Archaeological Perspectives On Resilience, Revitalization, and Transformation in Complex Societies

Beyond
Collapse
Archaeological
Perspectives
on Resilience,
Revitalization, and
Transformation in
Complex Societies
Edited by
Ronald K. Faulseit
Center for Archaeological Investigations

Occasional Paper No. 42
Beyond Collapse
Visiting Scholar Conference Volumes
Processual and Postprocessual Archaeologies: Multiple Ways of Knowing the
Past (Occasional Paper No. 10) edited by Robert W. Preucel
Paleonutrition: The Die and Health of Prehistoric Americans (Occasional Paper
No. 22) edited by Kristin D. Sobolik
Integrating Archaeological Demography: Multidisciplinary Approaches to
Prehistoric Population (Occasional Paper No. 24) edited by Richard R. Paine
Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture Change, and Archaeology
(Occasional Paper No. 25) edited by James G. Cusick
Material Symbols: Culture and Economy in Prehistory (Occasional Paper No.
26) edited by John E. Robb
Hierarchies in Action: Cui Bono? (Occasional Paper No. 27) edited by Michael
W. Diehl
Fleeting Identities: Perishable Material Culture in Archaeological Research
(Occasional Paper No. 28) edited by Penelope Ballard Drooker
The Dynamics of Power (Occasional Paper No. 30) edited by Maria O’Donovan
Hunters and Gatherers in Theory and Archaeology (Occasional Paper No. 31)
edited by George M. Crothers
Biomolecular Archaeology: Genetic Approaches to the Past (Occasional Paper
No. 32) edited by David M. Reed
Leadership and Polity in Mississippian Society (Occasional Paper No. 33) edited
by Brian M. Butler and Paul D. Welch
The Archaeology of Food and Identity (Occasional Paper No. 34) edited by
Katheryn C. Twiss
The Durable House: House Society Models in Archaeology (Occasional Paper
No. 35) edited by Robin A. Beck Jr.
Religion, Archaeology, and the Material World (Occasional Paper No. 36) edited
by Lars Fogelin
The Archaeology of Anthropogenic Environments (Occasional Paper No. 37)
edited by Rebecca M. Dean
Human Variation in the Americas: The Integration of Archaeology and Biological
Anthropology (Occasional Paper No. 38) edited by Benjamin M. Auerbach
The Archaeology of Hybrid Material Culture (Occasional Paper No. 39) edited by
Jeb J. Card
Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology (Occasional Paper
No. 40) edited by Jo Day
The Archaeology of Slavery: A Comparative Approach to Captivity and
Coercion (Occasional Paper No. 41) edited by Lydia Wilson Marshall
Beyond Collapse
Archaeological
Perspectives on
Resilience, Revitalization,
and Transformation in
Complex Societies
Edited by
Ronald K. Faulseit
Center for Archaeological Investigations

Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Occasional Paper No. 42
Southern Illinois University Press

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Copyright © 2016 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University
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Chapter 6 copyright © 2016 by Scott R. Hutson
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Beyond collapse : archaeological perspectives on resilience, revitalization, and transfor-
mation in complex societies / edited by Ronald K. Faulseit.
pages cm. — (Visiting scholar conference volumes) (Occasional paper ; no. 42)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
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1. Social archaeology. 2. Civilization, Ancient. 3. Social systems—History. 4. Social evolu-
tion. 5. Ethnoarchaeology. 6. Excavations (Archaeology) I. Faulseit, Ronald K., 1970– editor.
II. Series: Occasional paper (Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Center for Archaeo-
logical Investigations)
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For information, write to the Center for Archaeological Investigations, Faner 3479, Mail
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terials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Tables xv
Preface xvii
I. Setting the Stage
1. Collapse, Resilience, and Transformation in Complex Societies:

Modeling Trends and Understanding Diversity
Ronald K. Faulseit 3
2. Why Collapse Is So Difficult to Understand

Joseph A. Tainter 27
II. Reframing Narratives of Societal Transformation
3. After Monte Albán in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca: A Reassessment

Gary M. Feinman and Linda M. Nicholas 43
4. New Perspectives on the Collapse and Regeneration of the

Han Dynasty
Tristram R. Kidder, Liu Haiwang, Michael J. Storozum, and Qin Zhen 70
5. Requestioning the Classic Maya Collapse and the Fall of the Roman
Empire: Slow Collapse
Rebecca Storey and Glenn R. Storey 99
6. A Historical Processual Approach to Continuity and Change in

Classic and Postclassic Yucatan
Scott Hutson, Iliana Ancona Aragón, Miguel Covarrubias Reyna,
Zachary Larsen, Katie Lukach, Shannon E. Plank, Richard E. Terry,
and Willem Vanessendelft 124
v
vi Contents
7. The Dangers of Diversity: The Consolidation and Dissolution of

Cahokia, Native North America’s First Urban Polity
Thomas E. Emerson and Kristin M. Hedman 147
III. Resilience Theory and Societal Transformation
8. Release and Reorganization in the Tropics: A Comparative

Perspective from Southeast Asia
Gyles Iannone 179
9. Reestablishment of Complex Societies following Collapse and

Abandonment in Nasca, Peru
Christina A. Conlee 213
10. The Decline and Reorganization of Southwestern Complexity:

Using Resilience Theory to Examine the Collapse of Chaco
Canyon
Jakob W. Sedig 237
11. Transformation without Collapse: Two Cases from the U.S.

