Final answer:
The project led by Drs. Sudha Ram and Barbara Mills collaborates across disciplines to analyze Big Data on pre-Hispanic archaeological sites in the American Southwest, leveraging supercomputers and computer algorithms to manage and interpret the vast information.
Step-by-step explanation:
The "Big Data" knowledge discovery project led by Dr. Sudha Ram (MIS) and Dr. Barbara Mills (School of Anthropology) is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Eller College of Management.
This project focuses specifically on pre-Hispanic archaeological data from the American Southwest — Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado — from A.D. 800 to the 1500s, which is shortly after the arrival of the Spanish in the region. The team works with a massive volume of data that they liken to the information contained in the Library of Congress, requiring the use of supercomputers and advanced computer algorithms to efficiently sort and analyze the data.
Dr. Alison Holmes, who is part of the team, brings expertise in both Latin American and North American art history, emphasizing the significance of such interdisciplinary collaborations in enhancing our understanding of historical and cultural developments.