Why We Question Collapse and Study Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire

Abstract

Scholars -especially historians, archaeologists, and social anthropologists, the authors of these chapters -are strange animals. Historians spend lots of time toiling in dusty archives, and archaeologists excavate in the ground to discover clues to what happened in the past. Sociocultural anthropologists often live among peoples whose languages, food, houses, clothes, and beliefs are very different from our own. Wouldn't it be easier and much more lucrative to become a doctor or lawyer?Although we are not psychologists, it seems that one reason why we dedicate ourselves to figuring out how societies got along in the past, or how such a rich diversity of peoples continues to exist today despite the homogenizing forces of globalization, is that we like to tell stories. We also like puzzles, how one finds pieces of information (data) and from the pieces constructs a picture (in prose) that will convince other puzzle players that our story has "hit the nail on the head." This is an ancient and distinctly human desire, to tell a story and to tell it well. As scholars, we also want our stories to make a larger point about how our fellow humans lived in the past and about the variety of human experiences in reference to environmental interaction. We believe optimistically that an examination of the lives of others may lead to better understanding of how we might live today.But along the way we face the fact that our stories are not easy to construct and even harder to narrate to a public that is interested in what we do. Information collected may even (and often does)

Prehistoric deforestation at Chaco Canyon?

“…Scientists have a responsibility to engage with the public about the way in which their research is used by nonspecialists, and archaeologists have been particularly concerned about characterizing ancient societies as cautionary tales for modern society (55,56). We do not think Chaco is an example of societal "ecocide" (ref.…”

Macro-Economic Cycles Related to Climate change in Dynastic China

“…However, some critics note that Maya civilization did not collapse as quickly as supposed by some of these studies and the process of multisite and regional abandonment in the Terminal Classic played out over at least 125 yr (Turner, 2010;Dunning et al, 2012). These disagreements partly stem from differing views of the nature of collapse (McAnany and Yoffee, 2009;Butzer, 2012;Butzer and Endfield, 2012).…”

The slow demise of Easter Island: insights from a modeling investigation

“…Table 1), the variability between the three scenarios mirrors the controversy in the scientific debate around Easter Island and indicates how uncertainties in the assumptions can lead to conflicting views on the dynamics of a well-researched paleoecological system (Diamond, 2005;McAnany and Yoffee, 2010;Hunt and Lipo, 2011). Our findings therefore confirm D'Alessandro (2007), who found multiple steady states in a model of two-resources with critical depensation and emphasized the sensitivity of sustainable resource use in such social-ecological systems to small differences in their characteristics.…”

“…Is Easter Island a paradigm for a Malthusian collapse or rather for a sustainable use of resources? Is it a parable for the human ruthlessness toward a fragile environment or yet another example of an early society destroyed by colonialism and slavery (Bahn and Flenley, 1992;Flenley and Bahn, 2003;Diamond, 2005;Hunt, 2007;McAnany and Yoffee, 2010;Mieth and Bork, 2010)? The answers to these questions have been attributed importance far beyond the specific case as Easter Island has been considered a general model of humanenvironment interactions on a global scale (Bahn and Flenley, 1992;Kirch, 1997;Rainbird, 2002).…”