Excerpt

The most important issue confronting the social sciences is the extent to which human behaviour is shaped by factors that operate cross-culturally as opposed to factors that are unique to particular cultures. —BRUCE G. TRIGGER (2003)

Archaeologists and historians have been interested in explaining the rise of premodern states since the nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, a plethora of hypotheses have been advanced in attempts to rigorously explain the development of state society through time and space. But despite all the efforts of archaeological fieldworkers and theoreticians alike, no widely accepted theory has yet emerged. Even the best of the large-scale efforts at examining the causes of the rise of states, such as Bruce Trigger’s monumental Understanding Early Civilizations (2003), have not been able to create widely accepted theories (also see Johnson and Earle 2000).

Given this intellectual situation, we have organized this volume in the hope of advancing our understanding of the emergence of premodern states by using the methods and techniques of complexity science—network analysis, agent-based modeling, and the like—in new ways. Part I (chapters 2–3) provides historical context, discussing past efforts at formulating theories on the emergence of premodern states. The authors define key terms and review some of the problems that proponents of earlier theories faced. Part II (chapters 4–7) presents some of the complexity-science approaches that are used to uncover new patterns in the extant archaeological data. And Part III (chapters 8–9) offers some initial syntheses of data patterns. These three sections enhance old approaches to theory building by combining complexity-science strategies with theories and methods used by archaeologists in the recent past.

What approaches have scholars used to advance our understanding of the archaeological record of premodern states? First, they have been conducting both intensive and extensive surveys and excavations of a particular site or tradition. They have used their findings, as well as other archaeological studies of the tradition, to analyze and interpret the data, sometimes employing a wide variety of foci, from environment to demography to subsistence to warfare to trade. For example, in their pathbreaking Valley of Mexico survey, Sanders et al. (1979) focused particularly on the environment, demography, and subsistence in their examination of growing complexity in the region. Further south, Flannery and Marcus (1983) looked at aspects of all these factors in their analysis of the evolution of the Zapotec state.

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