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Complexity in Archaic States
Robert McC. Adams
Department of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093-0532
Received July 25, 2000; revision received October 6, 2000; accepted October 26, 2000;
published online June 1, 2001
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 20, 345–360 (2001)
doi:10.1006/jaar.2000.0377, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on
The concept of complexity, associated particularly with ancient cities, states, and civilizations
and their immediate antecedents, denotes qualities of hierarchical differentiation and the intricacy
and interdependency of their parts and relationships. Alike in the human and natural worlds, com-
plexity has repeatedly emerged as an overarching characterization through irregular, discontinu-
ous processes of accumulation. These led by degrees and at intervals to relatively abrupt, qualita-
tive changes. Under various constraints, contemporary archaeological research methods and
objectives have not been accompanied by an adequate recognition of the centrality of increasing
complexity as a social evolutionary tendency. Here it is argued that a focused, highly interdiscipli-
nary study of complex adaptive systems is meanwhile coming to the fore that deserves careful ar-
chaeological scrutiny. A growing convergence of interests is suggested by shared issues like histor-
ical path-dependency, the interactions of differently situated and motivated human agents,
differential returns to scale, and the range of possible, computer-generated outcomes of unpre-
dictable combinations of orderly, random and stochastic processes and events. © 2001 Academic Press
Two interrelated trends, toward increas-
ing hierarchical differentiation and toward
complexity, have characterized human so-
cial evolution since the end of the Pleis-
tocene. Yet it is obvious that individual so-
cieties have seldom if ever long sustained a
movement in either direction, let alone
both. As with its biological and ecosystemic
evolutionary analogues, discontinuities are
an essential part of the cultural evolution-
ary process. Making a case for comparable
processes affecting social systems and
ecosystems, with little more than a straight-
forward translation of the entities involved,
Holling et al. generalize that in all dynamic,
self-organized systems,
nge is neither continuous and gradual nor con-
ently chaotic. Rather it is episodic, with peri-
of slow accumulation of natural capital such
iomass or nutrients, punctuated by sudden re-
ses and reorganization of that capital as the re-
t of internal or external natural processes or of
an-imposed catastrophes. (n.d.: 2.4)
iscontinuous, rapid shifts, interspersed
uch longer spans of relative stability,
34
exist in most archaeological sequences of
regional or larger scale. Such irregularities
provide the framework for most archaeo-
logical theory and synthesis, employing the
longue durée outlook with which Fernand
Braudel has enriched the study of history—
and secondarily also of archaeology
(Bintliff, Ed. 1991).
Drawing on the example of the Industrial
Revolution, archaeologists under the stimu-
lus of Gordon Childe and Julian Steward
were already beginning to take notice of
complex, multicausal irregularities in rate
and direction by around the time of World
War II (Greene 1999). Numerous efforts
quickly began to center, as they remain cen-
tered today, on the multiple, independently
occurring examples of early food-produc-
ing and urban revolutions in both hemi-
spheres.
The study of hierarchical differentiation
has been deeply rooted in the social sci-
ences since the last century. Complexity, on
the other hand, has a more vaguely inclu-
sive, but also more obscure, lineage and
50278-4165/01 $35.00Copyright © 2001 by Academic Press
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
c
present set of meanings. Basically, it con-
veys a sense of intricacy in nature, struc-
ture, and perhaps causation. The Oxford
English Dictionary finds the root of the
word in a whole that comprehends a num-
ber of interrelated parts or involved partic-
ulars.
In archaeological usage complexity most
frequently implies “pronounced and insti-
tutionalized patterns of inequality and het-
erogeneity” (Smith 1993:5–6). Omitting rare
reference even to groups of hunter-gather-
ers, its prevailing application is sometimes
to chiefdoms but more especially to ancient
cities, states, and civilizations. Early
Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley,
North China, Mesoamerica, and Andean
South America, differing greatly from one
another in numerous other respects, stand
apart as the essentially complete roster of
the original or “pristine” members of this
latter class.
An abstraction like complexity does not
emerge immediately from raw archaeologi-
cal data. It grows by trial and error, through
analysis of many discrete settings and
through iterative testing with successively
improving methods. Levels of inequality in
status, wealth, and power come to light in
tomb furnishings, in discontinuous classes
of settlement size, domestic architecture,
and monumental construction, and in local-
ized concentrations of costly or exotic mate-
rials from distant locales. But doubts linger
about how closely gradations of control
over human and other resources corre-
sponded with these material vestiges that
survive to be detected and measured mil-
lennia later.
Measures of heterogeneity, similarly, are
in the end always somewhat speculative.
Reconstructions of relationships, connectiv-
ities, and individual differentiation or au-
tonomy require acts of creation, not deduc-
tion, from limited and ambiguous material
346 ROBERT M
residues (Smith 1994:143–144). Ancient
texts, where they are available, can play a
vital part in helping us to identify distribu-
tional patterns as signposts of organiza-
tions and institutions. But drawing signifi-
cant generalizations from ancient texts
faces obstacles not less difficult than those
confronting archaeologists.
Long preoccupied with the intellectual
resonances and aesthetic appeal of the qual-
ities identified with cities and especially
civilizations, humanistically inclined ar-
chaeologists have tended to concern them-
selves with the uniqueness of each member
of the “pristine” class as a cultural achieve-
ment, rather than with the common, unify-
ing characteristics that distinguish the class
as a whole. Anthropological archaeologists,
with a deeper commitment to the study of
cultural evolution at large, are less accept-
ing of this apparent unwillingness to seek
out the general behind a mass of particu-
lars. Seeking to avoid what can become an
endlessly elaborated, descriptive cul de sac,
most archaeologists trained in the outlook
of the social sciences today probably think
not in terms of civilizations but of early
states deriving from antecedent chiefdoms.
States are viewed as the decisive common
feature in all of the “nuclear” areas of civi-
lization’s emergence, the primary engine
behind a larger, dependent set of changes.
The overall pace of research continues to
grow and diversify ever more rapidly. That
alone, however, cannot account for the pro-
liferation of vigorous new theoretical and
methodological advances. My own surmise
is that most of these derive from external
sources—the importation of natural science
instrumentation, techniques, and perspec-
tives on the one hand, and insights and
models drawn from all across the social sci-
ences on the other. But the assimilating and
interpreting of impressively accumulating
masses of new data is still primarily di-
rected toward improving the understand-
ing of particular cases. Receiving much less
attention are synthetic and cross-cultural
C. ADAMS
approaches to an understanding of pro-
cesses commonly involved in the growth of
early states.
A
Part, but not all, of the explanation for the
failure of the theoretical dimensions of the
subject to keep pace is provided by limita-
tions of archaeological methodologies and
data. Scientific excavation, coupled with
the exacting analytical and publication
standards required if excavation results are
to advance the discipline and justify the de-
structiveness of the discovery process, is ex-
ceedingly time-consuming and expensive.
While larger than ever today, the supply of
trained archaeologists and the many differ-
ent kinds of resources they need has always
been comparatively modest. In relation to
the vastness of the remains of ancient civi-
lizations that are already known (quite
apart from what is yet to be discovered), it
can safely be asserted that in all of the “pris-
tine” areas only a minute fraction have as
yet entered into the corpus of primary, us-
able archaeological knowledge. With so lit-
tle known, the difficulties associated with
limitations or biases of existing samples are
very large.
Remains of monumental buildings and
other likely repositories of artistic, textual,
and similar “treasures” (by contemporary
exhibition criteria) have naturally attracted
disproportionate attention. Certain cate-
gories of voluminous and well-preserved
material like ceramics, having the addi-
tional importance of being sensitive
chronological indicators, almost always are
carefully studied. But even for ceramics the
determination and publication of full
ranges of variability rather than subjec-
tively selected types is rare.
Most textual as well as art-historical
sources that are archaeologically recovered
encounter not only these limitations but
others as well. Early writing systems, still in
the process of emergence, were distinctly
limited in the range of information they
could convey. And rich as they presently
became in anecdotal detail of the “dynas-
COMPLEXITY IN
ties, wars, and religions” genre, the textual
corpora originating in early states and civi-
lizations focus fairly narrowly on the views
and activities of elites. As such, they tell us
disappointingly little about wider societal,
let alone ecological, processes and settings.
Then there is a further difficulty. Con-
scious of where the greater weight of evi-
dence is ordinarily to be found, most ar-
chaeologists choose to concentrate on
well-represented periods of extensive
building activity, assured stability, and cen-
tralized control. An emphasis on functional
accounts and explanations, focusing on im-
plicitly durable institutions and system-
maintaining properties, is a natural out-
come. Treated as of lesser importance, or
even as falling outside the framework of
“scientific” analysis altogether, are the more
ill-documented, chaotic episodes of hostile
incursions and internal disruption. Yet in
terms of gross proportions of the life spans
of the societies in question, these conditions
were almost always the largest part of the
record.
The imprecision of most archaeological
dating has a similar effect. Permitting age
determinations only with fairly large mar-
gins of uncertainty, it frequently does little
to clarify the character or directionality of
cultural relationships. Sudden or short-
term processes of change go unrecognized.
Yet it is likely that they were often decisive
turning points. In large part, therefore, ar-
chaeological reconstructions of process
tend to be limited to selected, unrealisti-
cally smoothed, gradualistic aggregates.
Living continuously with insecure ap-
proximations of dates, archaeologists risk
not giving adequate consideration to some
of the more subtle losses of processual un-
derstanding that result. Within compact
settlements, careful stratigraphic analysis
of living floors has a reasonable chance of
establishing continuity and contemporane-
ity of habitation in adjacent residential
units. Whenever buildings are relatively
more dispersed, however, this rapidly be-
RCHAIC STATES 347
comes more difficult to demonstrate. Where
natural conditions of soil, precipitation, or
drainage could not support large areas of
densely built-up settlement, this means that
attempts to determine the number of simul-
taneously occupied dwelling units depends
largely on typological analysis of pottery
and other artifacts. Such attempts cannot
escape considerable imprecision. Conse-
quently, so do all population estimates and
related attempts to assess the agricultural
productivity presupposed by those esti-
mates.
What can be done to reinforce archaeol-
ogy’s chronological foundations against
these problems? There is gratifying but
fairly slow progress in extending the avail-
ability of dendrochronological and paleo-
magnetic dates. A more quickly and widely
applicable step involves simply making in-
creasing numbers of radiocarbon determi-
nations on carefully chosen and collected
samples. It has been shown that sophisti-
cated handling of large, disparate assem-
blages of such determinations can impres-
sively reduce uncertainties (Wright n.d.). In
any case, there needs to be greater aware-
ness of the interpretational opportunities
348 ROBERT Mc
that will continue to be foregone unless
greater resources are devoted to what may
seem mere chronological “refinements.”
INTERRELATED LIMITATIONS OFDATA, METHOD, AND THEORY
Mesoamerica, and more especially the
lowland Maya area, provides a brief illus-
tration of how all these difficulties intersect
with one another to limit the theoretical as
well as substantive progress of the field.
Common cultural traditions, integrative in-
stitutions, and the coercive powers of
rulership are likely to have tied the clus-
tered “temples” and “palaces” of monu-
mental ceremonial centers to outlying hin-
terlands of much smaller, more diffuse
settlements. But the degree of cohesiveness
of regions around centers remains elusive.
Smaller, outlying replications of some
monumental building types may, indeed,
imply a close, pan-community integration
of belief systems and/or a high level of hi-
erarchical control. But it also may imply, as
some Mayanists continue to argue, not a
contemporaneous phenomenon at all but
an occupation of the peripheries of the
great centers largely subsequent to an
abandonment of the cores. This is the kind
of argument that improved chronologies
could settle.
