GEO | University of Tübingen

The integrative spatial consideration and analysis of humanities and geosciences research data has been an important component of the interpretation of social and cultural relationships in the context of natural spatial conditions and in the dynamic inherent complex of relationships between humans and the environment, both in the past and in current research. This is reflected in a steadily growing number of articles in renowned journals, due to the rapid increase in recent years of both area-wide and point-based digital geoscientific data in ever higher resolutions (e.g. Lidar). Another aspect is the increasing use of geoscientific field techniques of close-up and remote sensing in archaeological research (e.g. geomagnetics). Associated with this, the demands on data management, data processing and data provision are increasing. In particular, descriptive data and various forms of documentation of features and objects place new methodological and conceptual demands on the integrative processing and analysis of these data in the context of the humanities.

For spatial and area-related data (points, lines, areas), methods from the fields of geostatistics, geoinformatics, machine learning and pattern recognition (Pattern Recognition and Knowledge Discovery) are often used. From this, a wide range of archaeologically relevant information on the landscape, such as soil quality, workability and nutrient availability, can be regionalised. In addition to the pure regionalisation of small-scale or punctual information, these methods provide important information for the analysis of the process under consideration, e.g. the change of soils over time. This analysis of cause-effect complexes in a spatial and temporal context is a central concern of current archaeological research and also of the SFB 1070 ResourceCultures, where different types of materiality and temporality in the sense of resource structures are to be researched in the second funding phase. The algorithms not only identify relevant cultural and environmental variables and their significant connection, but they also support research into dynamic processes, e.g. whether settlement development is primarily driven by socio-cultural or natural determinism, a question that plays an important role in the SFB 1070.

This combination of interdisciplinary methods and interdisciplinary ways of thinking results in five main fields of work for Subproject S in the current funding phase of
SFB 1070:

Geoscientific basics: basic geodata on climate, topography, geology, soil and land use
Support and consultation for all subprojects in geoscientific and geoarchaeological issues: regular geodata consultation hours, supporting individual subprojects and active collaboration in all project and cross-sectional areas
Management of all research data with environmental and spatial relevance: setting up and operating a data and FTP server, pre-processing the data and helping to set up databases in the sub-projects, interface programming and format conversions
Creation and improvement of geo-competence of (young) scientists in the use of geographic information systems and in dealing with environmental and spatial data: The central element for this are workshops, field schools and hands-on training schools, in which the young scientists of all subprojects are trained in the use of modern technical procedures of (geo-)data acquisition and (geo-)data processing
Interdisciplinary linking of research data in the humanities and environmental information with the application of procedures from the field of machine learning for the identification and analysis of complex impact structures