Dr. Néhémie Strupler
Néhémie Strupler is an archaeologist specializing in Digital Humanities and is a Research Associate at Durham University. His research employs open science principles, reproducible analysis, and data-driven paradigms. Dr. Strupler has held research positions at ANAMED (Istanbul), the Walter Benjamin Kolleg (Bern), the University of Tartu, the French Institute for Anatolian Studies (Istanbul), the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research (Cambridge, UK), and Freie Universität Berlin. His current projects at Durham University explore the archaeology of North Africa and digital archives as cultural heritage.
Biography
Néhémie Strupler grew up and studied mainly in regions close to the Rhine River. Design has long fascinated him, and he has a keen interest in understanding “human nature”, which led him to begin a bachelor’s degree in art history. There, he discovered that archaeology and the study of mundane artifacts would be a right fit for him.
He completed in September 2016 a PhD in Archaeology (University of Strasbourg, France jointly with University of Münster, Germany) on the Hittites’ kingdom capital Boğazköy / Ḫattuša entitled “The Lower City of Boğazköy during the Second Millennium BC: Political & Urban restructuring into a Kingdom’s Capital.” In this work, published as volume 28 in the series Boğazköy-Ḫattuša. Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen, German Archaeological Institute, he examines the evolution of activity patterns of the domestic quarters, at the critical moment when the site became the political capital of the Hittites.
Research
Archaeology
Geographically and chronologically, his field of specialization focuses on Central Anatolia and the Caucasus during the Bronze Age (3000−1200 BC), when prehistory, protohistory and history converge. His research work focuses on the reorganization of human societies and human environment interaction over the long term, beyond the cycle of apogee and decline of the first kingdoms. He is interested in the relationship between urbanization and the organization of activities within cities, as well as the organization of the countryside and pastoralism at the borders of kingdoms. He regularly participates in fieldwork and have active research programs in Turkey. For several years, he has also been working on the study of administrative tools (seals and their impressions, as well as fragments of cuneiform tablets) from an archaeological point of view, notably through their spatial contextualization to better understand the use and abandonment of these artifacts.
Digital Humanities
Néhémie Strupler uses innovative digital approaches to the study and representation of the past and supports the transition towards Open Science in the arts and humanities. The foundation of his research is rooted in quantitative and statistical methods for the analysis of archaeological data, while committing himself to the availability of digital data (open data), their long-term archiving and the reproducibility of analyses. Core strengths within his work include statistics, digital mapping, digital history, open access databases and web technologies.