How hierarchically organized were clus-
ters of neighboring settlement (not to speak
of the greater ambiguities of more dis-
persed groupings)? To the degree that hier-
archy can be demonstrated, was it durable
or intermittent, or even oscillating in polar-
ity? How confident can we be that settle-
ments identified as contemporary on the
basis of ceramic affinities were fully equiva-
lent in their actual spans of occupation?
Joyce Marcus rightly calls attention to the
“strong propaganda component of
Mesoamerican hieroglyphic inscriptions,”
requiring us to view claims of “subjuga-
tion” with considerable skepticism. Hypog-
amous marriages of Maya princesses from
larger centers to rulers of smaller ones can
reinforce such claims, but this does not ex-
clude the possibility of arrangements en-
tered into for mutual political or economic
advantage (1992:401). In any case, the for-
mal memorialization of a relationship at a
given moment says little about either its
real content or its durability.
In what is presently known of the life
span of major Mesoamerican centers Mar-
cus finds persuasive evidence of cyclicity.
But the length of the cycles she has so far
been able to detect reaffirms the limitations
of archaeological evidence. Durable hege-
monic regimes are assumed to last for cen-
turies (in Monte Alban’s case, more than a
millennium) before giving way to rivals.
Yet on overwhelming historical evidence, of
worldwide scope, ascendancy in such hier-
archies is inherently unstable and typically
C. ADAMS
limited to a few generations at most.
A more reasonable alternative is to as-
sume that monumental centers might retain
A
their ritual and symbolic role through be-
wildering shifts of political authority
over—and within!—them. Such is known
to have been the case in the more ade-
quately documented Mesopotamian case,
where successful monarchs repeatedly
credited themselves with rebuilding tem-
ples in cities they had subjugated. Ceremo-
nial inscriptional and building activity, in
other words, need not be correlated at all
closely with contentious, fluctuating pat-
terns of territorial control. Other, more di-
rect ways are needed to work out the de-
tails of the latter. But here, as Marcus
ruefully points out (1992:394, 407), we en-
counter a serious methodological problem
with the chronological insensitivity of ar-
chaeological surveys. If the object is to de-
tect temporary, contingent patterns of im-
perial control over areas of as much as
several tens of thousands of square kilome-
ters, our ends and means are simply not in
keeping with one another.
Lacking adequate ways of answering
questions like these, reconstructions of
many fundamental aspects of social life re-
main in a kind of diffuse, speculative limbo.
These include a lot of what is at the heart of
any approach to complexity, regional popu-
lation density and measures of sociopoliti-
cal integration and of division of labor. Par-
ticularly left in a realm of conjecture are
aspects of social variability within both re-
gions and individual settlements, affecting
patterns of ethnic differentiation and local-
ized patterns of descent, affiliation, and
coresidence.
The extent to which hostilities dominated
local interaction is another largely unan-
swered question. That the ancient Maya
were at least on occasion ferociously war-
like is the formerly unthinkable but now
persuasive conclusion to be drawn primar-
ily from new inscriptional evidence and
representational art. But this is somewhat
COMPLEXITY IN
inconsistent with the apparent lack of mili-
tary sophistication and the limited evidence
for fortifications. That suggests episodic,
fairly low intensity rather than continuous
warfare with ad hoc mobilizations of mo-
bile, heterogeneous forces clashing infre-
quently in the field rather than defending
well-defined frontiers or conducting sieges
of fixed strong-points. Such a pattern is
amply confirmed by late pre-Hispanic cen-
tral Mexican accounts, which again portray
a surprising lack of sophistication in mili-
tary tactics (Clendinnen 1985). While large
Aztec forces repeatedly campaigned far to
the southeast in the Guatemalan highlands
(as may have also their central Mexican
predecessors from Teotihuacan), something
approaching a permanent, fortified frontier
was maintained only against the hostile
Tarascan kingdom to the west. Overall pat-
terns of regional integration depend, in any
case, as much on the character of these hos-
tilities as on ceremonial exchange and royal
intermarriage.
Problems involving the intensity and
synchronicity of interactions are only multi-
plied when we look beyond fairly localized
regions to Mesoamerica as a whole. Within
the limitations of temporal units still based
largely on imprecise ceramic chronologies,
George Cowgill’s (1997) impressive control
of the enormous volume of relevant data
from Teotihuacan leaves a disturbing im-
pression of his accumulating doubts over
the number and significance of the ties be-
tween that great, unrivaled city and its con-
temporaries. If Cowgill’s view prevails, cul-
tural evolution in Mesoamerica was largely
of a cellular character, with the individual
cells only marginally and sporadically in
communication with one another.
Acknowledging that my standpoint is
one of general principles rather than
knowledge of the details, this seems quite
unlikely. It would require us to abandon the
idea that what made Mesoamerica as a
whole a “nuclear” area was the extensive
role of mutual stimulation and diffusion,
RCHAIC STATES 349
with frequent, significant, and reciprocal
contacts extending in many directions.
With the partial exception of ancient Egypt,
unusually compressed by its setting into a
narrow, continuous line of settlement along
the Nile, the prevailing pattern for all other
emergent civilizations was one of “polycen-
tricity” rather than mutual isolation. And in
any case, recent research is strongly reaf-
firming that Egypt was by no means im-
mune to the stimulus of outside interaction.
In recent decades archaeological surveys
are introducing a less localized, more inter-
actional point of view. Inescapably, how-
ever, place-oriented excavations remain the
core of the discipline. While controversies
over the “earliest” village or occurrence of
some important trait may be partly linked
to the quest for publicity, they also funda-
mentally reflect this way of thinking. From
within this mind-set, it requires a con-
scious, counterintuitive effort not to as-
sume the existence of a kind of self-enclos-
ing boundary around a particular locale of
excavation, within which processes of
change are viewed as largely endogenous.
