Abstract

Archaeology and Anthropology are intriguing and wide-ranging subjects, which provide cross-cultural, comparative perspectives on the world, both past and present. They are two closely related disciplines, but they have distinct focuses and methodologies that must be clearly understood and carefully studied. With the advancements in information technologies and computing hardware, recent years have seen the emergence of a new computational method, which seeks to simulate human cognition capability and confer human-like intelligence to machines and computers. Fuzzy cognitive map theories is such a new mathematical method that has been used extensively resulting in useful results across many scientific fields. Early thoughts on how Fuzzy Cognitive Map theories can be used in studies of Archaeology and Anthropology are provided.

Keywords:Archaeology; Anthropology; Cultural anthropology; Fuzzy logic; Complexity; Fuzzy cognitive maps