Stylistic clusters and the Syrian/South Syrian tradition of first-millennium BCE Levantine ivory carving: a machine learning approach

Thousands of first-millennium BCE ivory carvings have been excavated from Neo-Assyrian sites in Mesopotamia (primarily Nimrud, Khorsabad, and Arslan Tash), hundreds of miles from their Levantine production contexts. At present, their specific manufacture dates and workshop localities are unknown. Relying on subjective, visual methods, scholars have grappled with their classification and regional attribution for over a century. This study combines visual approaches with machine learning techniques to offer data-driven perspectives on the classification and attribution of this Iron Age corpus.