Computing the Difference Greece-Near-East

Comparative studies of Ancient Greece and the Near East have become a well-established subfield of classics, with a growing number of scholars specializing in various geographies and cultural fields in which the Greeks interacted with others. At the same time, discontent with the distinction between Greece and the Near East has grown as it becomes evident that such a distinction is a Eurocentric projection. In this talk, I explore a series of computational methods that allow us to reconsider some of the preconceptions on which such a distinction has been built. Computational methods like the formalization of social networks and the modeling of culture using machine learning can help us re-envision the scope of the field, possibly leading us closer to an ancient world-system still waiting to be discovered.