Southwest
Andrea Torvinen, Michelle Hegmon, Ann P. Kinzig, Margaret C. Nelson,
Matthew A. Peeples, Colleen Strawhacker, Karen G. Schollmeyer, and
Laura Swantek 262
12. Tres Zapotes: The Evolution of a Resilient Polity in the Olmec

Heartland of Mexico
Christopher A. Pool and Michael L. Loughlin 287
IV. Long-Term Resilience and Adaptive Strategies
13. Finding Resilience in Ritual and History in the Lake Okeechobee

Basin
Victor D. Thompson 313
14. Resilience and Persistent Places in the Mississippi River Delta of

Southeastern Louisiana
Christopher B. Rodning and Jayur M. Mehta 342
15. Political Economy and Craft Production before and after the
Collapse of Mississippian Chiefdoms
Maureen Meyers 380
Contents vii
V. Postcollapse Resilience and Reorganization
16. Crafting a Response to Collapse: Ceramic and Textile Production in

the Wake of Tiwanaku State Breakdown
Nicola Sharratt 407
17. Collapse, Regeneration, and the Origins of Tula and the Toltec State
J. Heath Anderson, Dan M. Healan, and Robert H. Cobean 431
18. Reconsidering Collapse: Identity, Ideology, and Postcollapse

Settlement in the Argolid
Katie Lantzas 459
19. A Tale of Two Cities: Continuity and Change following the Moche
Collapse in the Jequetepeque Valley, Peru
Kari A. Zobler and Richard C. Sutter 486
20. Household Adaptation and Reorganization in the Aftermath of the

Classic Maya Collapse at Baking Pot, Belize
Julie A. Hoggarth and Jaime J. Awe 504
Contributors 529
Figures
1-1. Adaptive cycle 13

1-2. Nested adaptive cycles and cross-cycle interaction 14
2-1. Energy-complexity spiral 36
3-1. State and Valley of Oaxaca in southern Mexico 45
3-2. Late Classic/Early Postclassic sites in the Valley of Oaxaca 50
3-3. Sites in the Valley of Oaxaca with genealogical registers 52
3-4. Genealogical registers from Tomb 6 at Lambityeco and Matatlán 53
3-5. Residences and ballcourt of the penultimate surface in the upper
precinct at El Palmillo 54
3-6. Late Classic ballcourt next to elite residence at Monte Albán 55
3-7. Late Classic ballcourts at Atzompa including two associated with
elite residences 56
3-8. Warrior and ballplayer figurines from the Mitla Fortress and El
Palmillo 57
3-9. Obsidian assemblages at the Ejutla site, El Palmillo, and Mitla
Fortress from the Early/Middle Classic to the Late Classic/Early
Postclassic 58
3-10. Postclassic small polities in the Valley of Oaxaca 60
4-1. Historical map of the lower Yellow River Valley in the Western
Han Dynasty 72
5-1. Adaptive cycle model of Roman Empire 102
5-2. Adaptive cycle model of Classic Maya 102
5-3. Three phase maps from the southern Etruria survey indicating
the distribution of archaeological sites before the rise of Rome,
during Rome’s height, and in the early medieval period 105
5-4. Map of the Classic Maya centers with their last Long Count data
and Gregorian calendar equivalents 110
5-5. Stela A of the thirteenth ruler of Copán, the Classic Maya center
with the most elaborate sculpture of rulers 111
5-6. Map of the Postclassic Maya sites in the lowlands 117
5-7. Central temple (Castillo), central area of Tulum, a Postclassic Maya
center in Yucatan 118
5-8. Great Plaza of Tikal, partial view, one of the largest of the Classic
Maya centers 118
ix
x Figures
6-1. Map of the northern Maya lowlands, showing many locations