Reinforcing this natural predisposition may
also be a continuing reaction against the ex-
cesses of older, now almost completely dis-
credited, diffusionist doctrines.
The effect is to take implausibly for
granted that the most significant social rela-
tionships—even in far-flung states and civi-
lizations, and even those relationships most
tied to power, production, wealth, and ac-
cess to resources—are among kin and
neighbors. This questionable outcome is by
no means limited to site-focused excava-
tions by archaeologists but applies with
equal strength to the tradition of commu-
nity-focused participant-observation in
ethnography and social anthropology (Ben-
nett 1980:204).
My point is to question whether we can
get very far with the principle of local au-
tarky in reconstructing the emergence of
early cities, states, and civilizations. All
“nuclear” areas were of considerable geo-
350 ROBERT Mc
graphic extent and so offered multiple at-
tractive niches for human exploitation in
diverse ecosystems. Together with surely
comparable conditions in surrounding re-
gions, this ecosystemic diversity led to a
range of mutually complementary direc-
tions of specialization as a basis for ex-
change. Moreover, as Ian Hodder has
pointed out with special reference to the
growth of social hierarchies,
there is more to exchange than economic advan-
tage—even if social advantage is included in that
term. Exchange involves the transfer of items that
have symbolic and categorical associations.
Within any strategy of legitimization, the symbol-
ism of objects is manipulated in the construction
of relations of dominance. The exchange of appro-
priate items forms social obligations, status, and
power, but it also legitimates as it forms. (1982:209;
cf. Haselgrove 1987:106)
Trade and interaction thus seem likely to
have been a fundamentally creative, desta-
bilizing, sometimes perhaps even critical
force in the promotion the development of
civilization. The same argument can be ex-
tended to increasingly refined products of
C. ADAMS
specialized craftsmen, and thus to techno-
logical innovations of many kinds, whether
originating locally or at a distance.
A NEW APPROACH TO COMPLEXITY
Studies along a different, broader front of
scientific inquiry have meanwhile been en-
dowing the cluster of concepts identified
with complexity with more carefully speci-
fied significance. The subject has become a
many-stranded approach to diverse classes
of phenomena whose principal characteris-
tic is that their properties and behaviors
cannot be adequately described or ex-
plained by the interaction of a few, rela-
tively simple, law-like principles.
Computer modeling plays a primary part
in most of these efforts It enormously ad-
vances the speed of computation and pro-
vides a format of visualization that en-
hances recognition of patterning. The
consequences of basic assumptions in a
model can be very quickly deduced for a
wide array of values, helping in the recog-
nition of regularities and emergent struc-
A
tures. An important effect of simulations, in
other words, is not to mimic “reality” but to
demonstrate the surprising, often counter-
intuitive outcomes that can be generated
from multiple, parallel, interactive applica-
tions of alternative sets of simple rules. Si-
multaneously, however, simulations intro-
duce and highlight methodological and
theoretical issues that are common and in-
telligible to both the natural and social sci-
ences.
The subjects of studies falling within the
framework of this new approach can be de-
scribed as diverse sequences of change
through time that exhibit unpredictable
combinations of orderly and chaotic fea-
tures. We see the combined influence of
various feedback effects, random or sto-
chastic events and processes, and the some-
times long-term, determinative conse-
quences of coincidental combinations of
initial conditions. Especially in the case of
living and social systems that are adaptive
in character, an important causal feature
seems to be the behavioral variability of in-
dividual “agents” that systemic models can
only represent by aggregating.
This new concern for complexity high-
lights a somewhat different set of consider-
ations than is suggested by city, state, and
civilization as examples of our traditional
archaeological categories. The primary
focus of scientific attention is turned away
from ever-more-refined accounts of internal
structure and toward boldly generalizing,
transdisciplinary explanations of form,
function, and change. “High-level” as
cities, states, and civilizations may seem to
most of us as archaeological categories,
they all fall within the larger category of
“complex adaptive systems”—systems
composed of interacting agents whose
array of individual behaviors conform to
rules that can be consciously or uncon-
sciously modified through an adaptive
COMPLEXITY IN
learning process.
There are deep uniformities in complex
adaptive systems and processes of all
kinds. They serve as illuminating intercon-
nections between human social systems
and such general biological phenomena as
the adaptation of species and populations
to environmental change through natural
selection, or the immune system’s adaptive
ability to form antibodies, or the brain and
nervous system’s ability to learn. John
Ziman, an eminent historian and episte-
mologist of science, offers a penetrating as
well as critical assessment of the present
state of play within this still rapidly devel-
oping field:
Complexity is another country: they do things dif-
ferently there. It seems essential to learn an appro-
priate language for, say, characterizing a system
by the diversity of its components and their inter-
actions, for providing a natural definition of the
“function” of a “part” of a complex system, or for
interpreting evolutionary drift toward a phase
transition between “sub-critical” and “supra-criti-
cal” behaviour. This type of analysis is still far
from established as a formal theoretical discipline,
but it is very instructive in showing that function-
ally integrated, self-constructing, far-from-equi-
librium systems do have their own laws and law-
like patterns of behaviour. (2000:51)
The search for complexity as it is mani-
fested in adaptive social systems calls atten-
tion immediately to differences in experi-
ence, motivation, and empowerment
among individual agents. Reflecting learn-
ing primarily acquired from interactions
with one another, these differences are a
critical source of adaptive change. For some
of the principal pioneers of complexity the-
ory, they seem to be, in fact, the major and
most compelling ones that provide the
basis for model-building, aggregative cate-
gories (Holland 1995:10–11, 93).
