This field employs data modeling, statistical analysis, and computer simulations to understand and reconstruct past human behaviors and societal developments.
AI science is an emerging discipline that attempts to uncover, quantitatively represent and explore specific properties and patterns of archaeological information.
This opens archaeological analysis to a wide range of computer-based information processing methods fit to solve problems of great complexity.
Its agenda can be split up in two major research themes that complement each other: There is already a large body of literature on the use of quantitative methods and computer-based analysis in archaeology.
Scientific progress in archaeology, as in any other discipline, requires building abstract, generalized and transferable knowledge about the processes that underlie past human actions and their manifestations.
Being an emerging field of research, AI science is currently a rather dispersed discipline in need of stronger, well-funded and institutionalized embedding, especially in academic teaching.
Currently, universities based in the UK provide the largest share of study programmes for prospective quantitative archaeologists, with more institutes in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands developing a strong profile quickly.
Vienna's city archaeology unit also hosts an annual event that is quickly growing in international importance (see links at bottom).