News

Ewa Dutkiewicz and Chris Bentz visit the Archäologisches Museum Colombischlössle in Freiburg. Thanks to Hans Oelze for hosting us and Elke Miethe for help with the artefacts.

Ewa Dutkiewicz and Chris Bentz visit the Archäologisches Hegau-Museum in Singen. Thanks to Nuria Schäfer and Ralph Stephan for their hospitality and help with the finds.

Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum (Switzerland)

Ewa Dutkiewicz visits the Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum in Zurich and the Sammlungszentrum in Affoltern am Albis. Thanks to the curator of the Stone and Bronze Age department Jacqueline Perifanakis for her hospitality and help with the finds.

Städtisches Museum Engen (Germany)

Ewa Dutkiewicz visits the Städtisches Museum Engen in southwestern Germany. Thanks to the head of the museum Eva Maria Berger as well as Dunja Harenberg for their hospitality.

Haus der Museen, Olten (Switzerland)

Ewa Dutkiewicz and Chris Bentz visit the Archäologische Museum Kanton Solothurn in Olten (Switzerland). Thanks to the curator Karin Zuberbühler and Pierre Harb for hosting us.

International Conference, PETRI Berlin

Ewa Dutkiewicz, Christian Bentz, and Éva David organized the International Conference on "Engraving Bones" at the PETRI Berlin. Many thanks to Marieluise Hahn, Carla Olabe, and Gizem Özbey for their support with conference organization. Finally, thanks also to all the participants for making this an inspiring meeting!

Visit at the Seminar für Ur- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie, Universität Jena

Ewa Dutkiewicz and Chris Bentz visit the Seminar für Ur- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena for data collection. Thanks to Clemens Pasda and Enrico Paust for hosting us.

Visit at the Museum für Ur- und Frühgeschichte Weimar

Ewa Dutkiewicz and Chris Bentz visit the Museum für Ur- und Frühgeschichte Weimar – Weimar for data collection. Thanks to Tim Schüler for hosting us.

Article published on signs of the Swabian Aurignacian

First main article of the EVINE project on Humans 40,000 y ago developed as system of conventional signs published by Chris Bentz and Ewa Dutkiewicz.

Visit at the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte (Halle an der Saale)

Ewa Dutkiewicz and Chris Bentz visit the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte – Halle (Saale) for data collection. Thanks to Marcel Weiß for hosting us, Veit Dresely for an insight into the depot, and Harald Meller for hosting us.

Visit at Musée d'Art et d'Archéologie du Périgord – Périgueux

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.

Visit at Musée d'Aquitaine – Bordeaux

Ewa Dutkiewicz visits the Musée d'Aquitaine – Bordeaux for data collection. Thanks to Vincent Mistrot for his hospitality.

Visit at MNP Les Eyzies-de-Tayac

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.

Talk at CUDAN Open Lab

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.

Professorship at Saarland University

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.

Talk at COMPILA 2025

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.

International Workshop "Engraved bones"

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.

Visits at Museums in Western Germany

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.

SignBase Retreat

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.

Talk at the University of Passau

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.

Talk at Institute for Empirical Language Sciences

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.

Visit at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg

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!

Visit at Archäologische Staatssammlung München

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!

Talk at AIPP Symposium

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.

New PhD student

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 about African signs from Cave Art to Writing

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).

Visiting Museums in Vienna and Mistelbach

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!

Talk at the University of Vienna

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.

Workshop on Icons in Transition

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.

Talk at Freie Uni Berlin

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!

Prähistorisches Kolloquium

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.

Talk at SIGTYP

Christian Bentz was invited to give a keynote at the 6th Workshop on Research in Computational Linguistic Typology and Multilingual NLP SIGTYP, hosted at EACL 2024.

Visit at Les Eyzies

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!

CLDF Workshop

Chrisitan Bentz gave a talk at the Workshop on Cross-Linguistic Data Formats (CLDF), MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig.