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，其发展和组织的一些最基本的事实仍然不清楚。目前的模式表明，在一个多世纪的时间里，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，该项目试图探索其作为城市景观的发展轨迹。然而，要理解城市主义，就需要在这些中心发展的早期获得它们成长的大规模空间数据。为了解决这个问题，研究小组将在现场进行高分辨率磁强计。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，使其成为在美洲考古遗址进行的最大的此类调查。该项目将提供第一次近全面的地下地球物理调查。来自磁力计调查的数据，结合严格的地理信息系统和地理空间分析，将使我们最终能够从鸟瞰的角度“看到”地表以下的情况，从而提供一个无与伦比的机会，将城市的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埋藏景观的全址地图，还将提供对土著人民联合形成美国最大的前殖民社区的方式的见解。该调查还将为该遗址的未来规划提供价值不可估量的数据集，该遗址每年有25万游客参观。项目结束后，这些数据将通过数字考古记录（tDAR）和密歇根大学托管的门户网站提供给其他学者和学生。数字地图集将成为未来对该站点中心核心进行调查的基础，为多年研究项目、博士论文和硕士论文奠定基础，甚至为初高中学生在探索美国第一个城市时学习GIS技术奠定基础。通过与伊利诺伊州历史保护机构（SHPO）和部落历史保护官员（THPOs）的协商，该项目还承诺与声称该遗址是祖先家园的土著部落进行持续合作。这将确保作为管理这些敏感数据的利益相关者的机会和责任得到广泛共享。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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.