Collaborative Research: Reconstructing an Early Urban Landscape

这项研究的重点是美国最早的城市之一，即使经过数十年的专业田野调查和分析，其成长和组织的一些最基本的事实仍然不清楚。目前的模型表明，在短短一个多世纪的时间里，它吸引了大量来自中大陆其他地方的移民，并成为整个北美的卓越中心。利用理论方法，该项目试图探索其作为城市景观构成的增长轨迹。然而，理解城市化需要大规模的空间数据，以了解这些中心在发展初期的增长情况。为了解决这个问题，研究小组将在现场进行高分辨率磁测量。这项大规模的地下调查将覆盖超过5.5平方公里的城市景观，使其成为美洲有史以来对考古遗址进行的最大规模的此类调查。该项目将首次对地下进行近乎全面的地球物理调查。来自磁力仪测量的数据，结合严格的地理信息系统和地理空间分析，将使我们能够最终从鸟瞰的角度“看到”地表下的情况，从而提供一个无与伦比的机会，将增长与世界各地其他早期的城市形成案例进行比较。该项目不仅将包括第一张全遗址范围的埋葬景观地图，还将提供有关土著人民如何结合形成美国最大的殖民前社区的见解。这项调查还将为该遗址的未来规划提供不可估量的价值的数据集，该遗址每年有25万游客访问。项目完成后，这些数据将通过数字考古记录(TDAR)和密歇根大学主办的门户网站提供给其他学者和学生。数字地图集将成为该网站中心核心未来调查的基础，形成多年研究项目、博士论文和硕士论文的基础，甚至是初中生在探索美国第一城市的同时学习地理信息系统技术的项目。通过与伊利诺伊州历史保护局(SHPO)和各部落历史保护官(THPO)的协商，该项目还承诺与声称该遗址为祖传家园的土著部落进行持续合作。这将确保在这些敏感数据的管理中作为利益相关者的机会和责任得到广泛分享。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This research focuses on one of the United State’s earliest cities which even after decades of professional fieldwork and analysis some of the most fundamental facts of its growth and organization remain unclear. Current models suggest that in little more than a century it attracted large numbers of immigrants from elsewhere in the Midcontinent and became the preeminent center in all North America. Drawing on theoretical approaches the project seeks to explore its trajectory of growth as the making of an urban landscape. Yet understanding urbanism requires large-scale spatial data on the growth of such centers in the early years of their development. To address this problem, the research team will perform high-resolution magnetometry over the site. This massive subsurface survey will cover more than 5.5 km2 of urban landscape, making it the largest such survey ever conducted in the Americas of an archaeological site. This project will provide the first near-total geophysical survey of the subsurface. Data from the magnetometer survey, combined with rigorous GIS and geospatial analyses, will allow us to finally “see” beneath the surface from a birds-eye view, thus affording an unparalleled opportunity to compare growth with other early cases of urban formation around the world. This project will include not only the first site-wide map of the buried landscape but will also provide insights into the ways that Indigenous peoples coalesced to form the largest precolonial community in the US. The investigation will also provide a dataset of incalculable value for future planning at the site which is visited by a quarter-million visitors each year. After the project, these data will be made available to other scholars and students via the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) and a web portal hosted by the University of Michigan. The digital atlas will become the basis for future investigations within the site’s central core, forming a foundation for multi-year research projects, Ph.D. dissertations and M.A. theses, and even projects through which middle and high school students learn GIS techniques while exploring America’s first city. Through consultation with the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency (SHPO), and across Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (THPOs), the project also promises sustained collaboration with Indigenous tribes who claim the site as an ancestral homeland. This will ensure that the opportunity and responsibility to serve as stakeholders in stewardship of these sensitive data are widely shared.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.