Socialising Complexity

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.