Complexity is everywhere. From biology to genomics, from anthropology to public policy, experts are marveling at the complexity of the phenomena they study. Yet in recent years, scholars have warned against taking all of this complexity at face value. In this spirit, this article frames “complexity” as an epistemic artifact traceable through particular histories and traditions of knowledge‐making. Attributions of relative complexity to different societies have a long history in anthropology. Archaeologists, in particular, have defined and redefined, debated and deconstructed complexity, leaving behind a lively textual trail. Examining this trail as a case study, the article investigates some of the different and sometimes conflicting logics behind what gets to count as complex, when, and why, as well as behind the more general expansion of complexity's reach in recent decades. By doing so, it exemplifies a way of approaching complexity as an anthropological problem and as a dominant problematic of our times. [knowledge, complexity, epistemology, archaeology]

中文翻译：

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追踪复杂性：考古案例

复杂性无处不在。从生物学到基因组学，从人类学到公共政策，专家们都对他们研究的现象的复杂性感到惊奇。然而，近年来，学者们警告不要将所有这些复杂性当做是表面价值。本着这种精神，本文将“复杂性”构想为一种可追溯到特定历史和知识传统的认知人工制品。相对复杂度归因于不同社会在人类学上具有悠久的历史。尤其是考古学家，已经定义和重新定义，辩论和解构了复杂性，留下了生动活泼的文本线索。本文以案例研究的方式进行了研究，研究了什么才算是复杂的，何时以及为什么，以及最近几十年来更广泛地扩展复杂性的范围。通过这样做，它示例了一种将复杂性作为人类学问题和当今时代的主要问题的方法。[知识，复杂性，认识论，考古学]