More Data and More Computation but not Necessarily Less Theory: Assessing the Status and Near-Future Directions of Archaeology

Summary

Over the last decade many archaeologists (the author included) have increasingly employed computational approaches to make sense of the ever-larger amounts of relatively low-quality data available, to identify signals within the noise. Numerous applications of summed probability distributions of 14C dates and similarly sophisticated processing of tree-ring dates fall within this category, as do attempts to extract data related to specific research questions from the growing worldwide archaeological literature and its archives (e.g., tDAR, ADS) or government site files which can be processed to reveal counts of sites at risk from rising sea levels (for example). Another example is the increasing availability of usefully processed paleoclimate data available from cyberinfrastructure projects such as SKOPE. But having lots of data does not in my view (though this has sometimes been claimed) relieve us from the necessity of continuing to build theory. Indeed, theory now has the opportunity to become more elaborate in response to the sizes of our data sets and the increased sophistication of our questions. Agent-based modeling is one example of how theories can usefully become more elaborate, and I close with an example of a recent ABM that suggests a pathway for the growth and demise of a tributary mode of production in the US Pueblo Southwest.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• US Archaeology Data Science Session: National Science Foundation US-Serbia & West Balkan Data Science Workshop

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Contact(s): Timothy A. Kohler

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