A theory of regime change on the Texas Coastal Plain

American Antiquity

Along the southeastern Atlantic coast of Georgia, hunter-gatherer groups substantially altered the landscape for more than three millennia (ca. 4,200―1,000 B.P.) leaving behind a distinct material record in the form of shell rings, middens, and burial mounds. During this time, these groups experienced major changes in sea level and resource distribution. Specifically, we take a resilience theory approach to address these changes and discuss the utility of this theory for archaeology in general. We suggest that despite major destabilizing forces in the form of sea-level lowering and its concomitant effects on resource distribution, cultural systems rebounded to a structural pattern similar to the one expressed prior to environmental disruption. We propose, in part, the ability for people to return to similar patterns was the result of the high visibility of previous behaviors inscribed on the landscape in the form of shell middens and rings from the period preceding environmental disruption. Finally, despite a return to similar cultural formulations, hunter-gatherers experienced some fundamental changes resulting in modifications to existing behaviors (e.g., ringed villages) as well as the addition of new ones in the form of burial-mound construction.

Humans are intimately enveloped by both ecological and economical systems, both of which are linked to one another at deep levels. Human social organization itself can be described as a complex, adaptive system in which numerous agents act for their personal gain, but where all such actions result in system permutations as a result of interdependencies and conflicting constraints (e.g. Kauffman 252-271). Complexity theory, and in particular the study of complex adaptive systems, is poised to shed light on patterns of human behavior, especially where the environments in which we live are undergoing rapid change. For these reasons I examine how viewing prehistoric hunter-gatherers as adaptive agents within a multi-tiered complex system may advance our understanding of the prehistory of the Northeast at the close of the last Ice Age.

In Surviving Sudden Environmental Change, case studies examine how eight different past human communities—ranging from Arctic to equatorial regions, from tropical rainforests to desert interiors, and from deep prehistory to living memory—faced, and coped with, the dangers of sudden environmental change. Many disasters originate from a force of nature, such as an earthquake, cyclone, tsunami, volcanic eruption, drought, or flood. But that is only half of the story; decisions of people and their particular cultural lifeways are the rest. Sociocultural factors are essential in understanding risk, impact, resilience, reactions, and recoveries from massive sudden environmental changes. By using deep-time perspectives provided by interdisciplinary approaches, this book provides a rich temporal background to the human experience of environmental hazards and disasters. In addition, each chapter is followed by an abstract summarizing the important implications for today’s management practices and providing recommendations for policy makers.

The Archaeology of Human-Environment Interactions: Strategies for Investigating Anthropogenic Landscapes, Dynamic Environments, and Climate Change in the Human Past, 2017

Walte~ L0:-vdermilk. (19~3) rem~ined relatively isolated from archaeology (see hlstoncal overview In Goudie 2013). It was historical geographers like Carl Sa~er (e.g., 1941), rather than archaeologists, who developed the ideas ab~ut Widespread anthropogenic influence that culminated in the 1956 publication of.Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (Thomas et al. 1956). These Ideas had little apparent impact on archaeology until the final third of the twentieth century, when the discipline really began to embrace study of anthropogenic environmental change as fundamental to understanding the human past (d. Redman 1999:Ch.2). At approximately the same time, Calaway, Michael J. 2005 Ice-cores, sediments and civilisation collapse: A cautionary tale from Lake Titicaca. Alltiquity 79(306):778-790. Caseldine, C. J. and C. Turney 2010 The bigger picture: Towards integrating palaeoclimate and environmental data with a history of societal change. Journal of Quatemary Sciellce 25(1):88-93. Clare, Lee and Bernhard Weninger 2010 Social and biophysical vulnerability of prehistoric societies to rapid climate change.

Environmental Archaeology, 2020

Environmental archaeological enquiry has a long and vibrant history. Many of the same questions have persisted in archaeological dialogues over the past century. In particular, the effects of environmental change on demographic patterns, health, and societal stability are among the most pervasive questions being addressed by anthropological research. These studies have limitations, however. For example, evaluations of the complex relationships between environmental variables and human responses are only just beginning to emerge in anthropological literature. This goal requires high-resolution paleoclimate datasets and the use of quantitative modelling rooted in evolutionary and complex systems theory. This paper serves as a broad review of advances in environmental archaeological enquiry associated with environmental change and human response. I argue that the future of archaeological questions concerning human-environmental connection requires a re-evaluation of causality and the incorporation of complex systems approaches to address human responses to external pressures.

History and archaeology have a well-established engagement with issues of premodern societal development and the interaction between physical and cultural environments; together, they offer a holistic view that can generate insights into the nature of cultural resilience and adaptation, as well as responses to catastrophe. Grasping the challenges that climate change presents and evolving appropriate policies that promote and support mitigation and adaptation requires not only an understanding of the science and the contemporary politics, but also an understanding of the history of the societies affected and in particular of their cultural logic. But whereas archaeologists have developed productive links with the paleosciences, historians have, on the whole, remained muted voices in the debate until recently. Here, we suggest several ways in which a consilience between the historical sciences and the natural sciences, including attention to even distant historical pasts, can deepen contemporary understanding of environmental change and its effects on human societies.

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour., 2005

Crisis to Collapse: The Archaeology of Social Breakdown, 2017

Quaternary International

Collapse" is an engaging buzzword that captivates public interest; as such, the notion of demise remains a dominant theme in studies of ancient civilizations. Our textbooks teach that the Roman Empire and Han dynasty (to name a few oft-cited examples) crumbled, and some, like the Maya and the Harappan suddenly-if not mysteriously-disappeared. In this manner, studying archaeology is promoted as a basis of prognostication for our modern Anthropocene, the timeframe when human agency became ascendant and affected global change. Well established models of collapse suggested that cultural downfall was predicated by hydroclimate-driven ecological and environmental crises that were both unavoidable and insurmountable, and resulted in finite endpoints like abandonments and disappearances. Such deterministic or apocalyptic notions of societal collapses are appealing and tidy, but incomplete narratives. Emerging research has moved beyond simplistic and linear interpretations of antiquity, invoking anthropological paradigms of continuity, social resilience and transformation, as well as new methodological approaches for resolving how cultures may have assimilated, or coped by strategic adaptation, migration, socio-political reorganization or technological innovation. Interpretations of geoarchaeological records in context of environmental reconstructions underscore themes raised by post-processual anthropologists, such as the need to view cultural change as a continuum through environmental changes. With these themes in mind, we link selected examples of modern studies of many regions with a special focus on North African drylands with archaeological records that provide contexts for reconstructing how cultures coped. Formal resilience theory, built on concepts that were originally borrowed from ecology, offers more realistic frameworks for reconstructions of the past that enable us to ask nuanced questions about sustainability strategies during political transitions, socio-political crisis events like warfare and disease, crop collapse, soil loss, extreme weather (including hurricanes, floods, droughts), and resource availability. Resilience and persistence of cultures is a given, and is inherent in the progressive study of ancient cultures and modern societies living in marginal environments, and facing hydroclimate change, overpopulation, and scarcity of resources. As such, geoarchaeological studies are vital for unpacking the Anthropocene.