The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Data integration and analysis towards synthesizing archaeological research of the countryside

In Mediterranean archaeology, there has traditionally been a strong sampling bias towards urban contexts, while the contemporaneous dynamics in the surrounding countryside have received less attention. In the last decades it has become clear that the countryside is much more complex than once thought, and that it encompassed a variety of human-environmental interactions, which makes its study more relevant and overdue than ever. One of the main limitations which currently prevents the archaeological reconstruction of regional developments within the countryside is that available datasets differ in scale and resolution. This basically represents a data integration problem, a vexing issue for many academic disciplines. In this application, we propose a study of Anatolia to develop data integration policies allowing innovative syntheses of currently scattered information. For this, we will work on ontologies, data standards, and implement novel machine learning analytical techniques capable of dealing with unbalanced designs. The larger spatial and temporal scale of the metadata allow for validating broader general trends such as responses to change. Apart from servicing the development of these aspects for the discipline of archaeology, the applicant has the ambition of contributing to the rewriting of the history of these archaeological countrysides. Although investigated in a specific part of the Old World, the approach and methods are intended to be generic in application.