Archaeology of Europe, The Mediterranean and The Levant

Archaeology of Europe, the Mediterranean and the Levant encompasses an expansive record of human societies from the earliest farming villages to complex imperial networks. Investigations range from inland tell sites and urban settlements to submerged harbours and shipwrecks along ancient coastlines. Surveys on land employ remote sensing, geophysical prospection and systematic fieldwalking to map sites and landscape use, while underwater projects use side-scan sonar, sub-bottom profiling and photogrammetry to document wrecks and drowned ports. Excavations recover architectural remains, artefact assemblages and organic materials, with dendrochronology and epigraphic evidence anchoring chronological frameworks. Geographic information systems and numerical modelling simulate movement of goods and people, integrating factors such as wind, currents and terrain resistance. Experimental archaeology, through reconstruction of vessels and replica tools, tests hypotheses of craft techniques, voyage performance and resource exploitation. Conservation science underpins both in situ preservation and careful recovery of fragile organic substances and metals. Conceptual approaches—viewing the sea as a lived seascape or the land as a palimpsest of human–environment interaction—highlight the dynamic interplay of social, economic and ecological forces that shaped past communities and their enduring impact on modern heritage management and climate resilience strategies.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent analyses of charcoal assemblages from early Iron Age copper smelting sites in the southern Levant have quantified shifts in fuel procurement. Initially dependent on high-calorific woodland taxa, smelters progressively exploited marginal species, signalling widespread deforestation and environmental degradation that contributed to the industry’s collapse. A multi-criteria simulation of European coastal shipping in the age of sail has for the first time produced monthly routing maps and journey-time estimates by combining historical meteorological data with vessel performance parameters. This model reveals recurrent maritime corridors and refines our understanding of trade seasonality and port hierarchies across the Atlantic–Mediterranean nexus. A deep-learning framework for restoring and attributing ancient inscriptions has markedly improved text reconstruction and provenance assignment. By integrating neural-network predictions with epigraphic expertise, accuracy of damaged text recovery has more than doubled, offering a new toolkit for deciphering fragmented stone and ceramic inscriptions across the Mediterranean world.

Archaeology of Europe, The Mediterranean and The Levant publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in archaeology of europe, the mediterranean and the levant across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Dendrochronology: Dating wooden timbers by analysing annual tree-ring patterns to establish construction phases and provenance.

Epigraphy: The study and interpretation of inscribed texts on durable materials such as stone, ceramic or metal.

Remote sensing: Detection and mapping of archaeological features from aerial or satellite imagery without ground disturbance.

Least-cost path analysis: GIS-based modelling that calculates the most efficient route between two points by minimising selected cost factors (e.g. wind resistance, terrain roughness).

Seascape: The conceptual and physical maritime environment understood as a cultural and ecological space shaped by human-sea interactions.

References

1. Fuel exploitation and environmental degradation at the Iron Age copper industry of the Timna Valley, southern Israel. Scientific Reports (2022).
2. A multi-criteria simulation of European coastal shipping routes in the ‘age of sail’. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2024).
3. Restoring and attributing ancient texts using deep neural networks. Nature (2022).
4. Weaving social networks from cultural similarities on the neolithisation process in the Western Mediterranean: Evolutionary trajectories using projectile tools. PLOS ONE (2024).
5. The Neolithic Transition in the Western Mediterranean: a Complex and Non-Linear Diffusion Process—The Radiocarbon Record Revisited. Radiocarbon (2018).
6. “A land whose stones are iron...”—Iron ore sources in the Southern Levant. Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology (2023).