mentioned in the text 126
6-2. Map of the Ucí-Cansahcab causeway showing the location of sites
researched by the UCRIP 128
6-3. Topographic map of the ballcourts and other structures at the core
of the Santa Teresa site 131
6-4. Map of Santa Teresa ballcourt showing the location of the ninety-
five 50 cm by 50 cm test pits, the large test pits, and the
distribution of ceramics and phosphate concentrations 133
6-5. Plan of block excavations on the north end of Structure 8a, a Santa
Teresa ballcourt, showing location and stone walls 134
6-6. Map of Kancab 138
6-7. Frequency seriation of ceramics from excavation operations with
large proportions of Late Classic, Terminal Classic, and Postclassic
ceramics 139
6-8. Postclassic altar and associated artifacts 140
7-1. Location of the Cahokia, East St. Louis, and St. Louis ceremonial
precincts within Greater Cahokia 149
7-2. Tree-ring-based reconstructions of the Palmer Drought
Severity Index for the Cahokia area for three periods:
1000–2000 c.e., 1000–1275 c.e., and 1050–1200 c.e. 152
7-3. Charts illustrating the projected population growth at .001 and
.005 rates for Cahokia 158
7-4. Mean and range of d13C and d15N isotope ratios derived from bone
collagen 161
7-5. Cahokia 87Sr/86Sr ratios by location 164
8-1. Map of mainland Southeast Asia showing centers mentioned in
the text 186
8-2. Examples of protostate walled enclosures from Sriksetra, Angkor
Borei, and Sambor Prei Kuk 188
8-3. Bagan, Myanmar/Burma 194
8-4. Angkor, Cambodia 196
9-1. Map of Nasca drainage, with sites discussed in the text 216
9-2. Large regional and ceremonial center of Cahuachi 217
9-3. Ojo of the Orcona puquio and the 2005 field crew near the La
Tiza site 218
9-4. Large wall in the western section at the La Tiza site 225
9-5. Small, ridgetop ritual area at La Tiza, with large grinding stone in
the center 227
10-1. Map of the northern Southwest, with the northern San Juan and
Cibola regions outlined 239
10-2. Examples of wall facing in Chacoan great houses 245
10-3. Great house ground plans 245
10-4. Construction history of Chaco Canyon great houses 246
10-5. Hubbard tri-wall structure at Aztec Ruins 249
Figures xi
10-6. Examples of post-Chacoan sites from the Cibola region, with large
open plazas and hundreds of rooms 251
10-7. Proposed adaptive cycles for Chaco Canyon and the northern San
Juan and Cibola regions 255
11-1. Case study areas of the Long-Term Vulnerability and
Transformation Project 264
11-2. Occupational subregions of the Cibola case study in central New
Mexico and Arizona 268
11-3. Occupational subregions of the Mimbres case study in southwest
New Mexico 269
11-4. Hypothetical examples showing how both the number of
categories and distribution among categories affect the 1-C
diversity measure 271
11-5. Hypothetical data of two idealized distributions of scalar
diversity 273
11-6. Spatial distribution of cooking-technology diversity in the Cibola
and Mimbres regions 275
11-7. Spatial distribution of local ceramic production diversity in the
Cibola region 276
11-8. Photographs of Cibola White Ware and Early White Mountain
Red Ware 276
11-9. Diversity and distribution of Mimbres Black-on-white
representational designs and geometric designs 277
12-1. Map of southern Gulf lowlands (Olman) with archaeological sites 289
12-2. Population trends in the southern Gulf lowlands 291
12-3. Map of the Nestepe group at Tres Zapotes showing basic
components of the Tres Zapotes Plaza Group (TZPG) plan 294
12-4. Stone monuments from Tres Zapotes, with images of Olmec rulers 298
12-5. Plan of Tres Zapotes showing location of plaza groups (Groups
1, 2, 3, and Nestepe) and other mounds 300
13-1. Location of the Lake Okeechobee study area in southern Florida 317
13-2. Meander scar (oxbow lake) along Fisheating Creek across from
the Fort Center site, LiDAR image of Glades Circle, and LiDAR
image of Great Circle complex at the Fort Center site 322
13-3. Example of earthwork complex in the Lake Okeechobee basin 325
13-4. Frequency of earthwork types in study area and frequency of
sites where a particular earthwork type occurs 327
13-5. Sites in the study area with 10 km buffer zones surrounding them 329
13-6. Example of a canal along the southwestern coast of Florida 330
14-1. Culture sequence for southeastern Louisiana 343
14-2. Deltaic lobes and archaeological sites with earthen or shell
mounds in southeastern Louisiana 344
15-1. Location of Southern Appalachian region sites discussed in text 383
15-2. Plan view of Carter Robinson excavations showing Structures
1, 2, 3, and 4 384
xii Figures
15-3. Approximate location of Structure 3 and Mounds A and B at