The Santa Fe Institute is the principal
center wholly devoted to the new “sciences
of complexity.” Closely interacting there (as
well as under its auspices by Internet) is an
extraordinary array of ideas and talents
continuously engaged, to borrow Joseph
RCHAIC STATES 351
Schumpeter’s (1975:84) characterization of
capitalism, in creative destruction. The
Santa Fe location, initially (and still today)
c
permits it to draw upon the human re-
sources of nearby Los Alamos National
Laboratory. Simultaneously, it brings SFI
within the widely shared Southwestern
United States archaeological perimeter of
traditional expertise and emphasis.
What are the advantages to be gained by
archaeologists through this different, con-
siderably more rigorous use of the concept
of complexity? An important characteristic
of complex, adaptive systems is a recogni-
tion of periodic “path dependency,” a de-
pendence of the trajectory of change not on
the current values of driving forces alone
but on history. Unpredictability in such
cases can be followed by high predictabil-
ity, as a system becomes “locked in” and
hence insensitive to perturbations.
Path dependency can result from increas-
ing returns to scale and agglomeration. The
first cities to appear, for example, were by
virtue of their greater size and population
able to dominate a surrounding landscape
of smaller towns. Similarly, particular im-
provements in agricultural or craft tech-
nologies that had been made possible by
the new concentrations of human and nat-
ural resources in early cities could become
locked-in by urban supremacy, leading (for
a time) to a suppression of later improve-
ments made in subordinate centers. Hyper-
trophy of institutional development and in-
vestments in infrastructure can become a
kind of dead hand of sunk costs that also
impedes adaptive change. All self-reinforc-
ing processes tend to build their own infra-
structures, hence tending to lead toward ir-
reversibility. Finally, historical accidents
(e.g., fortuitous discoveries, climatic crises,
exceptional individuals) may play a major
role under some circumstances, outweigh-
ing the effects of longer-term, presumably
more “basic,” driving forces. Implicated in
the new approach to complexity is a con-
cern for all these processes (Arthur 1989).
352 ROBERT M
Evolving systems, to proceed to the most
fundamental level, cannot be understood
by isolating their components and addi-
tively assembling sets of the interactions
between small numbers of these compo-
nents. In dealing with the appearance over
time of new classes of phenomena we must
expect instead to confront the emergence of
new wholes that are different from the sum
of their parts. This is the “emergent nov-
elty” familiar to evolutionary biologists,
but detectable in the physical sciences as
well. “More is different,” as is aptly stated
in the title of a classic refutation of the ade-
quacy of reductionism as a scientific pro-
gram by physics Nobel Prize winner Philip
Anderson, an SFI founder:
The ability to reduce everything to simple funda-
mental laws does not imply the ability to start
from those laws and reconstruct the universe . . . .
The constructionist hypothesis breaks down
when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale
and complexity . . . at each new level of complex-
ity entirely new properties appear, and the under-
standing of the new behaviors requires research
which I think is as fundamental in its nature as
any other. (1972:393)
Social systems, like all adaptive, living
systems, are structured composites of indi-
vidual agents with different as well as com-
mon endowments. They interact in accor-
dance with historically derived, although
situationally reinterpreted and never en-
tirely rigid, needs, aspirations, and patterns
of affinity. Viewed through the narrow aper-
ture of a myopic search for law-like regulari-
ties, the results are likely to be baffling. But
unprecedented new patterns of self-organi-
zation typically can appear in such systems
quite suddenly, after long intervals of rela-
tive quiescence during which there are only
smaller, slowly accumulating changes. Com-
plex systems, then, will be characteristically
composed of older, fossil-like elements coex-
isting with other elements of new, emergent
levels of articulation, differentiation, and
synthesis. The multiple instances of the rise
of early complex societies are classic exam-
C. ADAMS
ples of this process at work.
How do abrupt, qualitative changes
occur? They would be difficult to explain if
A
adaptation took the form of a consistent,
uniform striving for functional efficiency.
But as economist Peter Allen observes, the
(social as well as natural) environment to
which adaptation must take place is itself
complex, differentiated, uncertain, and de-
manding:
In an evolutionary landscape of hills and valleys
representing levels of functional efficiency of dif-
ferent possible organisms, it is the error-maker
who can move up a hill, eventually out-compet-
ing a perfectly reproducing rival . . . evolution
does not lead to optimal behavior, because evolu-
tion concerns not only “efficient performance” but
also the constant need for new discoveries. What
is found is that variability at the microscopic level,
individual diversity, is part of the evolutionary
strategy of survivors, and this is precisely what
mechanical “systems” representations do not in-
clude. In other words, in the shifting landscape of
a world in continuous evolution, the ability to
climb is perhaps what counts, and what we see as
a result of evolution are not species or firms with
“optimal behavior” at each instant, but rather ac-
tors that can learn! (Allen 1988:107–108)
Qualitative change may originate as either
a spontaneous or a deliberate process. But in
either case it usually takes the form of a sud-
den perception of unforeseen possibilities in
a seemingly useless or even “erroneous”
course already in existence at the margins.
Deviants’ or error-makers’ ideas and initia-
tives, crossing some lower threshold of fre-
quency or plausibility, then are discovered
by widening circles of adopters—or are im-
posed by a handful of newly empowered
ones—to meet new, or at least previously
unrecognized, challenges and needs. In the
parlance of complexity theorists, the nonlin-
ear, largely unpredictable outcome, a more
or less organized shift by the larger commu-
COMPLEXITY IN
nity, can be thought of as skirting the am-
biguous interface between controlled and
chaotic behavior.
APPLICABILITY TO EARLY CITIESAND STATES
How does a general concern for model-
ing the irregular courses of increasing com-
plexity contribute to an understanding of
the processes by which early states and civ-
ilizations emerged? I will concentrate on
the example of southern Mesopotamia,
both because I know it best and because of
the unparalleled supplementation of ar-
chaeological evidence there by textual
sources.
