the Digital Archaeologial Record Developing an Information Infrastructure for Archaeology Arizona State University School of Human Evolution & Social Change — School of Computing & Informatics

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Final Report of the Workshop
The Promise and Challenge of Archaeological Data Integration
December 5 and 6, 2004, the Upham Hotel, Santa Barbara, California
Organized by Keith W. Kintigh, Arizona State University
Under National Science Foundation Grant SES 0433959
May 10, 2005

Executive Summary

Disciplinary Needs. For archaeology to achieve its potential to provide 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 datasets.

New technologies in information integration will enable archaeologists to 1) work at scales not currently possible to answer pressing questions that cannot now be addressed due to a lack of effective access to existing data; 2) foster the development of a new paradigm of integrative and synthetic research; 3) scale and integrate archaeological data so that they can be used to address compelling questions in other disciplines; and 4) sustain the scientific utility of existing digital data that are critically endangered by media degradation, software obsolescence, and inadequate data documentation (metadata). To meet pressing research needs and to help stem the loss of existing information, it is essential that we embark now on the task of creating an infrastructure that will allow us to archive and make available integrated databases of archaeological data.

Vision. The needed information infrastructure has five key components: 1) a web-based interface designed for effective scholarly access; 2) sophisticated search capabilities using concept-oriented queries to locate and access relevant data sources while retaining confidentiality and rights of dataset creators; 3) data integration tools that use concept ontologies and digital metadata to integrate data from multiple sources, yielding an output database of appropriately scaled observations with consistent variables; 4) reporting capabilities that include both basic display of the integrated databases and their direct output in forms susceptible to further analysis; and 5) software tools that minimize the effort and expertise necessary to fully incorporate new and legacy datasets into the system. This cyberinfrastructure would encourage the research use of existing data, satisfy the data requirements of integrative and synthetic research, facilitate entry of data into the infrastructure, sustain endangered and irreplaceable data, and increase public accessibility of scientific findings.

Implications. Realizing this vision will entail both the development of innovative software tools that permit cross-project integration of data and a sustained effort to document existing and newly created datasets. More specifically, we propose: 1) establishing a national center for archaeological data integration that, along with a network of distributed data nodes, can address the emerging needs of a discipline asking increasingly wide-ranging questions that are impossible or impractical to answer with existing modes of research; 2) working with computer scientists to adapt existing informatics technologies from other disciplines (e.g., ecology and geology) and to develop general solutions for unsolved data integration problems posed by archaeology, thus contributing to a shared cyberinfrastructure for science; and 3) fostering a new group of professionals at the boundary of archaeology and computer science specializing in archaeological informatics.

The national center would set priorities for the development of the cyberinfrastructure, coordinate the development of metadata standards, assemble the technical expertise and develop the necessary software, provide software maintenance, coordinate the efforts of regional nodes in a network of data providers, and maintain legacy databases lacking an institutional home.

Initial Steps. To begin, a steering group should be established: 1) to develop a strategic plan that sets the direction for the long-term effort; 2) to work with NSF and other funding agencies to fund cyberinfrastructure development; 3) to actively explore the utility of existing models for cyberinfrastructure development and to participate in collaborative efforts to develop shared (across disciplines) cyberinfrastructural tools; 4) to suggest compelling test cases that can demonstrate the potential of the system to address both focused and large-scale issues in both disciplinary and cross-disciplinary research; and 5) to encourage and support efforts by professional societies to advance the development of a cyberinfrastructure for archaeology.

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. 0433959 and 0624341. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.