Ewa Dutkiewicz and Chris Bentz visit the Musée d'Art et d'Archéologie du Périgord (MAAP) in Périgueux for data collection. Thanks to Isabelle Maleyre and Céline Dumas for hosting us.
Ewa Dutkiewicz visits the Musée d'Aquitaine – Bordeaux for data collection. Thanks to Vincent Mistrot for his hospitality.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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).
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
Chrisitan Bentz gave a talk at the Workshop on Cross-Linguistic Data Formats (CLDF), MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig.
