Collaborative Research, Synthesis Centers, and the Challenge of Connecting the Past to the Present

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Synthesis in archaeology has traditionally been the province of the lone scholar, requiring heroic efforts of finding, integrating, and interpreting the results of published and unpublished reports. Such an approach is no longer tenable. The advent of CRM has led to a mountain of documented but only partially interpreted data. Academic and applied research projects now incorporate digital technologies which produce data at a pace that outstrips investigator’s ability to absorb them. It is telling that at a time when ample data on past human behavior and natural environments, the tools to make such data interoperable, and the desire to address long-term processes underlying many of today’s existential challenges exist, the major hinderance to synthesis are the traditions and culture of archaeology. About 30 years ago, other sciences facing similar issues came up with a novel solution: the synthesis center. These centers replaced lone scholars with working groups of collaborators who represent all sides of a problem, stress inclusivity and diversity, and who are provided the physical and digital tools to succeed. In 2017, archaeology joined these sciences with the establishment of the Coalition for Archaeological Synthesis (CfAS). In this paper, I trace CfAS’s history and accomplishments.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37912.0