Ten Questions and a Few More Thoughts
Recently, I had the pleasure of being interviewed for the Berliner Antike-Blog, a platform dedicated to research on the ancient world in the Berlin/Brandenburg region. The format – “10 Questions” – is a series I’ve enjoyed reading for years, so being asked to participate felt like a small milestone. Rather than simply reposting the interview here, I wanted to reflect on some of the themes that emerged and expand on a few points that didn’t quite fit the format.
Coming Home
The interview marks an interesting moment in my career. After several years at the University of Cologne – where I taught 3D documentation and modeling, and explored archaeogaming – I’ve returned to Berlin. My new role as head of a research unit of the KIŠIB project at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities brings me back to where my academic journey began.
KIŠIB is ambitious: we’re building a digital corpus of approximately 80,000 ancient West Asian seals and sealings. These small objects – used for millennia to authenticate documents and seal containers – are scattered across hundreds of museums worldwide. Our goal is to make them searchable, comparable, and accessible using FAIR and LOUD standards, machine learning, and a healthy dose of international collaboration.
What excites me most isn’t just the technical challenge, though. It’s the opportunity to work with colleagues in West Asia whose cultural heritage we’re documenting. The question of who gets to interpret and present the past has always been central to my work.
The Uncomfortable Questions About AI
When asked about where the field might be heading in ten years, I gave what I hope was an honest answer: AI will play a central role, but I’m genuinely uncertain whether to be excited or worried.
The potential is obvious. Automated segmentation of seal images, pattern recognition across massive datasets, connecting fragmentary information – these are tasks where machine learning could free us to focus on the interpretive work that actually requires human judgment. But the same technology that promises efficiency also carries risks we’re only beginning to understand.
My concern isn’t that AI will replace archaeologists. It’s more subtle than that. It’s about transparency: when an algorithm identifies a pattern, can we understand why? But, it’s also about bias: what assumptions are baked into training data, and whose perspectives get amplified or silenced? And it’s about interpretation: will the seductive power of seemingly objective computational results make us less likely to question our conclusions?
These aren’t reasons to avoid AI – they’re reasons to approach it with the same critical rigor we apply to any other methodology. The challenge for the next generation of digital archaeologists isn’t just learning to use these tools. It’s developing frameworks for evaluating when and how to trust them.
Archaeoinformatics as a Discipline
One point I made in the interview that I want to emphasize here: archaeoinformatics is not a service discipline. It’s a field with its own research questions.
How do we model uncertainty in archaeological data? Also, how do we structure information to accommodate multiple interpretations rather than forcing false certainty? How do we design algorithms that are appropriate for archaeological contexts, where “ground truth” is often contested? These are theoretical problems that deserve serious attention.
The practical implication for students is simple: don’t treat digital skills as something you pick up on the side. Engage with the intellectual foundations of the field. The technical skills will become outdated; the critical thinking won’t.
The Excavation Game That Doesn’t Exist
Perhaps my favorite question was about which archaeological method I’d want to see realistically depicted in a video game. My answer: The excavation process itself is designed as a strategic puzzle.
Imagine having to make real decisions – where to dig, how to allocate resources, what to document, and how – with each choice affecting what you can learn about a site. Less tomb raiding, more methodological decision-making under uncertainty. A game that shows why context and documentation are what distinguish archaeology from treasure hunting.
Does such a game exist? Not really. Maybe someday. If any game developers are reading this and want to collaborate on a grant application, you know where to find me.
What I Didn’t Say
Interviews impose constraints, and there’s always more to say. What the ten questions couldn’t quite capture is how these various threads connect: the critical media studies background from my dissertation on Eurocentric visual representations, the years of teaching 3D methods and watching students discover that digital tools are never neutral, the emerging work on archaeogaming, and what games teach us about how society imagines the past.
It all comes down to one conviction: the way we represent the past matters. Whether it’s a 19th-century reconstruction drawing, a modern 3D visualization, or a machine learning classification, every representation carries assumptions and perspectives. Our job isn’t to eliminate bias – that’s impossible – but to be transparent about it and to make space for multiple voices.
The full interview (in German) is available at the Berliner Antike-Blog:
teamredaktion (30. December 2025). 10 Fragen an Sebastian Hageneuer. Berliner Antike*-Blog. Last accessed on 7. January 2026. https://doi.org/10.58079/15faa.