TY - JOUR
T1 - A computational linguistic methodology for assessing semiotic structure in prehistoric art and the meaning of southern Scandinavian Mesolithic ornamentation
AU - Herskind, Lasse Lukas Platz
AU - Riede, Felix
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors
PY - 2024/5
Y1 - 2024/5
N2 - Non-figurative prehistoric art is comparatively common yet challenging to decode and hence to understand. At the heart of the difficulty of assessing the presence of semiotic structure in prehistoric art is a lack of appropriate, replicable, and case-transferable methodologies. We here propose a novel approach derived from computational linguistics, in which k-skip-n-gram (skipgram) models and associated pointwise mutual information (PMI) measures are customised to the analysis of prehistoric art. In applying this methodology to a large corpus of portable art from the South Scandinavian Mesolithic, we demonstrate how the mutual relationship between individual motifs can be established. In the case of Mesolithic portable art, our analysis strongly suggests that there is no evident semiotic structure – this was likely not a form of proto-writing – but salient changes of motif occurrence over time are detectable. These changes are sensitive to changes in population density, structure, and connectedness, and may relate to increased territoriality in the Late Mesolithic. The method presented here is readily case-transferable and renders possible further linguistic and semiotic analyses of prehistoric art.
AB - Non-figurative prehistoric art is comparatively common yet challenging to decode and hence to understand. At the heart of the difficulty of assessing the presence of semiotic structure in prehistoric art is a lack of appropriate, replicable, and case-transferable methodologies. We here propose a novel approach derived from computational linguistics, in which k-skip-n-gram (skipgram) models and associated pointwise mutual information (PMI) measures are customised to the analysis of prehistoric art. In applying this methodology to a large corpus of portable art from the South Scandinavian Mesolithic, we demonstrate how the mutual relationship between individual motifs can be established. In the case of Mesolithic portable art, our analysis strongly suggests that there is no evident semiotic structure – this was likely not a form of proto-writing – but salient changes of motif occurrence over time are detectable. These changes are sensitive to changes in population density, structure, and connectedness, and may relate to increased territoriality in the Late Mesolithic. The method presented here is readily case-transferable and renders possible further linguistic and semiotic analyses of prehistoric art.
KW - Computational linguistics
KW - Mesolithic
KW - Prehistoric art
KW - Semiotics
KW - Skipgrams
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85189804120&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jas.2024.105969
DO - 10.1016/j.jas.2024.105969
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85189804120
SN - 0305-4403
VL - 165
JO - Journal of Archaeological Science
JF - Journal of Archaeological Science
M1 - 105969
ER -