archaeologists have investigated Cultures of all peoples on Earth — So why not study unique communities outside this world? A team is creating an archaeological record of life aboard the International Space Station.
A new project, called the Sampling Quadrangle Assemblages Research Experiment (SQuARE), will include hundreds of photographs taken by astronauts throughout the living and working spaces of the ISS. The space station has been occupied by people for decades, and the launch of the first modules in the late 1990s coincided with the rise of digital photography. That means astronauts are no longer restricted to film her canisters when documenting life in space, and space archaeologists, yes, can only speculate about it from afar.
But this is the first time archaeologists have adjusted the photo for analysis. His SQuARE photos, taken over 60 days last year, show everything from anti-gravity hacks to the food astronauts enjoy. Justin Walsh, an archaeologist at Chapman University in Los Angeles and the University of Southern California, said images like this reveal how people use the limited tools and material comforts available in space. I believe that it will be very useful for social science researchers who want to take photographs. can actually start tracking,” says Walsh. The team presented preliminary findings at the American Archaeological Society meeting in Portland, Oregon, yesterday afternoon.
Walsh leads SQuARE with Alice Gorman, an archaeologist at Flinders University in Australia. The main thing she wants to learn is, “What are the social implications of a small, isolated society off Earth? mosquito?”
Modern archeology infers people’s social world from the physical objects they use and the spaces they construct, providing insight into people’s daily lives that they may not be aware of. Scientists consider archeology to be closely related to or even part of anthropology, but the anthropological method relies more on observation and interviews. However, the interview only reveals part of the story. For decades, psychologists have known that people have a hard time judging their own behavior. Memories are biased and eyewitness accounts can be inaccurate.
“We’re concerned that people don’t remember or even register when they describe what they do in life,” Gorman says. “Our approach is that we can see what people actually did, not just what they did. Said they did That’s what the archaeological record tells us. “
ISS records include tools, research equipment, food pouches, cleaning supplies, and other household items. The team will be photographed daily by NASA and European Space Agency astronauts from January 21, 2022 to March 21, 2022, in what Gorman calls a “surrogate excavation.” I took the image. Six locations, including the galley table, starboard workstation, port side of the U.S. Labs module, and the wall across from the toilet. Each photograph captures an area of approximately one square meter marked with adhesive tape at the corners, and the crew uses a color calibration chart to correct the digital images and a ruler for scale. I took After collecting 358 photographs, the archaeological team combed through them, marking objects that showed signs of use and objects that were in the same place in all the photographs (a sign of little use).
