ABSTRACT
Globalization can be understood as ‘complex connectivity’ that leads to dense networks and interdependencies (Jennings this volume, Knappett this volume). This, in itself, is principally a descriptive understanding modelled on a singular example. And blunt application and comparison may lead to teleological ascription for past societies – in a similar way that much archaeology that trains on social types (e.g. states, empires) often wilfully relies on material correlates and tick box traits. What can be less prescriptive a method, and probably what regional, prehistoric archaeologies are more geared to address, is to characterize how complex connectivity is transformative and how it is constituted. The latter should be in several senses of the term: rst and foremost in past socio-cultural reconstruction, but not excluding its status in modern epistemology, which reects as much on dominant scholarly apparatuses as it may on past social systems.
