Our Team
Dr. Maxime Brami
Initiator and co-PI
Maxime Brami is a prehistoric archaeologist at JGU Mainz, where he serves as substitute professor in the Department of Pre- and Early Historical Archaeology of the Institute for Ancient Studies. Since 2018, he has also been a researcher in the university’s ancient DNA laboratory. His research explores the interaction between culture and genetics in Neolithic and Copper Age Europe, using innovative AI-assisted approaches for data collection and analysis.
E-mail: mbrami@uni mainz.de
Kevin Klein
co-PI
Kevin Klein is a student in the Department of Pre- and Early Historical Archaeology of JGU Mainz. He has a background in computer science and is the software engineer for AutArch, GrainWise and the automated detection for Heritage Quest Luxembourg. Klein’s work primarily focuses on computational Archaeology.
E-mail: kkevin@students.uni-mainz.de
Andrea Stinner
Student assistant
Andrea Stinner is a student of Prehistoric Archaeology at JGU Mainz. She coordinates the cooperation with the volunteers for the Heritage Quest Luxembourg project in a Citizens-Science-approach. Together they identify possible archaeological structures on LiDAR imagery.
Her second focus lies on the analysis iron age pottery, specifically Alb-Hegau ceramics. In cooperation with the LEIZA she creates 3D scans which are then classified and incorporated into the AutArch workflow.
Rabia Güz
Student assistant
Rabia Güz is a student of Near Eastern Archaeology at JGU Mainz. She is responsible for the Website Coordination of ARCANE Lab and has been working on the AutArch project to incorporate the megalithic structures of Andalucía and the detection of arrowheads into the workflow.
Our Collaborators
Professor Ralf Lämmel
Ralf Lämmel is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Koblenz and his main interests are software languages, software archeology, and broadly software engineering, which also includes applications of AI in those fields. In the recent past, Ralf has also worked on AI in the software infrastructural context at Facebook (Meta). Ralf is collaborating with the team for AutArch and the Heritage Quest Luxembourg platform in the context of data science and AI and ontologies.
Dr. Antoine Muller
Antoine Muller is a postdoctoral researcher at the SFF Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE) at the University of Bergen in Norway. His work centres on computational analyses of lithic technology throughout the Stone Age. This includes 2D and 3D methods for extracting techno-morphological attributes from artefacts to reconstruct phenomena like reduction intensity, knapping skill, investment in core preparation etc. Other research interests include experimental archaeological approaches to reconstructing evolution in the standardisation, efficiency, complexity, skill, and cognition involved in lithic technologies.
Professor Volker Heyd
Volker Heyd is a Professor at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Previously, he worked as a heritage manager in Germany and before moving to Helsinki in 2018, for 17 years at the University of Bristol in the UK. Volker is a prehistoric archaeologist, currently dedicating himself to topics around human mobility, migrations, identity and ethnicity. He also promotes scientific applications in Archaeology, particularly ancient DNA, stable isotopes and biomarker lipids.
Volker has authored/edited/co-edited 12 books and published more than 100 articles, many of them in leading science journals, spanning from the Early Neolithic in Anatolia to the Iron Age in Central Europe. He has been the overall PI the ERC Advanced project ‘The Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe’ (2019-2024) and currently commits time as Vice-director to the FinTims isotope laboratory at Kumpula campus in Helsinki
Professor Maria Ivanova-Bieg
Maria Ivanova-Bieg is Professor of Prehistory at the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Head of the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology at the Institute of Ancient Studies. Her research focuses on the emergence and spread of early agro-pastoral societies, the development of social complexity during the Copper Age, and the formation of transregional exchange and communication networks across the Black Sea and Mediterranean regions.
She is Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project SUSTAIN: Sustainability of Agriculture in Neolithic Europe, which investigates the productivity and resilience of early farming systems. As part of this research, her team estimates yields of Neolithic crops using grain size measurements and stable carbon isotope ratios. To support and speed up these analyses, she contributes to the development of GrainWise, an AI-based tool that automates the extraction of outlines and measurements from microphotographs, enabling more efficient geometric morphometric analysis and grain size determination.