News

  1. EVINE
MNP
Visit at MNP Les Eyzies-de-Tayac
October-November 2025

Ewa Dutkiewicz, Marieluise Hahn, and Chris Bentz visit the Musée national de Préhistoire (MNP) in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac for data collection. Thanks to Catherine Cretin for hosting us.

CUDAN Open Lab
Talk at CUDAN Open Lab
November 12 2025

Chris Bentz gave an invited talk about ``Statistical properties of a 40,000 year old sign system'' at Cultural Data Analytics (CUDAN) Open Lab series. Thanks to Mikhail Tamm for the invitation, and Maximilian Schich for hosting the event.

Professorship
Professorship at Saarland University
September 25 2025

Chris Bentz has been appointed as Associate Professor of Digital Humanities (tenure-track) at Saarland University, Saarbrücken. Thanks to Jakob von Weizsäcker for the personal meeting and interesting discussions.

COMPILA 2025
Talk at COMPILA 2025
September 04 2025

Chris Bentz gave an invited talk about ``Language models and language complexity'' at this year's Complexity in Language (COMPILA) workshop as part of the Conference on Complex Systems (CCS) in Siena, Italy.

UISPP Workshop
International Workshop "Engraved bones"
July 30 2025

Ewa Dutkiewicz and Chris Bentz received funding by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for organizing a workshop on "Engraved bones: Gripping aids, signs, and decorations" as part of the UISPP Commission on "Modified Bone and Shell". The workshop will be held at the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Berlin from May 6th to 9th, 2026.

Collections
Visits at Museums in Western Germany
July 1-21 2025

Ewa Dutkiewicz visited overall five collections in Western Germany for inspecting artefacts. This included Monrepos in Neuwied, Stadtmuseum am Markt (SAM) in Wiesbaden, Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier, LVR Landesmuseum Bonn, and the Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, Universität zu Köln. Thanks to Olaf Jöris, Daniel Burger-Völlmecke, Jost Mergen, Peter Henrich, Ralf W. Schmitz, Andreas Maier, and Rebecca Gnau for their help.

Monrepos
SignBase Retreat
July 4-6 2025

The SignBase team met for a retreat at Koblenz. We also visited the "Archäologisches Forschungszentrum und Museum für menschliche Verhaltensevolution" at Monrepos. Many thanks to Olaf Jöris for the guided tour to some of the local sites and the museum.

Video Trailer
Talk at the University of Passau
July 3 2025

Mattis List and Chris Bentz gave pro- and contra arguments on the question: "Do language models understand human language?" as part of the open lecture series on Artificial intelligence – between hype and reality at the University of Passau. Thanks to the organizers, in particular Steffen Herbold for the invitation.

SKW
Talk at Institute for Empirical Language Sciences
June 4 2025

Chris Bentz gave a talk about "Evolutionary Semiotics: Visual Signs from Prehistory to Writing" at the Institute for Empirical Language Sciences at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. Thanks to the audience for the interesting discussions and their feedback. Thanks in particular to the director of the Institute Gerd Carling for the invitation.

FAU
Visit at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg
May 21-27 2025

Ewa Dutkiewicz and Christian Bentz visited the Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte Erlangen at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg for digitization of mobile artefacts. Thanks in particular to Thorsten Uthmeier for hosting us!

Archäologische Staatssammlung
Visit at Archäologische Staatssammlung München
May 14-20 2025

Ewa Dutkiewicz, Marieluise Hahn, and Christian Bentz visited the Archäologische Staatssammlung München for digitization of mobile artefacts. Thanks to the team of the museum, and in particular Heiner Schwarzberg for hosting us!

AIPP Symposium
Talk at AIPP Symposium
May 5th 2025

Ewa Dutkiewicz gave a talk about "Evolutionary Semiotics: From Marking Bones to Writing" at the Symposium of the International Academy of Prehistory and Protohistory (AIPP), Museum Island Berlin, Bode Museum.

Carla
New PhD student
April 2025

Our new PhD student, Carla Olabe-Rodríguez, started in April. Her research interests include Natural Language Processing (NLP), psycholinguistics, and language evolution. She holds an MA in English & American Studies from FSU Jena (2022–2024), with a focus on cognitive linguistics. Within the EVINE project she investigates statistical properties of speech in comparison to written language.

Planet Africa
Reel about African signs from Cave Art to Writing
April 2025

Reel by Ewa Dutkiewicz about signs from African cave art to modern day writing, related to the exhibition Planet Africa, eine archäologische Zeitreise at the James-Simon-Galerie (06.12.24 - 27.04.25).

NHMW
Visiting Museums in Vienna and Mistelbach
February 17-27, 2025

Ewa Dutkiewicz and Christian Bentz visit the Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut (ÖAI) and the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (NHMW), as well as the Mamuz Museum in Mistelbach for primary data acquisition in the context of SignBase. Many thanks to Marc Händel (ÖAI), Caroline Posch (NHMW), and Barbara Schuller (Mamuz Museum) for hosting us!

HEAS
Talk at the University of Vienna
February 19, 2025

Ewa Dutkiewicz and Christian Bentz were invited to the talk series of the Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences (HEAS) group at the University of Vienna. Thanks to Mareike Stahlschmidt and Maeve Nic Samhradáin for hosting us.

World Neolithic Congress
Workshop on Icons in Transition
November 2024

Christian Bentz and Ewa Dutkiewicz gave a talk about "Information Encoding in the Paleolithic" at the Workshop on "Icons in Transition", organized by Marion Benz, Barbara Helwing, and Ewa Dutkiewicz as part of the World Neolithic Congress, Harran University, in Şanlıurfa, Turkey.

CELIA Interest Group
Talk at Freie Uni Berlin
May 23-24 2024

Ewa Dutkiewicz and Christian Bentz gave a joined talk at the Workshop for "The Co-Evolution of Language, Interaction and Architecture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives", hosted by the CELIA Interest Group, Freie Universität Berlin. Thanks to Antje Wilton and Kenan Hochuli for hosting us!

Prähistorisches Kolloquium
Prähistorisches Kolloquium
May 2024

Ewa Dutkiewicz was invited to give a talk about "Die Zeichen des Paläolithikums – Verzierungen, Kalender oder Schrift?" at the Colloquium for Prehistory, University of Cologne.

SIGTYP
Talk at SIGTYP
March 22 2024

Christian Bentz was invited to give a keynote at the 6th Workshop on Research in Computational Linguistic Typology and Multilingual NLP SIGTYP, hosted at EACL 2024.

LesEyzies
Visit at Les Eyzies
March 2023

In preparation for the EVINE project, we visited the National Museum of Prehistory in Les Eyzies de Tayac, Dordogne, France. Thanks to the curator Catherine Cretin for hosting us!

CLDF Workshop
CLDF Workshop
December 2023

Chrisitan Bentz gave a talk at the Workshop on Cross-Linguistic Data Formats (CLDF), MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig.