Administrative Level

Talking about hierarchical complexity, administrative levels records the administrative levels of a polity. an example of hierarchy for a state society could be (1) the overall ruler, (2) provincial/regional governors, (3) district heads, (4) town mayors, (5) village heads. note that unlike in settlement hierarchy, here you code people hierarchy. do not simply copy settlement hierarchy data here. for archaeological polities, you will usually code as 'unknown', unless experts identified ranks of chiefs or officials independently of the settlement hierarchy. note: often there are more than one concurrent administrative hierarchy. in the example above the hierarchy refers to the territorial government. in addition, the ruler may have a hierarchically organized central bureaucracy located in the capital. for example, (4)the overall ruler, (3) chiefs of various ministries, (2) midlevel bureaucrats, (1) scribes and clerks. in the narrative paragraph detail what is known about both hierarchies. the machine-readable code should reflect the largest number (the longer chain of command).   (See here)