Enabling the Study of Long-Term Human and Social Dynamics: A Cyberinfrastructure for Archaeology

传统的科学研究集中在学科内部，在社会科学和自然科学之间存在明显的分歧。然而，科学研究现在正在跨越学科界限，将人类和自然系统视为密不可分的联系。这个项目最终关注的是理解人类与自然系统的长期变化。快速变化通常是显而易见的，而长期变化很难观察到，甚至更难研究，因为科学数据通常最多跨越几十年。另一方面，考古学收集和分析跨越几个世纪甚至几千年的人类社会及其环境的数据。因此，考古学有潜力在发展和检验人口、经济和社会稳定等主题的科学模型方面发挥独特的作用。然而，将考古知识用于这些目的受到数据固有复杂性的限制。事实上，几乎不可能对许多考古研究项目的原始数据进行有意义的分析。这项研究开启了建立考古学网络基础设施的进程，它将包括新的和现存的考古数据库，并将使用系统化的考古知识和复杂的计算机方法来超越数据可比性的问题。该基金的第一个组成部分是一个基础广泛的研讨会，该研讨会将试图就考古网络基础设施的愿景建立科学共识，评估专业和技术挑战，并概述实现这一愿景的战略。第二个组成部分是由考古学家和计算机科学家组成的团队对有限的考古问题进行深入探索。这部分内容旨在了解比较和整合来自不同实地项目的实际数据所需的各种详细知识（例如，它们的保存和收集策略），以及如何系统地表示这些知识以供计算机使用。第三部分将根据其他学科的经验审查考古数据整合所带来的技术问题。科学价值。一个以知识为基础的考古数据集成系统，包含了新的和现存的数据集，可以为广泛的社会和环境数据档案提供互联网访问。研究人员可以提取分析比较观察的数据库，将综合研究推进到一个新的水平，并使跨科学学科的研究人员能够用不可想象的经验支持水平来解决大规模和长期的问题。本研究也将有助于提供新的数据整合的计算机方法，适用于数据收集不一致的其他科学领域。更广泛的影响。拟议的系统有可能改变考古学本科教育的一个关键组成部分。采用这种基于知识的系统，批判性思维练习可以使用大规模的研究数据集，而不是通常分析的“玩具”问题。该制度对社会科学和自然科学的基础设施具有深远的影响。它将提供一种在文件不足和技术迅速变化的情况下保持不可替代的数据的长期效用的手段。学术、政府、部落和私营企业都将是由此产生的数据集成系统的积极消费者。考古学为不同领域的学者提供了有关社会、人口和环境的有意义的长期数据，可以帮助解释复杂的人类和社会动态，这些动态构成了今天的社会世界，塑造了现代环境。

Traditional scientific research is focused within academic disciplines with a marked divide between social and natural sciences. However, scientific research is now crossing disciplinary boundaries, seeing human and natural systems as inextricably linked. This project is ultimately concerned with understanding long-term change in linked human-natural systems. Rapid change is often obvious, whereas long-term change is difficult to observe and even more difficult to study because scientific data typically span, at most, a few decades. Archaeology, on the other hand, collects and analyzes data on human societies and their environments that span centuries or even millennia. Thus, archaeology has the potential to play a unique role in developing and testing scientific models on such topics as demography, economy, and social stability. However, the use of archaeological knowledge for these purposes is limited by the inherent complexities on the data. Indeed, it is nearly impossible to execute meaningful analyses that integrate primary data from many archaeological research projects. This research initiates the process of building a cyberinfrastructure for archaeology that would incorporate both new and extant archaeological databases and would use systematized archaeological knowledge and sophisticated computer methods to transcend the problems of data comparability. The first component of this grant is a broad-based workshop that will attempt to build a scientific consensus on a vision for a cyberinfrastructure of archaeology, assess the professional and technical challenges, and outline a strategy for achieving that vision. The second component is in-depth exploration of a limited archaeological problem by a team of archaeologists and computer scientists. This component seeks to understand the detailed sorts of knowledge needed to compare and integrate actual data from different field projects (e.g., their preservation and collection strategies) and how to systematically represent that knowledge for computer use. The third component will examine the technical problems posed by archaeological data integration in light of the experience of other disciplines.Scientific Merit. A knowledge-based archaeological data-integration system encompassing both new and extant datasets could provide Internet access to extensive social and environmental data archives. Researchers could extract databases of analytically comparable observations, propelling synthetic research to a new level and enabling researchers across scientific disciplines to address large-scale and long-term questions with a level of empirical support that has been unthinkable. This research will also contribute novel computer methods of data integration applicable to other scientific domains in which data are inconsistently collected.Broader Impacts. The proposed system has the potential to transform a key component of undergraduate education in archaeology. Employing this knowledge-based system, critical thinking exercises could use large-scale research datasets instead of the "toy" problems usually analyzed. The proposed system has far-reaching impacts on the infrastructure of social and natural science. It would provide a means to maintain the long-term utility of irreplaceable data in the face of inadequate documentation and rapidly changing technology. Academic, governmental, tribal and private enterprises would all be active consumers of the resulting data integration system. By providing scholars in diverse fields with meaningful access to long-term data on society, population, and environment, archaeology can help explain the complex human and social dynamics that have constituted today's social world and have shaped the modern environment.