Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T21:25:53.077Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Promise and Challenge of Archaeological Data Integration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Keith Kintigh
Keith Kintigh*
Affiliation:
School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-2402 ([email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This forum reports the results of a National Science Foundation—funded workshop that focused on the integration and preservation of digital databases and other structured data derived from archaeological contexts. The workshop concluded that for archaeology to achieve its potential to advance long-term, scientific understandings of human history, there is a pressing need for an archaeological information infrastructure that will allow us to archive, access, integrate, and mine disparate data sets. This report provides an assessment of the informatics needs of archaeology, articulates an ambitious vision for a distributed disciplinary information infrastructure (cyberinfrastructure), discusses the challenges posed by its development, and outlines initial steps toward its realization. Finally, it argues that such a cyberinfrastructure has enormous potential to contribute to anthropology and science more generally. Concept-oriented archaeological data integration will enable the use of existing data to answer compelling new questions and permit syntheses of archaeological data that rely not on other investigators' conclusions but on analyses of meaningfully integrated new and legacy data sets.

Résumé

Résumé

Este foro reporta los resultados de un taller auspiciado por la Fundación Nacional para las Ciencias (National Science Foundation), el cual se enfocó en la integración y conservación de las bases de datos digitales y de otros datos estructurados derivados de los contextos arqueológicos. Este taller llegó a la conclusión de que para que la arqueología alcance su potencial de avanzar en el entendimiento científico de la historia humana a largo plazo, hay una apremiante necesidad de que exista una infraestructura de información arqueológica que nos permita alcanzar, acceder, integrar, y extraer bases de datos diferentes. Este informe proporciona una evaluación de las necesidades informáticas de la arqueología, articula una visión ambiciosa para establecer una infraestructura de información disciplinaria distribuida (ciberinfraestructura), discute los retos presentados, y esboza los pasos iniciales hacia su realización. Finalmente, argumenta que dicha ciberinfraestructura tiene un enorme potencial de contribuir a la antropología y más generalmente a la ciencia. La integración de los datos arqueológicos orientados a los conceptos permitirá el uso de los datos existentes para resolver nuevas preguntas obligadas y conformar síntesis de los datos arqueológicos que se basan no en las conclusiones de otros investigadores sino en los análisis de bases de datos nuevas y heredadas integradas significativamente.

Type
Forum
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 71 , Issue 3 , July 2006 , pp. 567 - 578
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 2006 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References Cited

Berners-Lee, Tim, Hendler, James, and Lassila, Ora 2001 The Semantic Web. Scientific American 284(5):34-43.Google Scholar
Costin, Catherine L. 1991 Craft Specialization: Issues in Defining, Documenting, and Explaining the Organization of Production. In Archaeological Method and Theory, edited by M. Schiffer, 3:1–56. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Cowgill, George L. 1975 Population Pressure as a Non-Explanation. In Population Studies in Archaeological and Biological Anthropology, edited by A. C. Swedlund. Society for American Archaeology Memoir 30. American Antiquity 40:127-131.Google Scholar
Cowgill, George L. 1988 Onward and Upward with Collapse. In The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations, edited by Norman Yoffee and George L. Cowgill, pp. 244-276. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Nelson, Ben A. 1995 Complexity, Hierarchy, and Scale: A Controlled Comparison between Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, and La Quemada, Zacatecas. American Antiquity 60(4):597-618.Google Scholar
Society for American Archaeology 1996 Society for American Archeology Principles of Archaeological Ethics. American Antiquity 61:451-452.Google Scholar
Steckel, Richard H., Rose, Jerome C., Larson, Clark Spencer, and Walker, Phillip L. 2002 Skeletal Health in the Western Hemisphere from 4000 B.C. to the Present. Evolutionary Anthropology 11:142-155.Google Scholar