Computational approaches to a sustainable heritage management of Central Asian Archaeological Landscapes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Landscape Archaeology - Part 2" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Central Asian Archaeological Landscape (CAAL) project is building a geo-spatial inventory of archaeological resources for Central Asia. CAAL is developing a two-platform system that addresses the needs of end users. The graph database Arches platform, developed by the Getty Conservation Institute, is being employed for its powerful semantic search engine and multi-lingual capabilities, while an object-based relational PostGIS database is implemented because of its analytical functionalities and interoperability with other software packages.

In this paper, we present the challenges and the technical solutions adopted within a landscape-oriented site recording system that would hold in a single framework the complexity of both the archaeological record and of the archaeological data. The project deals with data coming from 6 national inventories, several national and international research projects, digitised archival materials, digitally-born datasets (e.g., multi-scalar UAV outputs), remote sensing mapping, and field survey data. This paper will focus on how the site-centric concept of site can be scaled up to a landscape perspective within a heritage management environment where the multi-disciplinarity and multi-vocality of different actors and stakeholders needs to be integrated into a single working framework for archaeological research and heritage legislation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Interdisciplinary Approaches to Landscape Archaeology - Part 2   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51406