The Proximity of Communities to the Expanse of Big Data

ABSTRACT

While individuals living near or on archaeological sites have frequently been hired around the world to dig on archaeological excavations, they have very rarely participated in the recording or documentation of those excavations. They have played even less of a role in designing the structures of either paper or electronic data management systems. In this paper, I describe some potential gaps in the archaeological record as a result of this exclusion, by detailing some ways that the communities at Çatalhöyük, Turkey and Petra, Jordan have developed highly situated forms of knowledge about these archaeological sites due to their proximities to them. I also argue that “proximity” inculcates not only forms of knowledge about an archaeological site, but also, under certain conditions, an important means of sharing knowledge between archaeologists and the communities who live where we work. I contrast proximity to the expansiveness of big data, and question whether it is possible and even preferable to imagine ways of integrating local, proximate perspectives into the rubric of big data.

KEYWORDS:

• Community archaeology
• big data
• digital archaeology
• epistemology
• Jordan
• Turkey

Acknowledgments

The research described here was funded by Fulbright, the American Schools of Oriental Research, the Biblical Archaeology Society, the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University, and the Stanford Archaeology Center. I am grateful to all of those living at Petra and Çatalhöyük who agreed to be a part of this research, who invited me into their homes and their lives, particularly those named and quoted in this text. I would like to thank as well the editors of this special issue, J. Andrew Dufton and Parker VanValkenburgh, for organizing the SAA session that led to the issue, for their editorial vision, and for their feedback on earlier drafts of the manuscript. Their critiques, together with those of JFA editor Christina Luke, and anonymous reviewers greatly improved the text. Any gaps or shortcomings, of course, remain my own.

Disclosure Statement

The authors declare no potential conflict of interest.

Notes on Contributor

Allison Mickel (Ph.D. 2016, Stanford University) is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Lehigh University, and a core faculty member in both Global Studies and the Center for Global Islamic Studies. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Stanford University in 2016 and her B.A. from The College of William and Mary in 2011. Her research focuses on how local communities have impacted and been affected by the long history of archaeological work in the Middle East. By interviewing current and former site workers employed on archaeological projects, and utilizing statistical and visual methods like social network analysis, Allison Mickel maps, measures, illustrates, transcribes, outlines, and stipples the roles that local community members play in the processes of archaeological knowledge production. She has excavated in Jordan, Turkey, Kenya, and the United States, and is now undertaking an ethnographic project centering on two new private companies in Jordan advocating for the recognition of local expertise and fair labor conditions on archaeological excavations.

ORCID

Allison Mickel http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6789-2638