In recent decades, the rich cultural heritage of the Near East is undergoing a digital revolution. Comprehensive online repositories have made the digital publishing of artefacts in 2D images, interactive 3D models, as well as text editions, a more sustainable common practice. Furthermore, computational analyses of ancient Near Eastern artefacts, texts and art, are starting to become more prevalent, applying quantitative analyses, natural language processing (NLP) or machine learning (ML), to answer questions about these complex ancient civilizations.
We are excited to announce that the second Digital Ancient Near Eastern Studies conference (#DANES24) will take place as a virtual event on 5-6 December 2024 during the afternoon hours CET.
This year’s theme is “Digital Resources of the Ancient Near East: Creation, Application Studies, and Maintenance”. We particularly invite talks about using and expanding digital datasets and databases related to the ancient Near East and/or talks about the creation, maintenance, and development of such resources.
The DANES conferences series is one of several activities of the DANES network, whose purpose is to establish and maintain a community of practitioners of digital and computational methods for the study of the ancient world.
The exploration of texts and artifacts as data using the plethora of computational tools and techniques available today requires additional training outside one’s area of expertise. This interdisciplinary approach has been growing rapidly in recent years and developing its own best practice standards and conventions that require familiarization with several fields of study.
The conference, Computational Perspectives on Ancient Near Eastern Literature, Art and Material Culture, aims to establish a professional network for Digital Ancient Near Eastern Studies (DANES). This will consolidate the successes of recent initiatives led by different research centers, and discuss how best to integrate computational approaches and digital humanities research for ancient Near Eastern texts, art and artefacts. Lastly, we will Incorporate into these discussions a critical perspective on the use of computational methods for text analysis, as well the visual analysis of ancient Near Eastern objects. This conference will include invited long and short talks, an in retrospect section, and poster presentations.
The purpose of the DANES conferences is to highlight recent work on the combination of the two worlds, showcasing current best practice, informing the community about ongoing research of its members, and introducing more students and scholars of the ancient world to new approaches made possible with current technological developments.
We invite students and scholars to present their original papers in the conference, either remotely or in person, on the application of one or more of the following methodologies and issues:
In particular, this year’s theme is intended to showcase the research that is only possible when sources are made available digitally and as openly as possible, and to highlight the increasing amount of work our community does in creating and maintaining resources and tools.
The conference will include additional invited keynote speakers, a Q&A session, and virtual hangout sessions.
We invite students and scholars to present their work on using, creating, or maintaining digital datasets and databases of ancient texts and artifacts from the Near East and Mediterranean, from the beginnings of writing to Late Antiquity.
Methods used and topics can include, but are not limited to, the following in alphabetical order:
To be updated…
We welcome the following types of submissions:
Please submit your abstracts through this Google Form.
Long and short talks will be published as a special issue in a leading, peer-reviewed journal–see for example the Insights into Digital Ancient Near Eastern Studies (iDANES) publications in it - Information Technology related to DANES’23. Contributions can be published as white papers on the OpenDANES platform, which is already indexed by Google Scholar. Workshops and posters will be published on OpenDANES as well, and will receive a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) upon publication.
For any questions, please contact the conference organizers:
On behalf of the OpenDANES board members: