Sébastien Plutniak is a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), working at the CITERES-LAT laboratory (Tours, France), and a former fellow of the École française de Rome. Trained as a prehistoric archaeologist and a sociologist and historian of science, his research focuses on contemporary and past uses of formal and computer-based methods in the humanities and social sciences –and archaeology in particular–, studied from practical, socio-historical, and epistemological perspectives.As a field archaeologist he worked intensively in Borneo (2009-2016) and in New Guinea (2018-2024). Besides, he serves as a board member of the French Chapter of the “Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology” organisation, the “French Prehistoric Society”, and the “History of Archaeology” commission of the “International Union for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences”. Shumon T. Hussain is a cross-disciplinary archaeologist with a research focus on Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene hunter-gatherer societies, in particular their stone artefact technologies and animal relationships. He is broadly interested in theoretical innovation and synthesis beyond archaeology as a disciplinary specialism, to better integrate data and perspectives across the humanities and sciences vis-à-vis questions of the human deep past, and the epistemology and practice of science. He is currently based at the University of Cologne, Germany, where he is Junior Research Group Leader at the Department for Prehistoric Archaeology and the newly established research hub MESH – Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities.Shumon is the author of “Contested Deep Pasts: Negotiating the French-Anglophone Divide in Pleistocene Lithic Studies” (Sidestone, 2026) and has published widely on archaeological theory and multispecies archaeology, including “What is Animal Prehistory?” (Animal History, 2025) and the “Paleolithic and Human-Animal Relations” entry in the Oxford Bibliography of Environmental History (Oxford University Press, 2025). Felix Riede is professor of archaeology at Aarhus University in Denmark. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and has been visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Department of Anthropology, the Department of Geography in Cambridge, and the Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research at Bern University.Felix works within an extended evolutionary synthesis framework to understand human biocultural evolution, its cognitive, social, climatic and environmental correlates, causes, and consequences. Felix is an astute interdisciplinarian and his work integrates across scales from individual artefacts to global patterns, across methods from qualitative to quantitative, from the laboratory to the field, from the archive to abstract models, and across scientific fields. In addition to many scientific and popular journal articles and book chapters,Felix is the author of “Splendid isolation. The eruption of the Laacher See volcano and southern Scandinavian Late Glacial hunter-gatherers” (AUP, 2017) and co-editor, with Payson Sheets, of “Going Forward by Looking Back: Archaeological Perspectives on Socio-Ecological Crisis, Response, and Collapse” (Berhahn, 2020).

• PrefaceTypologising archaeological typologies: Motivation, structure and the making of a digitally augmented edited volumeSébastien Plutniak, Shumon T. Hussain & Felix RiedePart I: The epistemology and theory of types and typologiesResearch perspectives and their influence on typologiesEnrico GiannicheddaOn the physics and metaphysics of classification in archaeologyMercedes Okumura & Astolfo G.M. AraujoThe loss of typological innocence: Pluralism in the epistemology and ontology of archaeological typo-praxisShumon T. HussainArchaeology, typology and machine epistemologyGavin LucasPart II: Research legacies, digital infrastructures and computer-based approachesTool types and the establishment of the Late Palaeolithic (Later Stone Age) cultural taxonomic system in the Nile ValleyAlice LeplongeonThe role of heritage databases in typological reification: A case study from the Final Palaeolithic of southern ScandinaviaFelix RiedeFrom paper to byte: An interim report on the digital transformation of two thing editionsFrederic Auth, Katja Rösler, Wenke Domscheit & Kerstin P. HofmannThe density of types and the dignity of the fragment: A website approach to archaeological typologyGiorgio Buccellati & Marilyn Kelly-BuccellatiIT- and machine learning-based methods of classification: The cooperative project ClaReNet (Classification and Representation for Networks)Chrisowalandis Deligio, Caroline von Nicolai, Markus Möller, Katja Rösler, Julia Tietz, Robin Krause, Kerstin P. Hofmann, Karsten Tolle & David Wigg-WolfPart III: New perspectives and themes in type-thinkingWhat is a form? On the classification of archaeological potteryPhilippe BoissinotA return to function as the basis of lithic classificationRadu IovitaSpeaking types into being: Language acts, typological persistence and performing archaeological spacePiraye HacıgüzellerHypercultural types: Archaeological objects in fast timeArtur S.P. RibeiroPostscriptDo we need (more) humble typologies?Shumon T. Hussain

Sébastien Plutniak is a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), working at the CITERES-LAT laboratory (Tours, France), and a former fellow of the École française de Rome. Trained as a prehistoric archaeologist and a sociologist and historian of science, his research focuses on contemporary and past uses of formal and computer-based methods in the humanities and social sciences –and archaeology in particular–, studied from practical, socio-historical, and epistemological perspectives.As a field archaeologist he worked intensively in Borneo (2009-2016) and in New Guinea (2018-2024). Besides, he serves as a board member of the French Chapter of the “Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology” organisation, the “French Prehistoric Society”, and the “History of Archaeology” commission of the “International Union for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences”. Shumon T. Hussain is a cross-disciplinary archaeologist with a research focus on Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene hunter-gatherer societies, in particular their stone artefact technologies and animal relationships. He is broadly interested in theoretical innovation and synthesis beyond archaeology as a disciplinary specialism, to better integrate data and perspectives across the humanities and sciences vis-à-vis questions of the human deep past, and the epistemology and practice of science. He is currently based at the University of Cologne, Germany, where he is Junior Research Group Leader at the Department for Prehistoric Archaeology and the newly established research hub MESH – Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities.Shumon is the author of “Contested Deep Pasts: Negotiating the French-Anglophone Divide in Pleistocene Lithic Studies” (Sidestone, 2026) and has published widely on archaeological theory and multispecies archaeology, including “What is Animal Prehistory?” (Animal History, 2025) and the “Paleolithic and Human-Animal Relations” entry in the Oxford Bibliography of Environmental History (Oxford University Press, 2025). Felix Riede is professor of archaeology at Aarhus University in Denmark. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and has been visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Department of Anthropology, the Department of Geography in Cambridge, and the Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research at Bern University.Felix works within an extended evolutionary synthesis framework to understand human biocultural evolution, its cognitive, social, climatic and environmental correlates, causes, and consequences. Felix is an astute interdisciplinarian and his work integrates across scales from individual artefacts to global patterns, across methods from qualitative to quantitative, from the laboratory to the field, from the archive to abstract models, and across scientific fields. In addition to many scientific and popular journal articles and book chapters,Felix is the author of “Splendid isolation. The eruption of the Laacher See volcano and southern Scandinavian Late Glacial hunter-gatherers” (AUP, 2017) and co-editor, with Payson Sheets, of “Going Forward by Looking Back: Archaeological Perspectives on Socio-Ecological Crisis, Response, and Collapse” (Berhahn, 2020).

• PrefaceTypologising archaeological typologies: Motivation, structure and the making of a digitally augmented edited volumeSébastien Plutniak, Shumon T. Hussain & Felix RiedePart I: The epistemology and theory of types and typologiesResearch perspectives and their influence on typologiesEnrico GiannicheddaOn the physics and metaphysics of classification in archaeologyMercedes Okumura & Astolfo G.M. AraujoThe loss of typological innocence: Pluralism in the epistemology and ontology of archaeological typo-praxisShumon T. HussainArchaeology, typology and machine epistemologyGavin LucasPart II: Research legacies, digital infrastructures and computer-based approachesTool types and the establishment of the Late Palaeolithic (Later Stone Age) cultural taxonomic system in the Nile ValleyAlice LeplongeonThe role of heritage databases in typological reification: A case study from the Final Palaeolithic of southern ScandinaviaFelix RiedeFrom paper to byte: An interim report on the digital transformation of two thing editionsFrederic Auth, Katja Rösler, Wenke Domscheit & Kerstin P. HofmannThe density of types and the dignity of the fragment: A website approach to archaeological typologyGiorgio Buccellati & Marilyn Kelly-BuccellatiIT- and machine learning-based methods of classification: The cooperative project ClaReNet (Classification and Representation for Networks)Chrisowalandis Deligio, Caroline von Nicolai, Markus Möller, Katja Rösler, Julia Tietz, Robin Krause, Kerstin P. Hofmann, Karsten Tolle & David Wigg-WolfPart III: New perspectives and themes in type-thinkingWhat is a form? On the classification of archaeological potteryPhilippe BoissinotA return to function as the basis of lithic classificationRadu IovitaSpeaking types into being: Language acts, typological persistence and performing archaeological spacePiraye HacıgüzellerHypercultural types: Archaeological objects in fast timeArtur S.P. RibeiroPostscriptDo we need (more) humble typologies?Shumon T. Hussain

