Trowels, processors and misunderstandings: concluding thoughts

Mehdi Saqalli (1) , Marc Vander Linden (2)

1 GEODE - Géographie de l'environnement
2 School of Archaeology and Ancient History

This conclusive text deals with the challenges of interdisciplinarity: Although conceptual and formal thresholds are well known within the scientific community, one may encounter difficulties for answering such related requirements: among them, the tension between the inherent holistic pretence of modelling and data-related prosaicism is important as well as the simple fact that things, practices, assumptions and words are not the same among disciplines inducing unsolved misconceptions, misunderstandings and social bias. Also, seeking legitimacy and validity but also efficiency at the modelling project level, implying simplifications, interpolations an generalizations, is often in contradiction with the need for legitimacy at the level of each discipline involved. This is due of course to potentially contradictory scientific requirements of both levels and for a weight at least equivalent to the perfectly normal social need for recognition of each researcher, usually within its own discipline, to compare with the risky "business" in terms of reputation, results' over-expectation and time consumption of modelling approaches.

Mots clés: Research community; social constraints to interdisciplinarity; go-and-return between fields and models

Domaines: Système multi-agents [cs.MA]; Modélisation et simulation; Environnement et Société; Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie; Archéologie et Préhistoire

Mehdi Saqalli, Marc Vander Linden. Trowels, processors and misunderstandings: concluding thoughts. Integrating qualitative and social science factors in archaeological modelling., Springer Editions, pp.217-223, 2019, Computational Social Sciences, ⟨10.1007/978-3-030-12723-7_9⟩. ⟨hal-02361551⟩