Table Of ContentSurviving Sudden
environmental Change
Surviving Sudden
environmental Change
ANswers from ArchAeology
Edited by
Jago Cooper and Payson Sheets
Authors
David Abbott, John Marty Anderies, Jago Cooper, Andrew Dugmore, Ben Fitzhugh,
Michelle Hegmon, Scott Ingram, Keith Kintigh, Ann Kinzig, Timothy Kohler,
Stephanie Kulow, Emily McClung de Tapia, Thomas McGovern, Cathryn Meegan,
Ben Nelson, Margaret Nelson, Tate Paulette, Matthew Peeples, Jeffrey Quilter,
Charles Redman, Daniel Sandweiss, Payson Sheets, Katherine Spielmann,
Colleen Strawhacker, Orri Vésteinsson
U N i v e r s i t y P r e s s o f c o l o r A d o
© 2012 by the University Press of Colorado
Published by the University Press of Colorado
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Printed in the United States of America
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The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by
Adams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State Col-
lege of Denver, Regis University, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, and
Western State College of Colorado.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Surviving sudden environmental change : answers from archaeology / editors, Jago Cooper and
Payson Sheets ; authors, David A. Abbott ... [et al.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60732-167-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60732-168-2 (ebook)
1. Environmental archaeology—Case studies. 2. Social archaeology—Case studies. 3. Natural
disasters—Social aspects—History—To 1500. 4. Climatic changes—Social aspects—History—
To 1500. 5. Human ecology—History—To 1500. 6. Human beings—Effect of climate on—
History—To 1500. 7. Social evolution—History—To 1500. 8. Social change—History—To
1500. I. Cooper, Jago. II. Sheets, Payson D. III. Abbott, David A.
CC81.S87 2012
930.1—dc23
2011045973
Text design by Daniel Pratt
Cover design by Zoë Noble and Daniel Pratt
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Foreword vii
Thomas H. McGovern
Chapter Abstracts xiii
introduCtion: Learning to Live with the Dangers of Sudden Environmental
Change 1
Payson Sheets and Jago Cooper
Chapter 1. Hazards, Impacts, and Resilience among Hunter-Gatherers of the
Kuril Islands 19
Ben Fitzhugh
Chapter 2. Responses to Explosive Volcanic Eruptions by Small to Complex
Societies in Ancient Mexico and Central America 43
Payson Sheets
Chapter 3. Black Sun, High Flame, and Flood: Volcanic Hazards in
Iceland 67
Andrew Dugmore and Orri Vésteinsson
Chapter 4. Fail to Prepare, Then Prepare to Fail: Rethinking Threat,
Vulnerability, and Mitigation in the Precolumbian Caribbean 91
Jago Cooper
v
contents
Chapter 5. Collation, Correlation, and Causation in the Prehistory of Coastal
Peru 117
Daniel H. Sandweiss and Jeffrey Quilter
Chapter 6. Silent Hazards, Invisible Risks: Prehispanic Erosion in the
Teotihuacan Valley, Central Mexico 143
Emily McClung de Tapia
Chapter 7. Domination and Resilience in Bronze Age Mesopotamia 167
Tate Paulette
Chapter 8. Long-Term Vulnerability and Resilience: Three Examples from
Archaeological Study in the Southwestern United States and Northern
Mexico 197
Margaret C. Nelson, Michelle Hegmon, Keith W. Kintigh,
Ann P. Kinzig, Ben A. Nelson, John Marty Anderies, David A. Abbott,
Katherine A. Spielmann, Scott E. Ingram, Matthew A. Peeples,
Stephanie Kulow, Colleen A. Strawhacker, and Cathryn Meegan
Chapter 9. Social Evolution, Hazards, and Resilience: Some Concluding
Thoughts 223
Timothy A. Kohler
Chapter 10. Global Environmental Change, Resilience, and Sustainable
Outcomes 237
Charles L. Redman
List of Contributors 245
Index 249
vi
Foreword
Thomas H. McGovern
It is a genuine pleasure to provide this foreword to what will certainly become a
key volume for the integration of the long-term perspective (longue durée) with
present and future efforts to cope with hazards to the environment and human
welfare. As Payson Sheets and Jago Cooper emphasize in their introduction
and overview chapter, this group of contributors draws upon an impressive
range of disciplines and well-developed case studies from around the globe.
