Dr Karsten Lambers

Karsten Lambers is an associate professor and head of the Digital Archaeology research group at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University. His research considers computational methods (e.g., Machine Learning) that enable the (semi-) automated extraction of meaningful archaeological entities from large bodies of digital data from different sources as a starting point for archaeological analysis and heritage management. Examples include the detection of burial mounds in LiDAR data and the detection of archaeological concepts in excavation reports. He also conducts multi-proxy analysis of human-environmental interaction with a focus on settlement patterns and resource use.

Karsten holds degrees in American Anthropology (MA, University of Bonn, 1998) and Prehistoric Archaeology (PhD, University of Zurich, 2005). His award-winning PhD research investigated the famed Nasca geoglyphs in southern Peru using a combination of field survey, remote sensing, 3D modelling and GIS-based spatial analysis. Before joining Leiden University, he held research and teaching positions at ETH Zurich, University of Zurich, the German Archaeological Institute, and the universities of Konstanz and Bamberg. At Leiden University he is affiliated with the SAILS initiative and directs research projects in computational archaeology and field projects in the Netherlands and in Switzerland.