Toqua and structure-type floor plan 387
15-4. Approximate location of mounds and structures at Little Egypt
site and plan view of Structure 1 390
16-1. Tiwanaku provinces 410
16-2. Tumilaca la Chimba 412
16-3. Tiwanaku kero with feline iconography, recovered from a grave at
Chen Chen 414
16-4. Repeated geometric pattern on two keros recovered from different
graves at Chen Chen 414
16-5. Sun Gate depicting the Staff God, Tiwanaku 415
16-6. Kero recovered from a grave at Tumilaca la Chimba 416
16-7. Ceramic spindle whorl in situ on the surface of a domestic patio,
Tumilaca la Chimba 418
16-8. Mummified subadult wrapped in a multicolored woolen textile
and held in position by a braided fiber rope, Chen Chen 420
16-9. Feet of a juvenile camelid interred with an adult male human at
Tumilaca la Chimba 420
16-10. Fragment of a striped woolen shawl recovered from a grave at
Chen Chen 422
17-1. Locations of sites and regions discussed in the text 434
17-2. Classic (Chingú phase, a.d. 1–550) settlement in the Tula region 437
17-3. Concordance of ceramic chronologies used at Tula, in the Tula
region, in the Basin of Mexico, and at Teotihuacán, along with
period names used in Central Mexico 439
17-4. Epiclassic (La Mesa, Prado, and Corral phases, a.d. 550–900)
settlement in the Tula region 440
17-5. La Mesa site plan 441
17-6. Topographic map of Cerro Magoni civic-ceremonial precinct 442
17-7. Location and internal layout of the Epiclassic site of Tula Chico
and the later Tollan-phase Tula Grande, showing columned halls
encountered in excavation 443
17-8. Early Postclassic (Tollan phase, a.d. 900–1150) settlement in the
Tula region 445
18-1. Map of the Argolid showing sites inhabited during the Late
Bronze Age through the Iron Age 462
18-2. Map of sites identified through surface survey or rescue
excavations 464
18-3. Map of sites identified with evidence for continued occupation or
reoccupation during Iron Age 464
18-4. Map of major sites in the Argolid 466
18-5. Map of the concentrations of mortuary contexts dating to the
study period 469
18-6. Comparison of individual and cumulative mortuary contexts in
the Argolid dating to the LH IIIB 2 period through Early
Geometric period 470
Figures xiii
18-7. Map demonstrating the chronologically latest inhumations within

chamber tombs relevant to this study 471
18-8. Locations and quantities of vessel inhumations 473
18-9. Comparison of quantities of chamber tombs and vessel
inhumations over time 474
19-1. Map of selected Moche-era archaeological sites on the north coast
of Peru 489
19-2. Traditional central Andean chronology and comparative ceramic
chronologies for the northern and southern spheres of Moche
influence 490
19-3. Map of selected Moche era archaeological sites in the Jequetepeque
Valley, Peru 491
19-4. Multidimensional scaling of the unbiased distance values as
determined from R-matrix analysis for twelve prehistoric north-
coast skeletal samples 494
20-1. Map of the Maya lowlands showing the location of Baking Pot
in western Belize 509
20-2. Proportions of exotic luxury items in noble, high-status commoner,
and low-status commoner house groups during the Late Classic,
Terminal Classic, and Postclassic periods 511
20-3. Proportions of exotic utilitarian items in noble, high-status
commoner, and low-status commoner house groups during the
Late Classic, Terminal Classic, and Postclassic periods 512
20-4. Proportions of local chert, nonlocal chert, and obsidian (to all
chipped stone) in noble, high-status commoner, and low-status
commoner house groups during the Late Classic, Terminal
Classic, and Postclassic periods 514
20-5. Proportions of items used in the production of local goods (to total
sherds) in noble, high-status commoner, and low-status commoner
house groups during the Late Classic, Terminal Classic, and
Postclassic periods 515
20-6. Proportions of items associated with large-scale community feasts
in noble, high-status commoner, and low-status commoner house
groups during the Late Classic, Terminal Classic, and Postclassic
periods 517
20-7. Proportions of faunal remains in noble, high-status commoner,
and low-status commoner house groups during the Late Classic,
Terminal Classic, and Postclassic periods 519
20-8. Proportions of materials with Maya symbols and motifs in noble,
high-status commoner, and low-status commoner house groups
during the Late Classic, Terminal Classic, and Postclassic periods 520
20-9. Multidimensional scaling for similarities between burials in
Settlement Cluster C and the Baking Pot ceremonial center 521
Tables
3-1. Tendencies in politicoeconomic mechanisms 48

