Models and Algorithms for Chronology

Abstract

The last decades have seen the rise of many fundamental chronological debates in Old World archaeology, with far-reaching historical implications. Yet, outside of radiocarbon dating—where Bayesian formal tools and models are applied—these chronological debates are still relying on non-formal models, and dates are mostly derived by hand, without the use of mathematical or computational tools, albeit the large number of complex constraints to be taken into account. This article presents formal models and algorithms for encoding archaeologically-relevant chronological constraints, computing optimal chronologies in an automated way, and automatically checking for chronological properties of a given model. These techniques are partly inspired from those (namely zones and DBMs) that have been developed in the setting of automated analysis of timed automata. Digital Object Identifier 10.4230/LIPIcs...