Analytical Archaeology and Artificial Adaptive Systems Laboratory (LAA and AAS)

Marco Ramazzotti

«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 2014, Supplemento 6, 85-112

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.

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