Archaeological Data Integration for the
Study of Long-term Human and Social Dynamics 2006 National Science Foundation, Human Social Dynamics Grant 0624341
Outline
Challenges to Archaeological Synthesis
Primary data are being irretrievably lost due to
discard (paper & digital)
media degradation (digital)
software & media obsolescence (digital)
lack of adequate metadata (paper & digital)
Data integration (constructing analytically comparable observations)
is difficult because:
limited access to primary data Lack of data comparability across projects
lack of systematic metadata describing data semantics - project, table,
and field levels
structural complexity of archaeological datasets
Infrastructure Components
Unified web portal to distributed data sources
Web-based, concept-oriented query interface
no need to understand each database’s schema
sophisticated ontologies will reduces need for data standardization
Software Registration Tools
facilitate registration of datasets in a central catalog
foster the collection of adequate metadata.
internationally distributed network of data content
Data Integration (uses ontologies, digital metadata, and user guidance
to integrate datasets)
at different scales,
at different times,
by different investigators using inconsistent typologies.
Output databases of scaled and integrated (comparable) observations
that can be analyzed
Technical Approach and Challenges
Preserve the original semantics of data
maintain source codes and descriptions
link to higher level concepts in a more general way
allow for inconsistent interpretations
Resolving conflicts that derive from incomplete and inconsistent data
recording strategies.
Dealing adequately with the complexities of archaeological contexts
Ad-hoc data Integration - interactively reconciling the data demands
of the query with the semantic content of the datasets
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.
