Can stones be made (artificially) intelligent? Understanding people from patterns and similarities of architectural decoration in Roman Asia Minor

The disciplines of History, Archaeology and Computer Vision have each stimulated the development and use of diverse digital tools within their own domain. But what if we dare to ask a research question positioned right at the crossroad of these fields, necessitating the analysis of people’s past via ancient texts and monuments (in casu thousands of legacy photographs of decorated buildings)? And what if, in addition, the expertise and data on the latter was locked into a silo due to its language barrier, hermetic and outdated scientific traditions and single-sided research finality? In this paper we return to dawn of our era (1st century BCE - 3rd CE) in the historical region of Asia Minor (roughly modern-day Turkey) to put this to the test. With the help of a Nodegoat relational database and pattern recognition AI-techniques we attempt to break down this silo and unlock its data’s true socio-historical potential.