Archaeology in the Age of Supercomputing

Abstract

As a discipline, archaeology is poised to fully embrace both the power and the peril of big data analysis. Our datasets are growing ever larger, especially those generated via remote sensing and geospatial processing activities, as is the computational complexity of algorithms designed to exploit them. Analyses are quickly outpacing what can be done using a single processing core on a desktop computer, leveraging off-the-shelf commercial and open source software. Our research needs are becoming increasingly sophisticated, to the point where relying wholly on outside experts in computer science and related fields is untenable. While the above statements could be viewed primarily as challenges, it is better to think of them as opportunities for archaeology to grow technologically and retain more ownership of our hardest problems. High performance computing, i.e., supercomputing, is already having an impact on the field, but we are moving into an era that promises to put the power of the world’s largest and fastest computers at archaeologists’ fingertips. What does the state of the art look like? How could we use the coming power? What lines of inquiry and analysis could we pursue once long-standing technical limitations have been removed? This chapter will focus on the present and the future of archaeological high performance computing, using several ongoing projects across a broad swath of the discipline as examples of where we are now and signposts for where we are heading.