In recent years, the area referred to as "Edom" in ancient Egyptian and Biblical texts, dating to the 2nd and 1st millennium BCE, has sparked much scholarly debate over chronology, the nature of its social organization and the relationship of the archaeology of Edom to ancient Near Eastern textual sources. Located in southern Jordan, relatively little Iron Age (ca. 1200 - 500 BCE) archaeological work has been carried out here resulting in a failure to develop an objective chronology for measuring and understanding social evolution in one of the southern Levant's key geographic regions. This has resulted in many gaps concerning the nature of the social complexity of Edom. This dissertation examines the emergence of complex societies and social boundaries in Iron Age Edom through the lens of ceramic analysis. Consequently, the thesis will illuminate some of the mechanisms underlying social change and social boundary formation in this region. The study tests a range of models using new archaeological and ceramic data from Iron Age Edom in the following manner: 1) by relying on theory from cognitive anthropology, a series of testable methods are employed for determining ancient social boundaries based on examining how technological styles are learned by a culture; 2) using recent UCSD archaeological excavations from seven previously untested sites in Edom that provide new data for testing these social models concerning social complexity in Biblical Edom; 3) employing ceramic ethnoarchaeology to help analyze the ancient ceramic assemblages from these sites to clarify their role in social boundary formation; 4) using petrographic analysis that gives a more detailed look into the ceramic assemblages, thereby increasing an understanding of where pottery originated and what materials were used - factors that ultimately reflect distinctions between different ancient pottery producing communities; and 5) developing the first comprehensive ceramic typology for the entire Iron Age II (ca. 1000 - 500 BCE) sequence of Edom that encompasses both the lowlands and highlands. Thus, this study contributes new data, methods and testable theoretical models for studying the archaeological record of the Iron Age Southern Levant when the first historical state level societies emerged in this part of the ancient Near East

Archaeological excavations are the last stronghold of analog recording in this era of digital archaeology. Around the world perhaps at this very moment excavations are occurring where artifacts, architecture, stratigraphic layers, and other archaeological datasets are recorded using only the paper and pen. Every evening after an excavation, supervisors and their volunteers huddle over their illuminated graph paper to convert their written notes and drawings into daily top plans. It is these paper top plans, journal notes, and overstuffed binders filled with printed spreadsheets that much later are meticulously entered into a computer. At this point, long after the season of excavation has been wrapped up, that the drudgery of data entry begins, which with large excavations can take months to digitize, process, and produce data that can be digitally analyzed. As multiple seasons of excavations compound, the delay between field excavation, ability to analyze and to publish increases exponentially.

There is an increasing demand within the humanities and social sciences to use computers to analyze material culture and discover patterns of historical and anthropological significance. Using southern Levantine Iron Age (ca. 1200-500 BCE) ceramics as a test case, the Pottery Informatics Query Database (PIQD) provides a novel solution for constructing regional ceramic typologies. Beyond digitally archiving 2D/3D-scanned ceramics, the PIQD encodes ceramic profiles as mathematical representations. This method of digital preservation enables rapid queries to be conducted in a mathematically grounded approach. In this sense, the queries are similar to online Basic Local Alignment Search Tool searches developed in the field of genetics by rapidly associating large quantities of digital vessel profiles to each other based on similar morphological traits. The PIQD is an open-source online tool that enables scholars and students to test humanities-related hypotheses against ceramic data in ways that conventional publications or other databases cannot provide. Regional spatial patterning of the ceramic data is delivered over a Google Earth-based user interface. In this paper, we present the PIQD as an objective method for developing a comprehensive ceramic typology of an entire region of archaeological study and provide an arena to conduct novel scientific research. We then demonstrate through a case study its analytical capabilities to handle large datasets of 3D scans and digitized 2D ceramic profiles and generate cultural inferences with the ceramic assemblages of the Iron Age II "Edomite" region located in modern southern Jordan. PIQD adds an important methodological tool to the post-excavation cyber-archaeology tool box. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

In late 2013, a joint archaeological and computer vision project was initiated to digitally capture the archaeological remains in the al-Ula valley, Saudi Arabia. The goal of our team of archeologists and computer scientists is to integrate 3D scanning technologies to produce 3D reconstructions of archaeological sites. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) serve as the vehicle which makes this scanning possible. UAVs allow the acquisition of 3D data as easily from the air as from the ground. This project focuses on the recent excavations carried out in ancient Dedan by King Saud University and the country's conservation of the Lihyanite "lion tombs" carved into the ancient city's cliff faces. Over the next several years this site will be used as a test bed to validate the potential of this emerging technology for rapid cultural heritage documentation. We additionally scanned several areas in Mada'in Saleh, an ancient Nabatean city filled with monumental carved sandstone tomb facades, rivaled only by the capital of the Nabatean empire: Petra.

Cyber-archaeology represents the marriage of archaeology, computer science, engineering, and the natural sciences with the aim of taking advantage of constantly evolving technologies for digital data capture, curation, analyses and dissemination. Digital data collection tools are perhaps the most rapidly changing arenas of development in cyber-archaeology and are becoming affordable tools for every archaeologist. In this paper, we examine two users’ approaches to produce point cloud models of archaeological sites using structure from motion (SfM) photography. The experiment took place at the Fountain of Peirene in ancient Corinth, Greece. Their implementation of the technology and their results are compared to highlight the very important role the photo-shooting session can play in the final outcome of the SfM reconstruction. We correlate the users’ approaches to the applied algorithms’ robust features and known limitations to provide a technical explanation of how archaeologists can significantly improve their success in SfM. As new algorithms and software emerge making SfM a common tool in archaeological documentation the methodology presented in this paper will enable archaeologists to meet the high demand for digital documentation on a global scale.