Student: Dimitrios Krikonis
Program: Data Science and Information Technologies / Big Data and
Artificial Intelligence

Title:
Machine Learning for Archaeology: A Human-in-the-Loop Chronology
Prediction System for Pottery from the Athenian Agora

Abstract:
This thesis investigates the use of machine learning as a decision-support
tool for archaeological pottery dating, aiming to provide initial
estimates without replacing expert judgement. First, it conducts a
comparative evaluation of text- and image-processing methods and different
classification and regression algorithms, using 1,910 pottery items from
the The Athenian Agora publication series. Five feature extraction methods
are compared across two modalities: TF-IDF and BERT for text, Canny with
HOG, ResNet and ViT for images, along with their six multimodal
combinations, giving eleven feature sets in total. The results show that
text-based methods outperform image-based approaches, while combining the
two does not provide a reliable improvement, possibly due to the limited
availability of photographs. TF-IDF performs better than BERT on the
dataset, and Vision Transformer (ViT) achieves the strongest results among
image representations. Additionally, a web application was designed and
developed (https://dimitris-kr.github.io/pottery-chronology-predictor/)
that integrates the selected models into a predict–validate–retrain
workflow, allowing archaeologists to review predictions, examine their
uncertainty, validate or correct chronologies, and contribute data for
future model retraining. The system was evaluated by its intended users,
who successfully completed the full workflow. However, whether successive
retraining cycles improve predictive performance remains an open question,
requiring additional validated data collected over time and a dedicated
evaluation methodology.

Date/Time: October 21, 2026 – 13:05 PM EEST

Examination Committee:
Maria Roussou (supervisor), Associate Professor, University of Athens
Alexandros Ntoulas, Assistant Professor, University of Athens
Ioannis Panagakis, Associate Professor, University of Athens

Presentation Link:
https://uoa.webex.com/meet/mariar