Session: #600

Session, made up of a combination of papers, max. 15 minutes each

Over the past 50 years, public support, effected through laws and regulations, has allowed archaeologists to document the archaeological record to an extent and intensity that was heretofore unimaginable. For many areas of the world, our knowledge of cultural sequences and trajectories—the who, what, when, and where of the past—is astounding. Yet for all the data we have amassed, we find it no easier to ascertain how cultures evolved, why societies chose the paths they followed, or how the patterns we discern in the past can inform decisions we make today. To move beyond documenting the archaeological record, archaeologists must shift their focus from interpreting project-by-project results to synthesizing multiple sources of data to produce emergent knowledge.
Synthesis, although not new to archaeology, has been difficult to institutionalize. Regulations require archaeological resources to be documented, but generally do not fund the integration of data beyond the project boundaries. Academics have been slow to recognize the value of cultural heritage data, and even when the importance of these data is recognized, academic research is inadequately funded to exploit its potential.
Recognizing these constraints, international efforts, such as the Coalition for Archaeological Synthesis (CfAS), have emerged. CfAS has adopted a form of collaborative synthetic research developed in the ecological sciences in which important scientific questions with clear public policy implications are framed in ways that can be solved within a few years (see http://archsynth.org). Collaborative synthesis, along the lines followed by CfAS and others, is the subject of this session.

Synthesis; CfAS; Collaboration

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Dr Jeff Altschul () ^1,2

Dr. Friedrich Luth (Germany) ³