By Stuart Kerr, Technology Correspondent
📅 Published: July 7, 2025 | Last Updated: July 7, 2025
📧 liveaiwire.com | 🐦 @liveaiwire
Beneath the Soil, AI Unearths New Storylines
In the world of archaeology, artificial intelligence is quietly becoming one of the field’s most powerful tools. Across continents, AI is being used to analyse satellite imagery, interpret ancient texts, and map buried cities—reshaping how we uncover and preserve human history.
Whether working from drone footage in Peru or heatmaps in Sudan, AI is helping archaeologists look beneath the surface—both literally and figuratively—to find what might otherwise be lost forever.
Mapping Lost Civilizations with Satellites and Sensors
In Egypt, a team from the University of Cambridge published findings in Remote Sensing showing how AI trained on desert satellite data uncovered hundreds of previously undocumented archaeological features in Hermopolis. The system identified likely buried structures and ancient layouts, now being targeted for field verification and excavation (MDPI Remote Sensing).
This mirrors techniques we previously examined in AI in Disaster Response, where similar technologies are deployed to assess post-crisis terrain. In archaeology, however, the focus is on what history hides—not what disaster reveals.
Smart Digging: Robots and Pattern Recognition
AI is also changing how we excavate. Autonomous ground-penetrating bots—such as Stanford’s “DigBot”—combine radar and LiDAR imaging with AI models trained on historic site geometry. These machines can identify anomalies beneath the soil, highlighting ideal dig zones while reducing risk to fragile layers.
In dating techniques, too, AI is transforming efficiency. Pattern-matching algorithms now assist in chronologically sequencing pottery fragments, sediment layers, and even cave drawings—shaving months off traditional analysis.
Our earlier look at The Automation Divide showed how machine intelligence shifts labour. In archaeology, it doesn’t remove the archaeologist—it refocuses their expertise on interpreting what AI reveals.
Decoding the Undeciphered
Perhaps most astonishing is AI’s growing role in translating lost languages. At Toulouse University, researchers trained deep learning models on known Mayan glyphs and ancient Iberian scripts. When fed damaged or incomplete inscriptions, the models filled in blanks—reconstructing narratives previously thought unreadable.
These neural networks, functioning much like the generative AI models in Behind the Facade, don’t just transcribe. They make educated projections, suggesting what the ancients might have said, recorded, or believed.
Protecting What Remains
Beyond discovery, AI plays a growing role in protection. In 2025, a global collaboration between ALIPH, Microsoft, Planet Labs, and Iconem launched HeritageWatch.AI—a platform using satellite and AI analysis to monitor heritage sites in war-torn or environmentally threatened regions.
A Euronews report confirmed that the platform has already flagged threats in Mali, Syria, and parts of Ukraine. High-resolution models offer a virtual archive, should sites be damaged or destroyed.
This ties in with the European Commission’s Culture, Heritage and Sport Strategy, which encourages smart monitoring and rapid-response conservation tech across EU member states.
Ethical Dilemmas in Digital Archaeology
But digitisation brings ethical complexity. Who owns a culture’s digital twin? Should sacred spaces be recreated in virtual museums without consent? And when AI rebuilds the past, whose version of history are we preserving?
The American Anthropological Association urges archaeologists and technologists to collaborate with local and indigenous communities. Ethical AI in heritage, they argue, must include transparent methods, open data sharing, and cultural respect.
Meanwhile, organisations like ALIPH—profiled by The Art Newspaper—are racing to digitise at-risk monuments with community partnership, not extractive scanning.
Preserving the Past, Digitally and Democratically
Digital heritage isn’t new, but it’s now smarter and more accessible than ever. Initiatives like Europeana host vast archives of art, manuscripts, and artefacts scanned across the continent. AI makes those archives searchable by style, language, and historical era, unlocking insights at a scale once impossible.
Soon, we may explore entire ancient cities in VR before any physical ruins are touched. AI will guide us through plazas that haven’t seen sunlight in millennia—just as it guides archaeologists in deciding where to dig, what to preserve, and how to remember.
About the Author
Stuart Kerr is LiveAIWire’s Technology Correspondent. You can follow his work at 👉 liveaiwire.com/p/to-liveaiwire-where-artificial.html or reach out via 🐦 @liveaiwire or 📧 liveaiwire.com.
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