4-1. Population and households of commanderies along the Yellow
River, c.e. 2 81
8-1. Characteristics of the four phases of the adaptive cycle and other
key concepts relevant to the application of adaptive cycles and
panarchy theory 182
8-2. Continua of variation for assessing socioecological resilience in
coupled socioecological systems 184
9-1. Chronology of settlement in the Nasca drainage 214
11-1. Forms of social diversity analyzed and their associated
archaeological data 270
11-2. Local and intraregional ceramics in the Zuni and Silver
Creek subregions of the Cibola case study 272
11-3. Social configurations preceding two cases of noncollapse
transformation 274
11-4. Diversity of cooking technology assessed at multiple spatial
scales 278
11-5. Diversity of local ceramic production assessed at two spatial
scales 278
11-6. Diversity of representational and geometric designs on Mimbres
Black-on-white bowls at two spatial scales 278
11-7. Relative changes in the forms of social diversity following
noncollapse transformations 279
12-1. Adaptive cycles in the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin 292
15-1. Vessel types found in Carter Robinson structures 385
15-2. Descriptions of Cherokee townhouses 396
18-1. Chronological divisions of Greek prehistory 461
18-2. Dates for the construction and final inhumation in chamber
tombs relevant to this study 472
18-3. Demonstration of the presence or absence of specific ceramic
shapes throughout the study period 476
18-4. Ceramic assemblages from palatial mortuary contexts at Mycenae
and Prosymna 477
xv
xvi Tables
18-5. Ceramic assemblages from mortuary contexts dating to the

period of palatial instability 478
18-6. Ceramic assemblages from Iron Age mortuary contexts 479
20-1. Ratios of serving vessels to cooking vessels among house groups
in several time periods 518
Preface
Most of the people reading this are at least marginally aware of the
tumultuous events that have taken place over the past few decades in Central Asia.
I received a personal education in the late fall of 2004, when I was informed that I
would be serving a year in Afghanistan with the U.S. Army National Guard. My
job was to help form, train, mentor, and advise an Afghan National Army kandak
(equivalent to a U.S. Army battalion) as part of the broader “nation building” effort
led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). After training in Kabul for
six weeks, the kandak, along with myself and eight other U.S. advisers, moved to
the Kunar Valley, where we spent the better part of 10 months supporting marines
and other U.S. forces in a variety of operations. In preparation for my deployment,
I introduced myself to the recent history of the region through the writings of
Ahmed Rashid (2006, 2010), a Pakistani journalist who chronicled Afghanistan’s
trajectory from relative stability prior to the Soviet invasion, through the armed
resistance, collapse of the Soviet empire, and Afghanistan’s subsequent descent
into violent, ethnically motivated civil war. Prior to NATO’s involvement, the
Taliban, with support from Pakistan’s government, ended the mujahideen war
and restored relative order to most of the Afghan territory, albeit through brutal
authoritarian control (Rashid 2010).
My role in Afghanistan was related to the attempted reconstruction or regen-
eration of the federal Afghan polity through the development of a nationalized
security apparatus intended to maintain the stability needed for political and
economic growth. Although my experience with the waste, fraud, and abuse that I
witnessed within my own government’s institutions actually forced me to ponder
the declining trajectory of the United States, I became keenly interested in learning
more about the ways in which societies in general transform and reorganize in
the wake of catastrophic events. What lessons could archaeology teach us about
resilience and reorganization, and, conversely, how might modern events help us
understand the archaeological record?
Upon returning to my studies at Tulane University, I planned to address these
questions through archaeological research in the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico. In
particular, I was interested in how secondary communities in the valley adapted
to the political reorganization that occurred after the decline of the Monte Albán
polity in the late first millennium a.d. (see Feinman and Nicholas, chapter 3).
While conducting the initial literature review, however, I became dissatisfied
xvii
xviii Preface
by the limited scholarly attention paid, especially in broad theoretical terms, to

