ABSTRACT
This chapter will present a historical overview of the study of social complexity in archaeology, starting with its usage in social evolutionary perspectives. It then continues with a discussion of urbanisation and state formation, as two major macro-scale processes commonly associated with social complexity in archaeological discourses. Next, I will discuss the role of systems theory and social systems thinking in archaeology as precursor to the application of complex systems thinking in archaeological research. I conclude the chapter with an extensive overview of complex systems theory and its past applications in archaeology, focusing on four main domains: (1) network science; (2) settlement scaling; (3) cultural evolution; and (4) agent-based modelling. By discussing the general theoretical underpinnings for complex systems approaches as well as highlighting the achievements and limitations of these works, this chapter will pave the way for the in-depth conceptualisation of social complexity in the next chapter.
