complex society

In anthropology and archaeology, a complex society is a social formation that is otherwise described as a formative or developed state (i.e. a civilization, to use an old-fashioned term). Social complexity in this sense thus refers typically to political complexity, specifically the presence of a hierarchy in the form of a ruling elite supported by bureaucrats, with associated paraphernalia such as administrative buildings and elite residences in urban or proto-urban population centres. Complex societies under this definition are also agricultural to provide the surplus required to support a social (non-food producing) elite. Explaining the origins of these types of social formations, which appear in many areas of the world, is one of the tasks of archaeology.
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