postcollapse societies and sociopolitical reorganization (but see Hegmon et al.
1998; Snodgrass 1971; Whitley 1991). It is apparent that other scholars shared these
feelings, because in the last decade there has been a growing corpus of research
on the topic (e.g., McAnany and Yoffee 2010b; Nelson et al. 2006; Schwartz and
Nichols 2006), including the adoption of several theoretical tenets from resilience
theory (e.g., Redman and Kinzig 2003).
In light of these developments, I envisioned the thematic scope for the twenty-
ninth annual Visiting Scholar Conference at Southern Illinois University Carbon-
dale as an opportunity to expand on these trends by inviting scholars with diverse
regional specializations and philosophical perspectives to contribute new works
toward understanding the processes involved in societal collapse and transforma-
tion. It was not my intent, however, to merely accumulate a comparative group of
regionally diverse case studies but rather to encourage participants to critically
engage recent theoretical positions with their data sets. The response went way
beyond expectations, and the presentations along with the subsequent dialogue
provided some serious intellectual stimulus that bore fruit in many of the chapters
presented in this volume.
The year of the conference, 2013, marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the
publication of two seminal and still influential books: Joseph A. Tainter’s (1988)
The Collapse of Complex Societies and Norman Yoffee and George L. Cowgill’s (1988)
edited volume The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations. These works, along
with the T. Patrick Culbert’s (1973) edited volume, The Classic Maya Collapse, set
the theoretical stage for the following quarter century of research on the subject
of societal collapse, which has received significant scholarly and popular atten-
tion. We are all indebted to these initial works for providing a foundation from
which to build, and their continued importance is demonstrated by the number
of times they are referenced in this volume. One article in particular, Shmuel
Eisenstadt’s “Beyond Collapse,” which appears in the Yoffee and Cowgill (1988)
volume, stood out to me because it considered both collapse and reorganization
as part of a larger process of structuring and restructuring among the political,
social, and economic boundaries within societies. I chose to recall this title because
the idea of going beyond addressing collapse as a stand-alone topic in favor of
developing broader understandings of societal transformation encapsulates the
recent trends in archaeological thought, including the works presented in this
volume, and provides an apt embarkation point from which this conference and
volume progressed.
There are many people to thank for their efforts in making the conference a
success and helping to produce this volume. First, I thank Heather Lapham and
Mark Wagner from the Center for Archaeological Investigations, who not only
sponsored the conference but also aided me greatly in all of my endeavors during
the year I spent at Southern Illinois University. I thank members of the conference
archaeological oversight committee, Izumi Shimada, Paul Welch, and Andrew
Balkansky, for their encouragement and guidance. I am particularly grateful
to Brian Butler for his efforts to ensure that the conference took place and that
it was a success. I am especially appreciative of the efforts made by Mary Lou
Preface xix
Wilshaw-Watts, who fulfilled a vital role in the development of the conference

and the organization of this book. I also thank Mary Lou Kowaleski (copy editor)
and Wayne K. Larsen (project editor) for their wonderful work copyediting and
preparing the volume for printing.
Of course, an edited volume is only as good as its contributions, and I am
both humbled and honored to have such a distinguished and prolific group of
scholars contribute. The intellectual exchange that took place at the conference
was an absolute delight to experience, and I am grateful to all who participated. I
give special thanks to the distinguished members of the discussion panel, Thomas
E. Emerson, Gary M. Feinman, Dan M. Healan, Rebecca Storey, and Joseph A.
Tainter, who provided thought-provoking and insightful discourse during a lively
interactive session. I also extend added appreciation to Tainter for delivering a
captivating keynote address. Lastly, I thank Stacy Dunn, Jerry Ek, Ashley Heaton,
Trisha Jackson, David Kohrman, Geoffrey McCafferty, Scott Macrae, David Mixter,
Olivia Navarro-Farr, Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown, David Small, Matt Spigelman,
and Kasia Szremski, who made significant contributions to the intellectual ex-
change at the conference with the insightful papers and posters they presented.
In general, I owe a debt of gratitude to all of the presenters and attendees for their
challenging and intriguing contributions toward furthering our understanding
of complex societies.

References cited are listed in chapter 1.
I. Setting the Stage
1. Collapse, Resilience, and
Transformation in Complex
Societies: Modeling Trends and
Understanding Diversity
Ronald K. Faulseit
A recent online article hosted by the British newspaper the Guardian

(Ahmed 2014), highlighting “NASA-funded” research that predicts the imminent
collapse of “industrial civilization,” underscores both the academic and popular
interest in this subject. This is not a new phenomenon, as Gibbon’s (2010 [1776–
1788]) History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has maintained a high level
of popularity through numerous reprints. Within the discipline of archaeology,
the collapse of complex societies has been an important and sustained research
focus for more than four decades (e.g., Butzer 2012; Culbert 1973; Demarest et al.
2004; Middleton 2012; Railey and Reycraft, eds. 2008; Tainter 1988; Webster 2002;
Yoffee and Cowgill 1988). Conversely, concepts such as resilience, sustainability,
and postcollapse reorganization have only recently gained widespread attention
in the field (e.g., Hegmon et al. 1998; Nelson et al. 2006). In particular, Schwartz
and Nichols’s (2006) volume After Collapse: The Regeneration of Complex Societies set
the stage for expansion of the subject matter to address how societies reorganize
after the decline of sociopolitical complexity.
The field of archaeology has recently seen increased diversification in philo-
sophical orientations and interpretive approaches, yielding a variety of alternative
understandings for societal collapse, resilience, and reorganization (e.g., compare
Storey and Storey with Hutson et al., current volume). As an unfortunate con-
sequence of this diversification, the study of societal collapse is often contrasted
Beyond Collapse: Archaeological Perspectives on Resilience, Revitalization, and Transformation in Com-