Begin with the unprecedented size of its
early city-states, on Anderson’s “more is
different” principle. Positive feedbacks link
together many manifestations of enlarge-
ment of population and territorial size.
Whether or not conforming in every respect
with modern definitions of urbanism, un-
precedentedly large “primate” centers
made their appearance (as in most “nu-
clear” areas) coincident with civilization it-
self. Their superior strength was underwrit-
ten by the larger populations assembled
within them. Based on their unequaled ca-
pacities to project power at a distance were
other, related capacities to impose patterns
of authoritarian domination, labor mobi-
lization, and tribute exaction on outlying
domains.
Joyce Marcus (1998) has recently sug-
gested that for early states as a class signifi-
cant increases in scale may be the single,
most decisive variable in the whole process.
It does indeed seem that increasing scale is
a necessary—although hardly a sufficient—
condition. With increasing scale, for exam-
ple, there will appear an increasing number
of niches—of complementary subsistence
resources, of opportunities for crafts and
other forms of specialization, of luxuries
and exotics to heighten the significance of
rituals and enhance elite status, and to de-
tach social hierarchies from purely local
levels of interaction and concern.
In most cases primate center growth
seems to have been too rapid to have re-
sulted from natural population increases
alone. Hence the influx from more dis-
RCHAIC STATES 353
persed hinterlands is likely to have in-
volved an element of persuasion if not com-
pulsion. Given the constraint of relatively
c
primitive transport, at least the larger ex-
amples of the new centers could not be reg-
ularly sustained with food and other re-
sources without an element of coercion in
the form of imposed tribute or corvée labor.
So the styles and symbols proclaiming as-
cendancy had the implicit role of helping to
overawe both potential opponents and dis-
affected supporters.
Early state societies must have been for
the most part risky, transitory constructs.
Neatly “conical” models of concentrated
ruling authority are unlikely to have per-
sisted for long without being internally as
well as externally challenged, perhaps es-
pecially at moments of dynastic succession.
Permanently ranked, hierarchical patterns
are therefore likely to have alternated peri-
odically with various forms of institutional
rivalry or heterarchy (Stein 1997:7). Often
driven to extend territorial control to the
limit of their organizational and military re-
sources, they could be exposed to system-
threatening crises by even minor environ-
mental fluctuations or internal fissiparous
tendencies. But if larger state or protoimpe-
rial configurations came and went, the
early cities in which power and resources
were concentrated were longer lived. Fluc-
tuating military fortunes might favor one or
another, but as a group their superior size
permitted them to retain a superior capac-
ity to amass, defend, and deploy resources
vis-à-vis their hinterlands. This also ex-
plains why they continue to receive a
grossly disproportionate share of archaeo-
logical attention.
Partly paralleling the “more is different”
principle is what Robert Merton (1973) has
called the Matthew Effect: To him who hath
will be given more. Or specifically, the allo-
cation of rewards and resources tends to be
strongly skewed in favor of the seeker/re-
cipient who has already attained higher sta-
tus and reputation. Advantages flowed to
354 ROBERT M
the city at the expense of the smaller town
and countryside, while within cities they
were enormously concentrated in the
hands of relatively small upper strata. An
increasing layering of social hierarchies and
of the administrative apparatus was a re-
sult, accompanied by increasingly differen-
tiated roles, ceremonies, and markers of
prestige.
Coordinate with processes of political
and socioeconomic stratification was an in-
creasingly subdivided division of labor.
This led to craft and craftsmanship hierar-
chies and proliferating demands for en-
hanced, better assured supplies of exotic
goods and raw materials. Systems of sub-
sistence are also likely to have become in-
creasingly large-scale, differentiated, and
complex. Urban populations may have con-
tinued to be primarily engaged in agricul-
ture at the outset. But as they grew, the in-
creasing proportion that gravitated or was
co-opted into the crafts, service occupa-
tions, cult observances, and administrative
activities presupposes a corresponding in-
tensification and specialization within the
food-producing sector.
Andrew Sherratt (1981) has characterized
this process as a secondary products revo-
lution, and there certainly is a conceptual
coherence among specialized advances that
in the Near East were concentrated in ani-
mal husbandry. Alongside of increases in
the scale and specialized management of
animal herds were differentiation within
herds for breeding stock, meat supply, and
working stock, specialized procedures and
equipment for milk and milk products, and
the growing importance of wool and its
processing.
Whatever their earlier origins, the forma-
tion of cities and states brought a newly
emergent quality to all of these develop-
ments. It was less and less devoted merely
to serving the ends of a localized, perenni-
ally at-risk subsistence economy and was
instead primarily directed toward the new
priorities of forcibly extending and defend-
C. ADAMS
ing an enlarged population-and-resource
base, ritual elaboration, prestigious display,
and the preparation of costly, labor-inten-
A
sive articles (above all textiles) for use in
long-distance trade. Textile production, in
particular (because of its high value-to-
weight ratio), quickly took on a quasi-in-
dustrial aspect. In Mesopotamia, where we
see this most clearly in textual archives, this
involved a marked enhancement of the in-
stitution of slavery into a state enterprise
rather than a domestic one. The increasing
subjection of large numbers of women and
their dependents into this role had impor-
tant secondary consequences for gender re-
lations. These constitute a kind of “lock-in”
of the superordinate economy’s trade rela-
tions, in the parlance of complexity theory.
Technology was in general a key sphere
of increasing complexity. Internal stratifica-
tion and growing stress on an external pro-
jection of authority and prestige clearly led
to an increasing differentiation between
mundane and ritual or luxury articles. The
production of luxuries, in turn, directed an
increasing component of external trade to-
ward the procurement of precious or exotic
substances. That led to more pronounced
gradations in skill, responsibility, and sta-
tus among producers. A distinction merely
between full- and part-time specialists, long
ago stressed by Childe, now seems entirely
too simple. It may even be actively mislead-
ing (Stein 1998:10). The more recently sug-
gested distinction between independent
and attached specialists (Brumfiel and Earle
1987:5) seems more promising.
