Guilherme D'Andrea Curra is a current PhD student at the Faculty of Archaeology.

More information about Guilherme D'Andrea Curra

Current research

Guilherme’s research started in 2024 and deals with pattern recognition methods, analytical tools and interpretive approaches for constructing pottery typologies in archaeology. Two of the primary research questions are the identification of relevant differences in vessel morphology and technology, and the description of complex cultural components of vessels in order to be processed by unsupervised learning algorithms. Additional questions include the definition of an interpretive framework for clusters of pottery assemblages, and the identification of archaeological contextual information in datasets that is most significant for cluster analysis.

An important research concern is the alignment between computational methods that have been developed or improved in recent times, and the traditional archaeological methods and theories related to definition of typologies that have been proposed by archaeologists since the 1940s. The research methods will be applied to different datasets of Chalcolithic/Bronze Age pottery from Egypt and the Near East, some with well-established typologies, to investigate the extent to which it is possible to replicate them through a new typology definition process, and others with more open alternatives for interpretation.

Curriculum vitae

Guilherme graduated from the MSc programme in Archaeological Science at Leiden University (2022), with a thesis related to machine learning methods applied to the classification of archaeological pottery assemblages. He holds a BSc in Computer Science (University of Caxias do Sul, Brazil, 1993) and a BA in Archaeology (University of Leicester, UK, 2017), with respective research related to software reuse in object-oriented environments, and the shape and significance of the Aegean Stirrup Jar in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean societies.

He worked on several IT-related projects as a systems analyst, designer, developer and as a specialist in project management methods and processes, then worked for some time in contract archaeology, dealing with surveying, excavation and recording of archaeological contexts, features and artefacts. At the Faculty of Archaeology he is having the opportunity to integrate both areas of knowledge and further develop his long-standing interest in computational methods applied to archaeology.

Publications

D’Andrea Curra, G. (2022). Classification of pottery assemblages in archaeology: a machine
learning approach. MSc thesis, Leiden University. https:⁠/⁠/hdl.handle.net/1887/3421358

Office days

Not currently housed at the faculty, available (13:00-17:00 CET) by appointment for online meetings.