IBE meets AIR: a framework for structured archaeological reasoning and digital reconstruction
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Date
2025
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Eurographics Association
Abstract
The increasing use of digital tools in archaeology has vastly expanded our capacity to document and visualise the past, yet the reasoning that connects evidence to interpretation often remains implicit or undocumented. This paper addresses that gap by integrating Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE)-a philosophical model of hypothesis evaluation-into the Archaeological Interactive Report (AIR), a semantic platform for managing and visualising archaeological data. We demonstrate how this integration enables transparent, iterative, and reproducible archaeological interpretation by structuring hypotheses, linking them to evidence, and assessing them against explanatory virtues. Two case studies illustrate the potential of this framework: the systematic reconstruction of the House of the Greek Epigrams in Pompeii, and an experimental application to the Gribshunden shipwreck, where reasoning evolves alongside data collection. The result is a replicable method that formalises archaeological argumentation and embeds it directly within digital infrastructure, making interpretation not only visible, but critically assessable and reusable.
Description
CCS Concepts: Visualization → Visualization systems and tools; Human computer interaction (HCI) → Interactive systems and tools
@inproceedings{10.2312:dh.20253298,
booktitle = {Digital Heritage},
editor = {Campana, Stefano and Ferdani, Daniele and Graf, Holger and Guidi, Gabriele and Hegarty, Zackary and Pescarin, Sofia and Remondino, Fabio},
title = {{IBE meets AIR: a framework for structured archaeological reasoning and digital reconstruction}},
author = {Campanaro, Danilo Marco and Derudas, Paola and Thomsen, Mikkel H. and Foley, Brendan and Nurra, Federico},
year = {2025},
publisher = {The Eurographics Association},
ISBN = {978-3-03868-277-6},
DOI = {10.2312/dh.20253298}
}