The expanded scale of territorial control
associated with early states brought other
new demands for political control mecha-
nisms. The risk-reducing advantages of en-
vironmental diversity were sought by im-
posing a degree of economic integration on
a larger region. That also imposed an en-
hanced burden of transport requirements,
much of which could be shifted to subju-
gated populations. Categories and degrees
of dependency furnished another dimen-
COMPLEXITY IN
sion of increasing complexity. Numbers in-
creased greatly, with male war prisoners as
a result of rising militarism and with
women impressed into textile-producing
activity. This must have been accompanied
by more repressive administrative innova-
tions.
Uncertainties over fluctuations in food
and other supplies were never wholly
avoidable, and were a growing danger as
population grew. In times of social break-
down or political crisis such fluctuations
could become devastating, forcing impov-
erished herdsmen or cultivators into do-
mestic dependency. Measures to offset
minor perturbations no doubt were fre-
quent. But insofar as they met with short-
term success they encouraged system
growth at the expense of heightened
fragility when the perturbations later ex-
ceeded tolerable limits (Adams 1978). In the
short run, if provisions for the mobilization
and concentration of reserves became in-
creasingly imperative with the appearance
of population concentrations of urban scale,
they were also more readily attainable with
new, urban-based forms of sociopolitical
organization.
Directing and interconnecting all of these
developments was a need for increasing
flows of information. By incorporating
growing numbers of requirements into a re-
ceived body of tradition and a corporate
memory it added new historical complexi-
ties to every level of decision-making. Writ-
ing, although not uniformly developing in
every early civilization to a stage deserving
this unrestricted characterization, thus
tends to play a decisive part in broader
technological configurations wherever it
appears. Crossing some threshold of func-
tional utility, its development inevitably led
to explosive increases in conceptual as well
as procedural complexity.
All of these characterizations of complex-
ity have a common core. It consists of the
emergence and proliferation of sets of sys-
tems or subsystems that are distinguished
RCHAIC STATES 355
from those present in simpler societies by
relatively more differentiated and ad-
vanced internal structures. Existing along-
ing internal as well as external fissures and
side one another, under conditions allow-ing for slowly growing self-determination
(and probably self-consciousness), were
suprafamily and local community group-
ings in increasingly specialized, frequently
unstable relations with one another. Exam-
ples include—to cite only a handful:
• elites and commoners—both cate-
gories with many internal gradations—and
often factions;
• uneasily coexisting ethnicities within
larger, artificially imposed, more hierarchi-
cally managed communities;
• many new degrees, varieties, and
rankings of specialization of human activ-
ity;
• overlapping, intermittently rival do-
mains of primarily religious, politico-mili-
tary, or administrative authority;
• coexisting traditional and altered gen-
der roles, with the latter characterized by
partial replacement of kin-group produc-
tion-for-use by forms of massed depen-
dency or slavery especially affecting
women;
• forms of association and collective ac-
tivity more governed by primordial kin,
ethnic, and other ascriptive ties, alongside
others more open to individualized choice;
and,
• perhaps most generally, groups and
strategies stressing sustainability tied to au-
thoritarian control, constancy, predictabil-
ity, and the demand for steady-state opti-
mization of performance, alongside others
stressing greater resilience in adapting to
less predictable conditions, further from
equilibrium and less amenable to control,
that might require a readiness to make sud-
den, fundamental changes in structure.
Viewed over a span of time, these differen-
tiated segments, strata, or strategies are un-
356 ROBERT Mc
likely to have developed at the same tempo
or to have altered course abruptly and in
the same direction. The existence of grow-
C. ADAMS
tensions lends new significance to issues of
settlement composition, regional differenti-
ation, and boundaries.
REASSESSING THE “RAMP” VS“STEP” CONUNDRUM
I once suggested that we could think of the
emergence of complexity—or of its archaeo-
logical cognates, cities, states, and civiliza-
tions—in terms of one of two contrastive
metaphors, a “ramp” or a “step.” As an ideal
type, a ramp implies a steady course and pace
of development, a smoothly unfolding series
of complementary trends following a seem-
ingly linear path without abrupt transforma-
tions or temporary reversals. A step empha-
sizes more sudden and disjunctive changes,
an abrupt “step” upward to a new plateau of
complexity, followed by oscillations above
and below the newly elevated mean (Adams
1966:170–171). More than three decades ago it
seemed impossible to decide which of these
seemingly polar alternatives was more accu-
rate and useful, imposing the uneasy choice
of an intermediate alternative. This would
slow the abruptness of the rate of change
below that suggested by the analogy of a
“step,” making provision for some continu-
ing “ramp”-like progress as well as oscilla-
tions after the initial attainment of a new,
urban or state-like level of integration.
Returning once again to the same subject,
the basis for making a choice is of course
much altered. Excavations, often of impres-
sive scale and multiseason duration, and
with greatly improved standards of data re-
covery and publication, have multiplied in
virtually all of the “nuclear” areas where
political conditions have permitted ad-
vances in methods as well as unimpeded
access. Regional surveys, growing in
methodological rigor and increasingly rely-
ing on remote sensing data of rapidly im-
proving availability and quality, are for the
first time supporting quantitative debates
A
(still within wide margins of uncertainty)
about ancient demographic levels and cycles,
agricultural regimes, and the shifting ten-
sions and balances between life in the major
centers and in rural hinterlands. As a result,
the formerly accepted perimeters of all the
nuclear areas have been pushed outward in
virtually every direction. And earlier barriers
to communication between archaeologists
and humanistic, textually oriented scholars
are disappearing as a new generation of
young professionals moves into leadership
with systematic training in both.
