Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Emergence Of Social Complexity In Small Scale Societies

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The development of social and economic control that leads to inequalities in the distribution of wealth within human societies has been a central theme in understanding how people live. Because archaeology provides a long-term view of past societies, and how they become more or less socially complex through time, it is well suited to provide insight into this phenomenon that occurs within human groups. Using innovative research techniques, Laura Swantek along with colleagues at Arizona State University will undertake research on this process, specifically focusing on understanding how some societies become more complex over time, others do not change, and still others cycle between high and low levels of complexity. Changes in complexity, such as those described here, can be seen today in parts of the world where social and economic changes occur within generations. Understanding what people did in their everyday lives that cause changes in social complexity in the past, will provide insight into how this process occurs today across our changing world. This research examines how people form socio-economic relationships through time and across space and through these connections are able to exert control of labor, maintain long-distance trade contacts, and differentially access material and ideological resources and as a result become wealthy members of society while others cannot. As a result of these kinds of actions, social networks, or the arrangements of people into complex social structures, change over time can be seen in the archaeological record. This research will be conducted on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus during a 700 year period during which small village level societies exhibited unique characteristics of changes in social complexity. Using data from past excavations of settlements and cemeteries and archaeological surveys, this research will combine methods developed in modern economics, and complex systems and network science, to examine how different social arrangements or network configurations are created by people striving for wealth and control within societies. This interdisciplinary research will foster international scientific collaboration, as well as develop and test new methods for understanding how people exert social and economic control, shaping and reshaping the societies in which they live.