The Comparative Archaeology of Complex Societies is a terrific book that should be read by every advanced undergraduate and graduate student with interests in the rise of preindustrial cultural complexity. Why am I so enthusiastic about the volume? My enthusiasm rests on both the high quality of its chapters and the signal importance of the subject matter and general approach in the book. This volume is a clarion call for archaeologists to take advantage of the rich database now available to them to significantly advance archaeological elucidation of the development of complex societies through time and space.

But such a goal seems so obvious. Why is a forceful argument for its importance necessary, especially because understanding the reasons for the rise of complex social, political, and economic organization has been of great interest to anthropological archaeologists for a long time?