None of these developments, however,
has decisively reduced the difficulties and
ambiguities of the ramp vs step choice. The
expanding geographic perimeters of inter-
action may be a partial exception. In rein-
forcing a pluralistic, polycentric under-
standing of the geographic base for the
emergence of urban and state-level soci-
eties, it may argue against the likelihood
that urban or state-like features in any nu-
clear area had been narrowly confined at
their origins to a single locus or very brief
upward step. But this is admittedly incon-
clusive evidence.
On the other hand, two other research
themes with which I have been involved
more recently seem at least partly conver-
gent in turning the search for a resolution of
the conundrum in a new direction. In the
first, retaining the same basic concern with
long-term cultural evolution, I sought out
an alternative approach involving the char-
acter and contexts of technological change
during later epochs that are at least rela-
tively much better documented (Adams
1996:xi–xvi). The second, given special em-
phasis here, explores the analytical power
of the new sciences of complexity.
The Industrial Revolution in the late 18th
and early-to-mid-19th century England was
COMPLEXITY IN
just such a phase of fundamental, acceler-
ated change as the multiple, initial episodes
of urban and state formation. As noted ear-
lier, the admittedly very broad and rough
similarity provided a stimulus and model
for Childe’s (1950) first formulation of the
idea of an urban revolution a half-century
ago. The comparison of the two is, further-
more, more apt than it would be with any of
the numerous, politically oriented revolu-
tions of the early modern to modern era.
Those latter have elements of conscious
leadership and the organization of opposing
parties and programs that are essentially
lacking in the Industrial Revolution and (to
the best of our knowledge) in early states.
One need not assume that there necessar-
ily are any deep homologies in the processes
involved in the two sides of this compari-
son. Nor is this the place to review the in-
comparably richer and more massive docu-
mentation that is available for the Industrial
Revolution than for any comparable process
of change which archaeologists may hope to
identify. But there is a broad consensus
among economic and technological histori-
ans about several aspects of the changes ac-
companying the Industrial Revolution: first,
that it was highly irregular in its impacts on
different regions and economic sectors; sec-
ond, that its growth was accompanied if not
led by an accelerating tempo of innovation;
third, that growth was concentrated in a
small number of key sectors rather than
generally distributed—the introduction of
efficient steam engines as sources of rotary
power, the mechanization of cotton textile
production, iron and steel smelting on a
progressively enlarged scale, and railroad
building. As engines of capitalist growth,
they led to growing concentrations of
wealth and a widening readiness to accept
the many risks and uncertainties of invest-
ing it in manufacturing. On the other hand,
there are continuing disputes among spe-
cialists as to just how preponderantly “in-
dustrial” and disjunctively “revolutionary”
RCHAIC STATES 357
the Industrial Revolution really was except
in retrospect. The fundamental insight is
one propounded many years ago by the
great economist Joseph Schumpeter, that
c
it is disharmonious or one-sided increase and
shifts within the aggregate which matter. Aggrega-
tive analysis . . . not only does not tell the whole
tale but necessarily obliterates the main (and only
interesting) point of the tale. (1939:134)
Essentially the same lesson emerges
from a further application of complexity
theory not mentioned earlier—one that in
important respects serves to unify and in-
tensify the effects of the whole ensemble.
The pursuit of innovation and novelty is
not a stable, uniformly distributed motiva-
tion in every social setting. Instead it is a
context-dependent emergent, stimulated by
the presence and interaction of many
forces for change like those just outlined.
Perhaps we can think of an upwelling of
activity, more or less consciously directed
toward innovation that is triggered by the
roughly contemporary crossing of some
threshold of accelerated change by a num-
ber of separate, normally independent and
fairly linear processes—e.g., craft special-
ization and the growth of elite hierarchies.
Once set in motion by a sense of new de-
mands and opportunities, a more highly
motivated pursuit of innovations would
both encourage general experimentation
with unfamiliar courses of action and un-
dermine traditional barriers to pan-societal
communication and processes of cross-fer-
tilization. Some increase in the general rate
of change would be a likely outcome. Even
if this aggregate was extremely modest (as it
is credibly argued to have been during the
Industrial Revolution), over a span of con-
siderably less than a century it could still ac-
count for nothing less than an economic
transformation. This change in tempo is pre-
cisely what Childe sought to capture by first
calling attention to what he described as an
urban revolution. And the occurrence of a
similar change in tempo can also be as-
sumed during what is often characterized as
the food-producing revolution at the time of
358 ROBERT M
the earliest onset of agriculture.
A crucial component of growing com-
plexity, in other words, was a new or sig-
nificantly enhanced capacity for strategic
abstraction in making judgments and tak-
ing action—more specifically, in formulat-
ing rules and modifying them on the basis
of experience, in weighing risks and un-
certainties within the same scale of calcu-
lation rather than considering them incom-
mensurables, in organizing associative
action more persuasively and efficiently,
and in searching out previously unfore-
seen opportunities for change and im-
provement. Translated into an archaeolog-
ical context, this is what the phrase
common among complexity theorists
“emergent capacity for self-organization”
is all about.
It is perhaps most fundamentally for
this reason that a research program focus-
ing on the unifying theme of complexity
deserves consideration by archaeologists.
Emergence is a multilevel phenomenon,
involving the convergence of many re-
lated and unrelated processes of change to
produce entirely new, unforeseen quali-
ties. Creative rather than merely additive,
it finds a classic example in the rise of
C. ADAMS
early states and civilizations—one of our
oldest, but still most rewarding fields of
study.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A brief, informal version of this paper was first
given in November 1997 at the Complex Society
Group’s Third Biennial Conference at the University of
Arizona. I am indebted to John Bintliff for encouraging
its enlargement into something more serious, a process
that has undergone several successive revisions.
Henry T. Wright and Guillermo Algaze made many
helpful and penetrating suggestions and critical com-
ments along the way.
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