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