plex Societies, edited by Ronald K. Faulseit. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Occasional
Paper No. 42. © 2016 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University. All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
3
4 R. K. Faulseit
against the study of societal resilience, based on the favored epistemological focus
of the particular archaeologist. On the one hand, scholars seek to model compara-
tive cross-cultural trends for collapse and reorganization, while, on the other,
scholars seek to understand cultural diversity in particular complex societies.
McAnany and Yoffee (2010:5), who prefer the latter approach, note that “studying
collapse . . . [is] fine when viewed at a distance but dissolves into disconnected
parts when examined up close.” Thus, they suggest that rather than focusing on
how societies collapse, we should be focused on what makes them resilient. This
is an unnecessary dichotomy, because collapse and resilience are part of the same
phenomenon, and one cannot be studied without addressing the other. Rather
than setting up these approaches as foils, it is important to accept that, in general,
cross-cultural trends in prehistory are visible at large spatial and temporal scales,
but cultural diversity becomes more apparent at the smaller scales. In this way,
studies with varying theoretical approaches conducted at different scales should
not be seen in contrast to one another but as complementary, providing a holistic
understanding of these complex phenomena.
This volume builds on both the long-standing research on societal collapse
and the recent focus on societal resilience by engaging concepts such as collapse,
resilience, revitalization, and reorganization on various scales through novel
and exciting theoretical frameworks. The subtitle for this introductory chapter,
“Modeling Trends and Understanding Diversity,” derives from the effort to en-
courage contributions from authors who take a variety of theoretical approaches
to interpreting their data sets. In this introductory chapter, I hope to demonstrate
how the works in this volume build on previous research and combine to advance
our understanding of complex societies.
Definitions and Limitations
Many scholars have identified and discussed the problems associated

