Human Origins-Digital Future, An International Conference About The Future Of Archeological And Paleoanthropological Databases

Databases are ubiquitous in the natural sciences and can include anything from a simple, thematically restricted table to a complex, interdisciplinary network. Despite their widespread use, many questions remain unresolved about their growth, analytical function, interoperability, and sustainability. To examine current trends in this dynamic field, The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans (ROCEEH; www.roceeh.net), a research center of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities organized an international and interdisciplinary conference entitled “Human Origins – Digital Future.” The research center itself maintains the ROCEEH Out of Africa Database (ROAD; https://www.roceeh.uni-tuebingen.de/roadweb), an interdisciplinary catalog of information about archeological and paleoanthropological localities and their assemblages in Africa and Eurasia dating between 3 million and 20,000 years ago. The main aim of the conference was to discuss integrative aspects and approaches for developing, using and securing large scientific databases in the future, specifically in the context of archeological and paleoanthropological research. The conference focused on how databases with novel information technology can be used to gain new knowledge by linking, retrieving and analyzing archeological, paleoanthropological, paleobiological, and geographical information. In addition to addressing fundamental questions of digitization and open science, the conference examined approaches using innovative methods. With additional support from the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, the conference took place online from July 27–31, 2020 with 113 registered participants from 19 countries. Invited researchers presented their findings in English in a series of 15 lectures, 11 poster presentations, and 4 interviews. We originally planned the conference as a 3-day face-to-face event at the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. However, due to the persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic, we reconceived our plans 2 months beforehand. We restructured the conference as an online event using the communication platform, Zoom, with help gained from the experience of Amorim and Tucci. The conference consisted of five sessions: Databases, Methods, Applications, Products, and Perspectives. To combat web fatigue, we limited the sessions to 2 hr and spread them over 5 days at a time when participants from both the Far East and the American West could participate. All contributions were recorded and remained accessible for 6 weeks after the conference via the collaboration platform, NextCloud, hosted on our server. These recordings will serve as the basis for a digital publication (see below). While many contributors prerecorded their talks for playback during the conference, some chose to present live, adding a comfortable ebb and flow to the meeting. We began each session with a recap of the previous day's results using a “mind-map” (Figure; Figure S1), which afforded those who could not attend the chance to remain informed. We incorporated many opportunities for live interaction though formal and informal discussions after each talk, session, and day. We also reimagined round-table discussions as prerecorded interviews in which ROCEEH members asked the panel about how they envisioned the future of databases in the study of prehistory.