Modeling temporal uncertainty in historical datasets

TY - GEN

T1 - Modeling temporal uncertainty in historical datasets

AU - Kase, Vojtech

AU - Sobotkova, Adéla

AU - Heřmánková, Petra

PY - 2023/12

Y1 - 2023/12

N2 - This paper explores several approaches to assess temporal trends within archaeological and historical datasets containing records marked with significant extent of uncertainty accompanying their dating. We evaluate the strengths and pitfalls of these methodologies by employing two datasets: one comprising ancient shipwrecks and the other ancient Greek inscriptions. While these objects can, in principle, be precisely dated to specific years, they are often assigned broader date ranges, spanning centuries or longer historical periods. We propose that the most promising approaches involve using these date ranges as defining probabilities. By randomly assigning specific dates based on these probabilities, we enable hypothesis testing for temporal trends. As we want to encourage other scholars to employ the methods we propose, we offer a detailed description of the implementation of these methods using functions from the Python tempun package.

AB - This paper explores several approaches to assess temporal trends within archaeological and historical datasets containing records marked with significant extent of uncertainty accompanying their dating. We evaluate the strengths and pitfalls of these methodologies by employing two datasets: one comprising ancient shipwrecks and the other ancient Greek inscriptions. While these objects can, in principle, be precisely dated to specific years, they are often assigned broader date ranges, spanning centuries or longer historical periods. We propose that the most promising approaches involve using these date ranges as defining probabilities. By randomly assigning specific dates based on these probabilities, we enable hypothesis testing for temporal trends. As we want to encourage other scholars to employ the methods we propose, we offer a detailed description of the implementation of these methods using functions from the Python tempun package.

KW - historical datasets

KW - inscriptions

KW - python

KW - temporal uncertainty

KW - tempun package

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85178667385&partnerID=8YFLogxK

M3 - Article in proceedings

T3 - CEUR Workshop Proceedings

SP - 413

EP - 425

BT - Proceedings of the Computational Humanities Research Conference 2023

A2 - Šeļa , Artjoms

A2 - Jannidis, Fotis

A2 - Romanowska, Iza

PB - CEUR-WS.org

ER -