American Schools of Oriental Research | 2016 Annual Meeting Paper Abstracts WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2016 offer in the way of training programs for our foreign colleagues and collaborators (if desired), and what are the appropriate mechanisms to do so? New technologies are essential for the future of our field, but we PLENARY ADDRESS need to consider their broader implications. Sarah Parcak (University of Alabama at Birmingham), “Toward a 21st Century Archaeology of the Near East: Technology, Big Data, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2016 and Citizen Science” Since 2011 and before, the archaeologists working in North Africa, the Middle East, and Mediterranean have faced unprecedented 1A. Encoding Data for Digital Collaboration challenges due to war, terrorism, looting, urbanization, and economic collapse. Some, like the Arab Spring, could not be predicted, while CHAIRS: Amy Gansell (St. John’s University) and Vanessa Juloux others, like looting, are problems that have existed since antiquity. (École Pratique des Hautes Études), Presiding Issues surrounding urbanization and land development are only Alessandro Di Ludovico (Sapienza Università di Roma), “For a going to increase as global populations expand and available land for Critical Debate about the Use of Quantitative Methods in Western development decreases. With some tensions in the aforementioned Asiatic Studies: Approaches, Concrete Targets, and Proposals” regions escalating, while others may be stopped or decrease temporarily, Digital tools and quantitative methods have been used quite the overall situation is evolving in ways that even the experts cannot late, infrequently, and unevenly in the disciplines that deal with the accurately predict. Thus, how do we, as archaeologists and subject cultures of ancient Western Asia. This paper begins with an overview matter specialists in the region, prepare for an uncertain future? of past quantitative approaches, especially in the field of figurative Many of our in-country colleagues have had their lives threatened languages, to ancient Western Asian culture, in order to examine by escalating violence and war (while some have lost their lives), and scholarly attitudes, strategies, and goals. I will then discuss the results there are countless men and women in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, and and potential of some specific approaches of current research. Lastly, elsewhere who are unsung culture heroes. This talk will suggest ways I will offer concluding reflections and outline concrete proposals for we might scale efforts already underway to support cultural heritage the future. in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and will also suggest There are actually many reasons nowadays to revitalize the debate possible additional avenues for exploration using new and emerging about the use of quantitative research methods. In “digital humanities” technologies. research it is necessary to integrate the theoretical attitudes and concrete Multiple efforts are already underway to map cultural heritage applications of quantitative methods with the specific scientific issues destruction in the MENA region using satellite imagery. Yet, how do and approaches of each discipline. In particular for Western Asiatic we share and manage satellite data effectively and in ways that protect studies it is of great importance (considering the damages and the sites rather than encourage further looting or site destruction? The threat to the heritage occurring in the relevant countries) to recover, ethics of geospatial analytics is a new area for archaeology, and one collect, and preserve as much available data as possible. Digital tools that merits dialogue. With so many new discoveries being made, require and facilitate this effort, and often generate the positive side we want to celebrate them, while at the same time protecting sites. effect of leading scholars to reflect on their own approaches and Additional technology advances, with LIDAR, drones, and 3D site implicit assumptions. Through shared data and digital collaboration, a scanning, all offer exciting new possibilities for both site detection critical understanding and comparison of data collected and published and preservation, but methodologies and protocols are still being by different authors stimulates new perspectives and discovery. developed. Other tools like crowdsourcing could be exciting avenues to monitor sites, but have not been applied yet at a global scale. How Sveta Matskevich (University of Haifa) and Ilan Sharon (Hebrew to manage these communities so that they are engaged, informed, and University of Jerusalem), “A Conceptual Framework for empowered to make positive changes is one under intense discussion. Archaeological Data Encoding” There are many possibilities as well as pitfalls, and understanding them Archaeologists are striving to make their data digital, open, fully may assist our field in the future. and linked; in other words, they are building networks of data. To There are many avenues for supporting cultural heritage. Many benefit from encoded data sets, their structures need to be mapped of our colleagues have been actively engaged with cultural diplomacy by a metamodel that operates with general concepts instead of for the first time, whether testifying in front of Congress, the CPAC terminologies specific for each excavation or data set. committee, or assisting foreign governments. This has opened up a There are two basic approaches to excavation recording (in myriad of possibilities for public engagement. How should we as a field terms of basic excavation unit defined, and philosophy behind it) begin to prepare our graduate students for this new world? In addition, implemented in a variety of recording systems throughout the history many of us are engaged with assisting Homeland Security with their of Levantine archaeology and still today. Here we propose a conceptual efforts in stopping the illegal importation of antiquities. Should meta-model that can accommodate these seemingly incompatible more of us be engaged? On an international level, what more can we 80 | ASOR PROGRAM GUIDE 2016 November 16–19 | San Antonio, Texas approaches. The theoretical principles behind this model allow for a of archaeological data, often through attempts to establish data high level of flexibility within the structure. We defined a fundamental “standards,” which has proven relatively unfruitful. Furthermore, entity: the interpretation event. Three higher-level entities (or basic as highly atomized, item-based data structures come to replace the types of interpretive units) derive from it: spatial (locational) units, traditional relational data model often utilized by archaeologists, it has finds (or samples), and relations. Each entity may have any number of become apparent that a data standard is not necessary as long as our attributes and be grouped into classes (context, assemblage, scenario). data ontologies remain appropriately abstract (i.e., highly itemized). As a pilot study, the model was applied to legacy and recently In doing so, we can conceive of DBMS not as simple repositories of acquired excavation data sets from locus- and spit-based recording data, but as analytical environments in their own right, wherein lies systems that use either forms or diaries for managing their field the potential for not only the accumulation, but the construction records. The result is a graph database that integrates these different and contestation of knowledge from archaeological data (Knowledge records while preserving their original attributes unique for each Discovery from Archaeological Data [KDAD]). excavation. The model can be used as a basis for archaeological data Following a brief excursus into the phenomenon of data mining networks that aggregate diverse resources such as digital publication and its implications within the discipline, this paper will focus on the platforms. implementation of a revised apriori algorithm (after Agrawal and Srikant 1994) for establishing associations among items in a dataset. Shannon Martino(School of the Art Institute, Chicago) and Matthew The algorithm is applied to a dataset from Tell Mastuma, Syria, to Martino (The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools), “A elucidate heretofore unrecognized patterns among the data derived Quantitative Method for the Creation of Typologies for Qualitatively from Stratum I-2b. It is argued such patterns are indicative of past Described Objects: A Case Study of Prehistoric Figurines from practices enacted at the site, and association rules are utilized to paint Anatolia and Southeastern Europe” a more nuanced portrait of the community of Tell Mastuma during Typologies are fraught with subjectivity: one characteristic is the Iron II. considered relevant, while another may go unnoticed entirely. This subjectivity sometimes leads to more than one typology being created Émilie Pagé-Perron (University of Toronto), “Data Mining for the same set of data, with each researcher claiming to better Cuneiform Corpora: Get Relational” represent the data. Indeed, the creation of a typology is a creative The digital humanities are slowly setting foot into Assyriological process inspired by leaps of intuition. Ultimately, intuition and its studies. Cuneiform scholars are beginning to borrow and adapt inherent subjectivity ought to be explained by scientific reasoning. computerized methods from both Science, Technology, Engineering, In the interest of omitting subjectivity from typological analyses, and Mathematics