MEGADROUGHT & COLLAPSE C

Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-0-19-932919-9
Verlag: ACADEMIC

Buch, Englisch, 344 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 681 g

Megadrought and Collapse is the first book to treat in one volume the current paleoclimatic and archaeological evidence of megadrought events coincident with major historical examples of societal collapse. Previous works have offered multi-causal explanations for climate change, from overpopulation, overexploitation of resources, and warfare to poor leadership and failure to adapt to environmental changes. In earlier synthetic studies of major instances of collapse, the archaeological record has often not been considered.

Included in this volume are nine case studies that span the globe and stretch over fourteen thousand years, from the paleolithic hunter-gatherer collapse of the 12th millennium BC to the 15th century AD fall of the Khmer capital at Angkor. Together, the studies constitute a primary sourcebook in which principal investigators in archaeology and paleoclimatology present their original research.

Each case study juxtaposes the latest paleoclimatic evidence of a megadrought (so-called for its severity and its decades to centuries-long duration) with available archaeological records of synchronous societal collapse. The megadrought data are derived from all five archival paleoclimate proxy sources: lake, marine, and glacial cores, speleothems (cave stalagmites), and tree rings. The archaeological records in each case are the most recently retrieved.

The editor derives two arguments from the discussions in the volume: (1) Societal collapse would not have occurred without megadrought. Attendant social disruptions may have been present in some instances. Nonetheless, megadrought rendered agriculture-based societies unsustainable in different regions, periods, and levels of social complexity, from simple foraging to vast empires. (2) A set of adaptive responses can be observed across the nine cases: adaptive collapse in the face of insurmountable megadrought, region-wide and settlement abandonment, and habitat tracking to sustainable agricultural environments. The evidence points to a paradigm shift: the insertion of another major force, natural climate variability-megadrought-into the global historical record.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weiss

Weiss, Harvey

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Soziale & wirtschaftliche Auswirkungen von Umweltfaktoren
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Umweltgeschichte & Umweltarchäologie
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Wasserversorgung
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Vor- und Frühgeschichte, prähistorische Archäologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Contributors

- Introduction

- Harvey Weiss

- 1. 12,000-11,700 cal BP: The Collapse of Foraging and Origins of

- Cultivation in Western Asia

- Ofer Bar-Yosef, Miryam Bar-Matthews, and Avner Ayalon

- 2. 6600-6000 cal BP Abrupt Climate Change and Neolithic Dispersal

- from West Asia

- Bernard Weninger and Lee Clare

- 3. 4.2 ka BP Megadrought and the Akkadian Collapse

- Harvey Weiss

- 4. 3.2 ka BP Megadrought and the Late Bronze Age Collapse

- Daniel Kaniewski and Elise Van Campo

- 5. AD 550-600 Collapse at Teotihuacan: Testing a Climate Forcing from

- a 2400-Year Mesoamerican Rainfall Reconstruction

- Matthew S. Lachniet and Juan Pablo Bernal-Uruchurtu

- 6. AD 750-1100 Climate Change and Critical Transitions in Classic Maya

- Sociopolitical Networks

- Douglas J. Kennett and David A. Hodell

- 7. Twelfth Century AD: Climate, Environment, and the Tiwanaku State

- Lonnie Thompson and Alan L. Kolata

- 8. Thirteenth Century AD: Implications of Seasonal and Annual Moisture 0 Reconstructions for Mesa Verde, Colorado

- David W. Stahle, Dorian J. Burnette, Daniel Griffin,

- Edward R. Cook, and Larry V. Benson

- 9. Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries AD: The Case of Angkor and

- Monsoon Extremes in Mainland Southeast Asia

- Roland Fletcher, Brendan M. Buckley,

- Christophe Pottier, and Shi-Yu Simon Wang

- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Harvey Weiss is Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Environmental Studies at Yale University. For the past thirty years, he has directed archaeological and paleoenvironmental investigations of the ca. 2200 BC Akkadian site at Tell Leilan, Syria. Weiss has edited several volumes and published numerous articles and essays in Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, among other journals.