They are united in a growing movement among archaeologists, environmental
historians, and paleoecologists to make a well-understood past serve to cre-
ate a more genuinely sustainable future and increase human resilience in the
face of both gradual and sudden change (Constanza, Graumlich, and Steffen
2007; Crumley 1994; Dugmore et al. 2007; Fisher, Hill, and Feinman 2009;
Hornberg, McNeill, and Martinez-Alier 2007; Kirch 1997, 2007; Kohler and
van der Leeuw 2007; Marks 2007; McGovern et al 2007; Norberg et al. 2008;
Redman et al. 2004; Rick and Erlandson 2008; Sabloff 1998).
the eagle hill meeting, oCtober 2009
The editors and contributors are also connected by their participation in the
three-day Global Longterm Human Ecodynamics Conference hosted by
the Humboldt Field Research Institute at its excellent facility in Eagle Hill,
vii
tHoMas H. Mcgovern
Maine, on October 16–19, 2009 (http://www.eaglehill.us/). The conference
was generously funded by a grant from the US National Science Foundation
(NSF), Office of Polar Programs (OPP), Arctic Social Sciences Program, as
part of President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Our OPP grants officer, Dr. Anna Kerttula de Echave, played an invaluable and
inspirational role before, during, and after what proved to be an incredibly ener-
gized and successful meeting. The Eagle Hill meeting grew out of discussions
with the NSF about the desirability of harvesting fresh data and perspectives
acquired by some of the large-scale projects funded under new cross-disciplin-
ary initiatives, including the NSF Biocomplexity competition, the Human and
Social Dimensions of Global Change program, and the International Polar
Year (2007–2009), as well as various European interdisciplinary programs
(BOREAS, Leverhulme Trust projects), to promote more effective interre-
gional (especially north-south) communication and integration of teams, cases,
and new ideas. In spring 2009 a team drawn from the North Atlantic Biocultural
Organization (NABO) research and education cooperative (Andy Dugmore of
the University of Edinburgh, Sophia Perdikaris and Tom McGovern of CUNY,
and Astrid Ogilvie of the University of Colorado) was tasked with organizing
a working conference that would connect teams and scholars active in diverse
areas of human ecodynamics research and involve students participating in
Sophia’s Islands of Change Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)
program. The October Eagle Hill meeting eventually had seventy-one faculty
and student active participants, representing a dozen disciplines and nations
worldwide. Prior to the meeting, participants interacted through the NABO
website maintained by Dr. Anthony Newton (University of Edinburgh), and
this on-line collaboration and preparation proved critical to the success of the
meeting (for a full report on the Eagle Hill meeting and a list of faculty partici-
pants, see http://www.nabohome.org/meetings/glthec2009.html).
As part of the pre-meeting preparation we grouped participants into
working groups, each with at least two chairs charged with organizing their
groups, leading discussions before and during the meeting, and preparing pre-
sentations by each working group for discussion by the entire group. The teams
and chairs were:
• Methods, Data, and Tools (chairs Doug Price and Tina Thurston):
New analytic tools allow transformation in our abilities to trace migra-
tion, reconstruct diet, and reconstruct settlement. Some specialties
and approaches are very recent in origin (stable isotopes, aDNA), and
others have recently been able to significantly upgrade their general util-
ity through expanded data resources (archaeobotany, zooarchaeology,
geoarchaeology).
• Who Cares Wins (Shari Gearheard and Christian Keller): Education,
community involvement, policy connections, and interdisciplinary
viii
foreword
engagement. Moving beyond outreach to mobilize traditional environ-
mental knowledge (TEK) and local knowledge and expertise for global
science. Engaging underrepresented sources of innovation and expand-
ing human resources. Connecting science to the public and providing
diversity to policy makers.
• Hazards and Impacts (Payson Sheets and Jago Cooper): Recurring haz-
ards, differential impacts, long-term lessons for vulnerability and resil-
ience, successful and unsuccessful models of response and adaptation.
• Climate Change (Socorro Lozano and Lisa Kennedy): Climate change
impacts, threshold crossings, adaptation versus resilience, past lessons
for future impacts.
• Models and Visualization (Shripad Tuljapurkar and Tiffany Vance):
Digital resources for education, data integration and dissemination,
integrative modeling, and exploration of complex causality and complex
self-organizing adaptive systems.
• Coping and Scale (Tate Paulette and Jeff Quilter): Societies of different
scales have produced cases of both failure and long-term sustainability
in balancing demands of specialization, short-term efficiency, and long-
term flexibility in the face of discontinuous but often rapid changes in
natural and social environments.
• Ecodynamics of Modernity (Steve Mozorowski and Jim Woollett): Past
“world system” impacts since CE 1250, commoditization, repeated pan-
demic impacts, climate change, Columbian exchange, mass migration,
cross-scale integration and linkage, maximum potential for integration
of history, ethnography, archaeology, and multi-indicator environmen-
tal science.
All of these team presentations provoked intense and productive discus-
sions (some of which lasted far into the night), but the Hazards and Impacts
team led by Payson and Jago was a clear “star” session among many very strong
contenders. In part, this reflected the dynamic of the conference, where all par-
ticipants were deeply committed to using their expertise to make concrete and
practical contributions to improving the lives of present and future residents
in their research areas. As discussed fully in Jago and Payson’s introductory
chapter, hazards research provides a well-structured venue for the long-term
perspective to have immediate and positive benefits, and this has attracted
contributors from other Eagle Hill teams to what had been the Hazards and
Impacts team project.
The Global human ecodynamics alliance (Ghea)
The Eagle Hill meeting resulted in a strong consensus to continue and broaden
discussions begun in Maine, drawing in more teams, disciplines, and world
areas to achieve a genuinely global perspective that could take on projects such
ix
