Overview

Archaeology can provide a 'deep time' perspective on issues of contemporary relevance--including human demography, social inequality, migration, the evolution of social identities, diffusion of ideas and technologies, and spread of social movements--to a variety of research communities. A major challenge

in using archaeological data to address these domains, however,is that most information collected by archaeologists is not digitally curated or synthesized beyond individual projects. A number of recent synthesis projects in the U.S. Southwest show the great potential of these data for addressing big questions in the social sciences. The proposed project will accelerate the cumulative research potential of these efforts through the creation of cyberSW, an integrated cyber infrastructure that will

(1) merge several existing synthetic databases from the U.S. Southwest into one scalable, networked database;

(2)collect additional data from archives, reports, museum collections,and limited fieldwork to fill in spatial,temporal, and material culture gaps in the new database;

(3) analyze those data and create user-friendly online tools for data analysis and display based in network science and other quantitative methods; and

(4) establish a web portal for data display, analysis, and sharing that is accessible to both professional researchers and the general public.

Intellectual Merit

The archaeological record of the U.S. Southwest is one of the most intensively studied in the world and is often at the cutting edge of archaeology with respect to method and theory. This project builds on several prior NSF-funded projects in this area that have already produced large, synthetic databases that focus on specific areas and time periods. As part of this project, we will integrate these into a single research database of unprecedented scale. But cyberSW will be more than a database; it will be an integrated knowledge delivery system allowing users at different levels of expertise to view, analyze, and extract data for other analyses. Protocols for data standardization and synthesis have already been established for most classes of artifacts and architecture, and we will build on these as we expand our coverage to new areas of the Southwest. Additional data will be collected that will allow researchers to address social science issues of contemporary relevance from the deep time perspective unique to archaeology,including demography, density, diversity, and connectivity. An innovative part of our project is the use of a graph database that is both scalable and open source, which can be used as a model for other large-scale research projects.

Broader Impacts

CyberSW will result in the data integration of millions of objects from tens of thousands of settlements spread across the U.S. Southwest that were inhabited between ca.A.D. 800 to 1550, making it one of the largest archaeological databases in the world. By merging existing databases and creating a single-networked database that provides the infrastructure for research by a variety of constituencies on several big questions in the social sciences, including: How and why does social inequality emerge? What is the relationship of demographic scale to social connectivity? Why do some societies fail? And how does migration alter social relationships and identities? Many of the archaeological sites to be incorporated into cyberSW are well-known and of great interest to the general public because they are on federally

managed lands, including National Parks and Monuments. Making these data available to researchers and to the public fulfills an ethical responsibility to make the findings of archaeological research accessible and interpretable. The online analytical tools will allow a wide range of individuals to conduct their own analyses, whether these be tribal members interested in their history,students learning data manipulation and display, or social scientists grappling with the long-term questions about the human past. The Citizen Science component for registered volunteers will allow a much bigger community to participate in transformative science.