Sébastien Plutniak is a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), working at the CITERES-LAT laboratory (Tours, France), and a former fellow of the École française de Rome. Trained as a prehistoric archaeologist and a sociologist and historian of science, his research focuses on contemporary and past uses of formal and computer-based methods in the humanities and social sciences –and archaeology in particular–, studied from practical, socio-historical, and epistemological perspectives.As a field archaeologist he worked intensively in Borneo (2009-2016) and in New Guinea (2018-2024). Besides, he serves as a board member of the French Chapter of the “Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology” organisation, the “French Prehistoric Society”, and the “History of Archaeology” commission of the “International Union for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences”. Shumon T. Hussain is a cross-disciplinary archaeologist with a research focus on Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene hunter-gatherer societies, in particular their stone artefact technologies and animal relationships. He is broadly interested in theoretical innovation and synthesis beyond archaeology as a disciplinary specialism, to better integrate data and perspectives across the humanities and sciences vis-à-vis questions of the human deep past, and the epistemology and practice of science. He is currently based at the University of Cologne, Germany, where he is Junior Research Group Leader at the Department for Prehistoric Archaeology and the newly established research hub MESH – Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities.Shumon is the author of “Contested Deep Pasts: Negotiating the French-Anglophone Divide in Pleistocene Lithic Studies” (Sidestone, 2026) and has published widely on archaeological theory and multispecies archaeology, including “What is Animal Prehistory?” (Animal History, 2025) and the “Paleolithic and Human-Animal Relations” entry in the Oxford Bibliography of Environmental History (Oxford University Press, 2025). Felix Riede is professor of archaeology at Aarhus University in Denmark. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and has been visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Department of Anthropology, the Department of Geography in Cambridge, and the Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research at Bern University.Felix works within an extended evolutionary synthesis framework to understand human biocultural evolution, its cognitive, social, climatic and environmental correlates, causes, and consequences. Felix is an astute interdisciplinarian and his work integrates across scales from individual artefacts to global patterns, across methods from qualitative to quantitative, from the laboratory to the field, from the archive to abstract models, and across scientific fields. In addition to many scientific and popular journal articles and book chapters,Felix is the author of “Splendid isolation. The eruption of the Laacher See volcano and southern Scandinavian Late Glacial hunter-gatherers” (AUP, 2017) and co-editor, with Payson Sheets, of “Going Forward by Looking Back: Archaeological Perspectives on Socio-Ecological Crisis, Response, and Collapse” (Berhahn, 2020).

• PrefaceTypologising archaeological typologies: Motivation, structure and the making of a digitally augmented edited volumeSébastien Plutniak, Shumon T. Hussain & Felix RiedePart I: The epistemology and theory of types and typologiesResearch perspectives and their influence on typologiesEnrico GiannicheddaOn the physics and metaphysics of classification in archaeologyMercedes Okumura & Astolfo G.M. AraujoThe loss of typological innocence: Pluralism in the epistemology and ontology of archaeological typo-praxisShumon T. HussainArchaeology, typology and machine epistemologyGavin LucasPart II: Research legacies, digital infrastructures and computer-based approachesTool types and the establishment of the Late Palaeolithic (Later Stone Age) cultural taxonomic system in the Nile ValleyAlice LeplongeonThe role of heritage databases in typological reification: A case study from the Final Palaeolithic of southern ScandinaviaFelix RiedeFrom paper to byte: An interim report on the digital transformation of two thing editionsFrederic Auth, Katja Rösler, Wenke Domscheit & Kerstin P. HofmannThe density of types and the dignity of the fragment: A website approach to archaeological typologyGiorgio Buccellati & Marilyn Kelly-BuccellatiIT- and machine learning-based methods of classification: The cooperative project ClaReNet (Classification and Representation for Networks)Chrisowalandis Deligio, Caroline von Nicolai, Markus Möller, Katja Rösler, Julia Tietz, Robin Krause, Kerstin P. Hofmann, Karsten Tolle & David Wigg-WolfPart III: New perspectives and themes in type-thinkingWhat is a form? On the classification of archaeological potteryPhilippe BoissinotA return to function as the basis of lithic classificationRadu IovitaSpeaking types into being: Language acts, typological persistence and performing archaeological spacePiraye HacıgüzellerHypercultural types: Archaeological objects in fast timeArtur S.P. RibeiroPostscriptDo we need (more) humble typologies?Shumon T. Hussain