Joy JuedesChapman University’s “dig” into life on the International Space Station has been honored by the American Anthropological Association.
The project was given the association’s General Anthropology Division’s New Directions Award for its “extra-terrestrial archaeological work in studying the material culture of humans in space.”
The project – the first archeological study of a space habitat – is led by Department of Art chair Justin Walsh, an archeologist by training, and Alice Gorman of Flinders University in Australia.
The project uses archeological methods to study human activity in space. Its Sampling Quadrangle Assemblages Research Experiment (SQuARE) coordinates photo documentation by crew members aboard the space station of 1-meter-square spaces for 60 consecutive days. Walsh and Gorman analyzed more than 4,500 objects from two squares, and Walsh will present the results at USC on Sept. 26.
Project collaborators include Chapman faculty members Erik Linstead, Wendy Salmond and Stephanie Takaragawa and data scientist Rao Hamza Ali (Ph.D. ’22), who worked in Chapman’s Machine Learning and Affiliated Technology Lab.
Earlier this year, the project was given the Archaeological Institute of America’s 2023 Award for Outstanding Work in Digital Archaeology.
