A Prolegomenon on Archaeological Complexity and Disorganization: Fragmentation and Missing Data

Abstract

Archaeologists all over the world face problems regarding complexity and disorganization. Whether surveying, excavating, or doing laboratory analysis, the nature of the evidence of prehistoric societies is fragmented and incomplete. On a global and very general basis, the older the site, the greater the fragmentation, the more the missing data, and the greater the disorganization that the archaeologist must navigate to understand the past. Of course, there are notable exceptions. Most archaeologists consider the topic from the specificity of a particular time, a particular place, and a particular society. In this paper, it is considered in its most non-particular and general format. In order to do so, the paper creates an artificial archaeological region that is surveyed and excavated to a greater and lesser extent and analyzed with a variety of statistical and graphic evaluations. It concludes that when all other things are equal, increasing fragmentation causes far more disorganization and increases complexity than does missing data. Thus, fragmentation is a far more important problem for archaeological interpretation than relatively small amounts of missing data.