Planning Archaeological Infrastructure for Integrative Science

规划综合科学考古基础设施

• 批准号: 1202413
• 负责人: Keith Kintigh
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Arizona State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-01-15 至 2013-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1202413&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Planning; Archaeological; Infrastructure; Integrative; Science

A fundamental challenge of science is to understand the processes that shape how human societies interact with one another and that explain how societies are, at once, constrained by and change the natural environments in which they are situated. Because of the complexity of the interactions, achieving these understandings must be seen as a shared enterprise that broadly engages social, behavioral, and economic sciences, as well as a range of natural sciences. Some of these processes are strongly influenced by events that can be readily observed over periods of days, months, or years. Other important processes operate slowly - over centuries or millennia - and their effects often cannot be detected in present-day or historical observations. Because archaeology is frequently the only source of long-term scientific data on human societies and their environments, it is essential that we take advantage of the unique information that archaeology can provide. Indeed, reconstructed archaeological sequences can be seen as completed "experiments" in the long-term operation of social and environmental processes played out in diverse social and natural environments. Systematic archaeological research has been conducted for more than a century. In the US alone, thousands of archaeological field projects are now conducted each year. These projects record large amounts of archaeological and environmental data and produce lengthy reports, in addition to published articles and books. However, overwhelmingly, this information is not readily accessible to scholars. Even if it were accessible, the complexity of the data - due in large part to the enormous diversity of the human behavior it documents - make it extremely difficult to use in the context of synthetic research on social and environmental dynamics. To move forward on this important research agenda, the availability of archaeological data must be enormously expanded and computational methods developed and implemented that make it possible for synthetic research to effectively exploit this huge reservoir of data and documents.The goal of this project is to develop a plan that would detail how major investments by NSF in the information infrastructure of archaeology could best improve the scientific community's ability to use archaeological data in synthetic research on social and environmental dynamics and thereby serve the needs of contemporary society more broadly. This goal will be achieved by a sequence of two small conferences coordinated by a steering committee that will select the conference participants and set the agendas. Based on the conference outcomes, the steering committee will produce a report that details the needs for and expected benefits of substantial infrastructure investments in archaeology and that describes and provides budget estimates for the proposed investments.

科学的一个基本挑战是了解塑造人类社会如何相互互动的过程，并解释社会立即受到约束并改变其所处自然环境的方式。由于互动的复杂性，必须将这些理解视为一家共同的企业，它广泛地吸引了社会，行为和经济科学以及一系列自然科学。这些过程中的一些受到事件的强烈影响，这些事件可以在几天，几个月或几年的时间内很容易观察到。 其他重要过程的运作缓慢 - 几个世纪或几千年 - 在当今或历史观察中通常无法检测到它们的影响。 由于考古学通常是关于人类社会及其环境的长期科学数据的唯一来源，因此我们必须利用考古学可以提供的独特信息。 的确，重建的考古序列可以看作是在各种社会和自然环境中进行的社会和环境过程的长期运作中完成的“实验”。系统的考古研究已经进行了一个多世纪。 仅在美国，现在每年都会进行成千上万的考古野外项目。 这些项目记录了大量的考古和环境数据，除了发表的文章和书籍外，还会产生冗长的报告。但是，绝大多数情况下，学者不容易访问此信息。即使可以访问它，数据的复杂性 - 很大程度上是由于它记录的人类行为的巨大多样性，也使在社会和环境动态的合成研究中极其难以使用。 要推进这一重要的研究议程，必须大量扩展考古数据的可用性，并开发和实施计算方法，使合成研究有可能有效利用这一庞大的数据和文档储备。该项目的目标是，该项目的目标是开发一项计划，以开发一项计划，以详细介绍NSF在库术中详细介绍库术的研究，以详细介绍库级的研究，以促进库级的库术基础性，该计划的构成能力的概念构成概念的基础性，该计划的能力是概念性的，该计划的构成能力是概念性的。环境动态，从而更广泛地满足当代社会的需求。这一目标将通过指导委员会协调的两个小型会议来实现，该委员会将选择会议参与者并设定议程。根据会议成果，指导委员会将制定一份报告，详细介绍了考古学基础设施投资的需求和预期收益的需求和预期收益，并描述并为拟议的投资提供了预算估算。