Articles by Marco Ramazzotti
MASPAG & pyArchInit, the newborn collaboration of Sapienza and adArte in the Sultanate of Oman
Guido Antinori, Marco Ramazzotti, Francesco Genchi
Abstract
During the fieldwork season in November 2021-March 2022, the ‘Missione Archeologica della Sapienza nella Penisola Arabica e nel Golfo’ (MASPAG), as part of the research activities supported and financed by the Great Excavations of Sapienza since 2019 and MAECI since 2022, planned and launched a new landscape archaeological project in the Sultanate of Oman. The first survey was carried out in an area of the Al Batinah South Governorate unknown to archaeology, combining remote-sensing and ground verification activities. This operation also saw the first result of the collaboration between the MASPAG research group and adArte srl, developer of pyArchInit open sources plugin for QGIS. The first season of the survey not only made it possible to estimate the archaeological potential of the study area, but also served as a workshop, opening a dialogue between universities and private companies, to discuss open source solutions in archaeology.
«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 2023, 34.1, 49-58; doi: 10.19282/ac.34.1.2023.06
Modelling the past. Logics, semantics and applications of neural computing in archaeology
Abstract
The study of complex archaeological systems through the new Artificial Intelligence and Natural and Neural Computing is a research project which evaluates the historical meaning of the relationships between records of the past as an essentially human construction. It repeats a strong position of Analytical Archaeology, but updates it on the basis of the progress which neurosciences and physics have made in simulating the principles which regulate memory, orientation, classification and mapping of reality. Modelling and simulating the contexts of the past in integrated, parallel, distributed processing through machine learning methods, must make use of a precise encoding of the documents. It takes on an important role in empirical research only when the results produced become the hyper-surface of a network membrane to continue, update, refine or open the analysis itself. After some 30 years of such theoretical, analytical and experimental research, logics, semantics and applications of neural computing maintain their distinct value as a new theoretical approach for the study of dynamic and systemic cultural complexity. They provide a new analytical paradigm for computational modelling in archaeology and an advanced computational method for pattern recognition in archaeometry.
«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 2020, 31.2, 169-180; doi: 10.19282/ac.31.2.2020.16
Analytical Archaeology and Artificial Adaptive Systems
Abstract
The study of complex archaeological systems with the support of the philosophy of Artificial Intelligence is a research project that evaluates the historical meaning of the relationships between archaeological documents, intended as an essentially human construction, reaffirming, in this way, the importance of Analytical Archaeology, and updating it on the basis of the progress made by Cognitive Science, Neuroscience and Cybernetics through the simulation of the principles regulating memory, orientation, classification and interpretation of reality. It is important to highlight that these models, unlike others, require a precise encoding of the documents and acquire an important role in the research only when the results they produce become the hyper-surface to continue, update, refine or open the analysis itself. In the time of techniques it is still too predictable that the last perceptible limit is still that of the relationship (metaphorical, nuanced or allusive) between 'mind and machine'. Besides, in this age, it is almost instinctive to replicate the function of knowledge, to retrieve its origin and to postulate a backstory for it. On the other hand, the models seeking a place in this discipline, by drawing their inspiration both from other dissimilar disciplines and from the theories that try to explain the cognitive function, would be absorbed by the recreation, even though minimal or impossible, of intelligences, first the Cybernetic and then the Artificial Intelligence. The other model they would be inspired by is reason as a tool and this becomes, today, the condition for interpreting and communicating the historical, archaeological and anthropological complexity of the human being.
Analytical Archaeology and Artificial Adaptive Systems Laboratory (LAA and AAS)
Abstract
This contribution represents a further attempt to synthesise and to introduce the research activities of the Analytical Archaeology and Artificial Adaptive Systems Laboratory (LAA and AAS) recently instituted at La Sapienza University of Rome thanks to the award of the project ARCHEOSEMA and to the institutional collaboration of the Department of Antiquities and the Department of Intercultural and European Studies and Physic Department. The main didactic and empirical activities of the Laboratory are related to the applicative simulations of Artificial Adaptive Systems to the analysis of complex natural and cultural phenomena through the lens of Analytical Archaeology. These complex phenomena are essentially understood to be the product of cognitive behaviour, in other words models and ideal-types which represent it and can be analysed on a formal logical level. This introductory exploration leads to a significant syntactic diversification of logical inferences and a progressive human attempt to trace them back to the simulation of cognitive complexity. Artificial Adaptive Systems, as Natural Computation mathematical tools which express these emulative properties, are historiographically involved in the connectionist reaction to behaviourism and therefore they effectively form the social sciences’ attempts to ascribe the complexities developed by our brains to advanced, non-linear and dynamic computational models. The LAA and AAS results will be examined in a historical perspective, but it is of great importance to consider the epistemological implications of this new approach since it is moved by the idea that every kind of language can be studied after being transferred into a non-linear sequence of variables.
ARCHEOSEMA. Sistemi artificiali adattivi per un'archeologia analitica e cognitiva dei fenomeni complessi
Abstract
ARCHEOSEMA is the name of a metadisciplinary theoretical, analytical and experi¬mental research project which has recently been awarded a grant by the Sapienza University of Rome. The purpose of the research is to create a logical model based on the interaction between Geographical Information Systems and Artificial Adaptive Systems. The model is conceived as an epistemological and methodological instrument: epistemological because it requires an interdisciplinary dialogue that involves archaeology, physics, geography, linguistics and statistics, and methodological because it is intended to analyze solutions for problems of classification, seriation and organization of alpha-numerical data; to implement the dynamic simulation of the variables which compose organic and/or cultural systems; to identify new rules for spatial, economic and political organization and, moreover, to analyze physical, aes¬thetic and linguistic phenomena of the self-organization, entropy, learning and translation. This epistemological and methodological instrument which is technically programmed like a GIS combines the most advanced instruments of physics, mathematics, algebra and geometry and the first simulations made on three different databases (territorial, aesthetic, and linguistics), already show a series of preliminary results that open new possibilities for territorial archeology, cognitive archeology and computational linguistics.
«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 2013, 24, 283-303; doi: 10.19282/ac.24.2013.14
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