Collaborative Research: Reconstructing an Early Urban Landscape

这项研究的重点是美国最早的城市之一，即使经过几十年的专业实地调查和分析，其增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，在世纪多一点的时间里，它吸引了来自中部大陆其他地方的大量移民，并成为整个北美的卓越中心。利用理论方法，该项目旨在探索其作为城市景观的发展轨迹。然而，理解城市化需要大规模的空间数据，这些中心在其发展的早期发展。为了解决这个问题，研究小组将在现场进行高分辨率的磁力测量。这项大规模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调查。该项目将提供第一次几乎全面的地下地球物理调查。来自磁力计调查的数据，加上严格的地理信息系统和地理空间分析，将使我们最终能够从鸟瞰图中“看到”地表之下，从而提供了一个无与伦比的机会，将增长与世界各地其他早期城市形成的案例进行比较。该项目不仅将包括第一张被掩埋景观的全场地地图，还将深入了解原住民如何合并形成美国最大的前殖民社区。该调查还将为该网站的未来规划提供不可估量的价值数据集，该网站每年有25万游客访问。项目结束后，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遗址中心核心未来调查的基础，为多年研究项目奠定基础。学位论文和文学硕士论文，甚至项目，通过初中和高中学生学习GIS技术，同时探索美国的第一个城市。通过与伊利诺伊州历史保护局（SHPO）和部落历史保护官员（THPO）的协商，该项目还承诺与声称该遗址为祖先家园的土著部落进行持续合作。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.