Conceptualising, Processing and Visualising Vagueness in Archaeological Data

49th International Conference on Computer Applications and Qualitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA 2021)

(online). Chipre
Congreso. 2021

Background

Vagueness has always been a difficult topic in science; information that is uncertain, or entities with unclear borders, for example, are especially difficult to treat. Over the past few years, for archaeology, and for the humanities in general, vagueness has started to be considered as a rich source of knowledge when it is adequately managed. Mechanisms to record, represent and communicate vagueness have been proposed, and CAA as well as other conferences has had some very good sessions on this topic in recent years. This complements a long tradition of trying to cope with vagueness; works such as [2] and, more recently, [6], have paved the way for more recent research.

The aim of this line of research can be summaries as follows: instead of treating vagueness as an undesirable and annoying aspect of archaeological information, we should start seeing it as a valuable resource that must be recorded, processed and visualised for richer interpretations and more nuanced conclusions.

Current Research

Recently, approaches have been proposed to classify vagueness in different types (such as ontological vs. epistemic [3]), capture vague information about archaeological entities [5], or visualise vagueness in 3D archaeological reconstructions [1]. The Digital Humanities community has also paid significant attention to this, with specific projects (such as PROVIDEDH, http://www.chistera.eu/projects/providedh) and some specific workshops and tracks focusing on vagueness, such as “Complexity And Uncertainty In DH Projects: A Co-design Approach Around Data Visualization” within Digital Humanities (DH) 2019, or “Uncertainty in Digital Humanities” in the International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality (TEEM) 2019. Information science and computing are also starting to work on this field, as exemplified by the ongoing special issue of Information on vagueness [4].

Most of these works, however, are extremely data-oriented, focussing on how to capture vagueness in databases or how to express it in datasets. Although this is very interesting, it only constitutes part of the necessary work; in order to treat vagueness as a valuable asset, we must start by being aware of its existence and impact in our data models, and include the explicit treatment of vagueness as one factor in the decision-making processes of model building in archaeology. In addition, we need tools to build and process vagueness as one dimension of the archaeological data from the field to the final report.

So far, there are no tools like these, and drawing conclusions that incorporate vague knowledge or evaluating the impact of vagueness in research outcomes is practically impossible.

Expected Contributions

In this manner, research is necessary to contribute sound philosophical arguments to the treatment of vagueness in archaeology; to provide a good conceptualisation of related ontological and epistemic issues such as precision, exactitude, accuracy, perfection, error, ambiguity, generalisation, or reliability; and to suggest notational and visual devices to convey vagueness in 3D reconstructions, maps, charts and other forms of representations. Only when a solid theoretical foundation has been set will we be able to develop computer systems that can store, process and represent vagueness as appropriate.

This is especially so in relation to space and time. Objects with fuzzy spatial boundaries (such as many archaeological sites or areas) are difficult to manage, study and preserve, and events or phases with uncertain or unclear temporal boundaries are equally hard to treat. This session aims to advance contributions to fulfil these needs.

Expected Themes

Papers are welcome in this session about the following topics, among others:

• Philosophical accounts of vagueness, including ontological and epistemic aspects.

• Relationships between linguistic, spatial, and temporal vagueness.

• Theories, ontologies and conceptual models of data vagueness in archaeology.

• Use of different computational approaches such as fuzzy logic, many-valued logics, machine learning or other quantitative approaches to the description of vagueness in archaeological data.

• Incorporating vagueness to the recording of data in the field or the lab using databases and other information systems.

• Visualisation of vagueness in final outputs of computer-aided archaeological products, including datasets, maps, timelines, sketches, 3D reconstructions and other visual representations of the archaeological record.

• Case reports of archaeological sites or areas that have been affected (positively or negatively) by the treatment of vague information.

Audience

The session will be of interest to:

• Archaeologists concerned with a richer and more nuanced representation of spatial and temporal vagueness.

• Cultural heritage managers that must make decisions on, and deal with, information that is intrinsically imprecise and uncertain.

• Developers of information systems that are aiming to capture vagueness in their data.

Session Format

This will be a standard session including an introductory invited keynote talk (20 minutes) plus a number of 20-minute papers. Time for discussion will be available.

References

[1] L. Brunke, “Uncertainty in archaeological 3D reconstructions,” University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands, 2017.

[2] P. A. Burrough, I. Masser, and F. Salgé, “Natural Objects with Indeterminate Boundaries,” in Geographic Objects with Indeterminate Boundaries, no. 2, P. A. Burrough and A. U. Frank, Eds. London: Taylor & Francis, 1996, pp. 3–28.

[3] C. Gonzalez-Perez, Information Modelling for Archaeology and Anthropology. Springer, 2018.

[4] C. Gonzalez-Perez, M. Pereira-Fariña, and L. Tobalina-Pulido, “Information Vagueness.” MDPI, 2020, [Online]. Available: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/information/special_issues/information_vagueness.

[5] P. Martín-Rodilla, C. Gonzalez-Perez, P. Martin-Rodilla, and C. Gonzalez-Perez, “Conceptualization and Non-Relational Implementation of Ontological and Epistemic Vagueness of Information in Digital Humanities,” Informatics, vol. 6, no. 2, 2019, doi: 10.3390/informatics6020020.

[6] B. Smith and A. C. Varzi, “Fiat and bona fide boundaries: Towards an ontology of spatially extended objects,” in Spatial Information Theory: A Theoretical Basis for GIS, no. 1329, S. C. Hirtle and A. U. Frank, Eds. Springer, 2005, pp. 103–119.

Vagueness. Archaeology. Conceptual modelling. Visualization. Imprecision. Uncertainty.