Socialising Complexity introduces the concept of complexity as a tool, rather than a category, for understanding social formations. This new take on complexity moves beyond the traditional concern with what constitutes a complex society and focuses on the complexity inherent in various social forms through the structuring principles created within each society. The aims and themes of the book can thus be summarised as follows: to introduce the idea of complexity as a tool, which is pertinent to the understanding of all types of society, rather than an exclusionary type of society in its own right; to examine concepts that can enhance our interpretation of societal complexity, such as heterarchy, materialisation and contextualisation. These concepts are applied at different scales and in different ways, illustrating their utility in a variety of different cases; to re-establish social structure as a topic of study within archaeology, which can be profitably studied by proponents of both processual and post-processual methodologies.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• PART I: THE COMPLEXITY CONCEPT
  • 1: Socialising Complexity
  • 2: Evolution, Complexity and the State
• PART II: THE ORGANISATION OF SOCIETY
  • 3: Notes on a New Paradigm
  • 4: Social complexity is not the same as Hierarchy
  • 5: The Rules of the Game. Decentralised Complexity and Power Structures
  • 6: The state they were in: community, continuity and change in the north-central Andes, 1000–1608 AD
• PART III: COMPLEXITY THROUGH PRACTICE
  • 7: Materialising ‘complex’ social relationships: Technology, production and consumption in a Copper Age Community
  • 8: Settings and symbols: assessing complexity in the pre-Hispanic Andes
• PART IV: COMPLEXITY AND LANDSCAPE
  • 9: Multiple landscapes and layered meanings: scale, interaction and process in the development of a Swahili town
  • 10: Social landscapes and community identity: the social organisation of space in the north-central Andes
  • 11: Taking the Bight out of complexity: elaborating interior landscapes within South-Central California
• PART V: ENCOUNTERING COMPLEXITY
  • 12: Creating Complexity: the example of the Muisca of Colombia
  • 13: The decentralised state: nomads, complexity and sociotechnical systems in Inner Asia