the different nature of the proxies they use. History uses mainly authored time-stamped writings (e.g., diplomatic letters, political writings) while Archaeology uses anonymous time-uncertain material culture (e.g., ceramic and stratigraphic sequences). How can such archaeological series be grouped to create periods? To what extent can two periods be considered as contemporaneous ?
[30 minutes] chair: Keith May, James Taylor
Archaeologists often deal with multi-aligned chronological data: a piece of material culture can be related to a stratigraphic unit containing other objects, to site-wide stratigraphy with groupings and phasing, to broader landscape and/or cultural periodisation, to seriation, to artifact types found in other archaeological cultures, and to so-called ‘absolute’ dates from scientific dating methods (e.g., radiocarbon dates). How, in practice, are these data aligned with each other? How is uncertainty propagated over different chronological assessments?
BREAK: 15 minutes
[30 minutes] chair: Florian Thierry
Deterministic dates, whether seemingly exact (e.g., 79 AD), approximate with uncertainties (e.g., 80/81 AD), or relative (e.g., after 68 AD), can be encoded unambiguously using standards such as ISO 8601, EDTF, or OWL-Time. Such date expressions can serve as the basis for space–time gazetteers (e.g., PeriodO and ChronOntology) and be reused in ontologies (e.g., CIDOC CRM). However, these formats, gazetteers and ontologies cannot directly express probabilistic temporal distributions, such as those derived from radiometric dating. Furthermore, the different ad hoc chronological formats and syntaxes used by chronological software (e.g., OxCal, ChronoModel, or ChronoLog) add a further layer of complexity. How can we foster interoperability between all these formats and standards?
[30 minutes] chair: Joe Roe
A host of mathematical methods and algorithms exist for both deterministic and probabilistic temporal assessments in archaeology. Software packages (libraries), as well as interactive software applications, are being used to solve a wide variety of chronological problems, such as seriation, Bayesian calibration of radiocarbon dates, or chronological network modelling. Mastering the whole array of available chronological methods, algorithms and tools can be challenging. Is a unified, standardised approach feasible and desirable? And if so, what concrete steps can be taken to achieve it?
[5-10 minutes]