Thinking Through Archaeological Complexity explores how archaeologists can engage with complex adaptive systems, examining dynamic interactions between humans and environments across space and through time. It offers a roadmap for integrating theory, method, and data through a complexity science lens.

This volume bridges archaeology and complexity science, offering a transdisciplinary framework for understanding long-term socio-ecological dynamics. It provides a substantive overview of how complex adaptive systems science is used in archaeology. Drawing from case studies in the Ancestral Pueblo Southwest, it demonstrates how tools like agent-based modeling, ecological and social network analysis, and settlement scaling reveal emergent patterns in the archaeological record. The book critically examines concepts such as resilience, adaptation, innovation, and transformation, offering alternatives to overly linear narratives. Emphasizing methodological transparency, it provides practical guidance for scholars interested in modeling, data integration, and working across disciplinary boundaries while grounding in theoretical pluralism. By situating archaeological knowledge within broader scientific conversations, the book encourages readers to reimagine the past not as static or collapsed, but as complex, entangled, and instructive for contemporary challenges.

This book is essential reading for students, researchers, and practitioners in archaeology as well as complexity science. It will also appeal to scholars in anthropology, environmental studies, geography, and network science interested in long-term human-environmental dynamics and the application of complex systems approaches in historical contexts.

About the Author

Stefani A. Crabtree is Associate Professor in Social-Environmental Modeling in the Department of Environment and Society at the S.J. and Jessie E. Quinney College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Utah State University. She is also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

Reviews

"The environment, culture, and human cognition - the subject matter of archaeology - are the three most complicated systems of which we have tangible knowledge. Stefani Crabtree offers a wonderfully readable introduction to complexity science as a way to think about the emergence of order in the archaeological record."
Steve Lansing, External Professor, Complexity Science Hub Vienna and the Santa Fe Institute, USA

"Stefani Crabtree has brought the best of SFI to archaeology, focusing a complexity lens on the human-environment nexus by bringing in insights from ecology, network science and geography."
Simon Levin, James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, USA

Book Information
ISBN 9781629585550
Author Stefani A. Crabtree
Format Paperback
Page Count 158
Imprint Left Coast Press Inc
Publisher Left Coast Press Inc
Weight(grams) 310g