with developing a generally accepted nomenclature for the subject of this volume,
i.e., defining terms such as collapse, resilience, reorganization, revitalization, and
transformation (e.g., Cowgill 1988, 2012; Keck and Sakdapolrak 2013; Middleton
2012; Railey and Reycraft, 2008; Tainter 2000). In the second chapter of this in-
troductory section, Joseph A. Tainter provides an extensive and in-depth treat-
ment of this elusive task, highlighting the inherent professional and philosophical
viewpoints and biases incurred over the very long history of study. I do not wish
to rehash any of those arguments here but, rather, briefly discuss and perhaps tie
together the use of three important terms as they specifically apply to the themes
addressed in this volume: collapse, societal transformation, and resilience.
Collapse
Professional archaeologists have long eschewed the popular notions
of societal collapse, which comprise the catastrophic and sometimes mysterious
disappearance of an entire civilization or cultural tradition (e.g., Eisenstadt 1988;
Collapse, Resilience, and Transformation in Complex Societies 5
Feinman and Nicholas, chapter 3; McAnany and Yoffee 2010; Tainter 1988). Instead,
most scholars recognize that “there are elements of continuity with the succeeding
period” after collapse and that “invariably the progress of research makes the Dark
Age less dark” (Renfrew 1984:367). Therefore, collapse is more aptly viewed as a
rapid (over a few generations) decline in sociopolitical complexity or the demise
of a particular political system (Kidder et al., chapter 4; Railey and Reycraft 2008;
Tainter 1988:4; Yoffee 1988, 2010). Still, within this broad definition there exists a
considerable variety of possibilities.
Renfrew (1984) perhaps provided the most comprehensive and archaeologi-
cally useful definition of collapse. He viewed it as a sudden decline in sociopolitical
complexity marked by four general features: “1) The collapse of central adminis-
trative organization of the state, 2) the disappearance of the traditional elite class,
3) the collapse of centralized economy, and 4) settlement shift and population
decline” (Renfrew 1984:367–369). Within this characterization, he further lists
items that are archeologically detectable, such as the “abandonment of palaces,”
“abandonment of public building works,” “cessation of rich traditional burials,”
“abandonment of elite residences,” “abandonment of settlements,” and a “shift to a
dispersed pattern of smaller settlements” (Renfrew 1984:367–369). This functional
definition and its corresponding physical aspects make up the body of supporting
evidence that is often used to demonstrate societal collapse, including the material
presented in the papers in this volume. Nevertheless, the decline of some modern
cities, such as Detroit, should give us pause when considering the political and
social implications we envision based on this kind of evidence.
Collapse is probably best understood as the fragmentation or disarticulation of
a particular political apparatus (Eisenstadt 1988; Faulseit 2013; Marcus 1998). In this
conceptualization, the extent to which we recognize the spatial and temporal scope
of the attributes defined by Renfrew (1984) (see also Railey and Reycraft 2008) in the
archaeological record relates to both the degree and kind of control and/or influence
that the political entity maintained over other institutions and structures, in other
words, the nature and extent to which political and social boundaries overlapped
prior to fragmentation (Eisenstadt 1988). In this way, a variety of outcomes chart
the degree to which social and political boundaries are integrated, disarticulated,
and reconstructed. Emerson and Hedman (chapter 7) define an extreme case, where
the political entity was unable to integrate diverse social groups over the long term
into a single cultural tradition, while Torvinen et al. (chapter 11) present a more
modest example of community dispersal as an adaptive strategy.
Societal Transformation
Some scholars suggest rejecting the use of the term collapse altogether
because of the popularly conceived connotation of lost or even failed civilizations
(e.g., Hutson et al., chapter 6; McAnany and Yoffee 2010). These scholars argue that
the rapid cultural devolution evoked by this term is not supported by convincing
evidence and can even serve to embolden bigoted perceptions held toward today’s
descendant communities (e.g., Hunt and Lipo 2010; McAnany and Gallareta 2010;
Wilcox 2010). Because of the perceived judgmental nature of the term, McAnany
6 R. K. Faulseit
and Yoffee (2010) suggest more neutral characterizations like social change and
transformation. For archaeologists steeped in four-field anthropological training, it
seems almost natural to gloss over the evidence for the dramatic decline of politi-
cal institutions when witnessing firsthand the inspiring resiliency that exists on
a smaller scale, such as the persistent nature of household organization in Meso-
america (Kowalewski et al. 1984). That being said, it is precisely the larger events
associated with the collapse of political regimes, such as the Roman Empire and
Classic Maya polities (Storey and Storey, chapter 5), that provide the background
for us to recognize and contextualize things like continuity and resiliency in social
structures found in the aftermath.
Instead of a substitute for the term collapse, however, there is potential for the
application of societal transformation as a broadly defined concept encompassing
the full extent of possible outcomes (e.g., collapse, reorganization, revitalization,
etc.) associated with societies in transition. In this way, societal transformation serves
as an umbrella term that covers the range of sociopolitical trajectories, including
those discussed in this volume. For example, Thompson (chapter 13) examines the
long-term social strategies that created stability for societies along the southern
Gulf Coast of the United States, an area subject to episodic and sometimes cata-
strophic environmental disruptions. Torvinen et al. (chapter 11) evaluate noncol-
lapse outcomes in the U.S. Southwest or instances where people facing ecological
stress adopted novel adaptive strategies. Zobler and Sutter (chapter 19) examine
multiple regional responses to the collapse of complex polities in the Andes. Em-
erson and Hedman (chapter 7) present Cahokia, probably the most definitive
example of a community that experienced rapid and dramatic decline without a
subsequent reorganization or regeneration of sociopolitical complexity.
All of these studies relate to one another in that they address both social
and political response to internal and external stresses. As Hutson et al. (chapter
6) note, “in the face of droughts or other challenges, humans have the ability to
adjust (or not adjust) political systems in a bewildering variety of ways, not all of
which lead to collapse.” This application of societal transformation, thus, encap-
sulates what the title of this volume, Beyond Collapse: Archaeological Perspectives on
Resilience, Revitalization, and Transformation in Complex Societies, implies: expanding
the subject matter to incorporate all of the inherent variation in studies of societal
collapse, resilience, and transformation to address all possible alternative outcomes
when societies encounter social, political, economic, or environmental stresses.
Resilience
The concept of resilience has recently fostered growing attention in a
number of academic disciplines, and like societal transformation and collapse,
scholars have had difficulty identifying a single widely applicable definition for the
term (see Keck and Sakdapolrak 2013). Instead, resilience is often vaguely concep-
tualized by characterizing the vulnerability of a particular unit and its ability to
adapt to, cope with, or transform when facing both acute (e.g., tsunamis, invasions,
etc.) and chronic (e.g., environmental degradation, long-term drought, economic
stagnation, etc.) stresses (Keck and Sakdapolrak 2013). Within the archaeological
literature, resilience carries two distinct characterizations that are directly related
to the range of possibilities associated with societal transformation. While both ap-
plications are important, they have unfortunately also been the source of significant
confusion (Redman and Kinzig 2003), making it necessary to discuss their specific
roles here. On the one hand, Cowgill (2012:304) defines resilience as “the ability to
maintain, or quickly restore, in the face of a challenge, conditions considered highly
desirable.” On the other hand, McAnany and Yoffee (2010) suggest that resilience
involves the maintenance of cultural aspects, such as worldview, kinship, and
language, in civilizations that experience a decline in sociopolitical complexity.
Holling and Gunderson (2002) present an insightful discussion of these con-
ceptualizations as well as their application to modeling ecosystem dynamics; they
distinguish between engineering resilience and ecosystem resilience. The former relates
to Cowgill’s understanding and involves the short-term ability of a particular
unit to maintain homeostasis, or an equilibrium state. This was a major focus for
researchers attempting to model the collapse of complex societies using general
systems theory (see below). Ecosystem resilience, however, relates to McAnany
and Yoffee’s (2010) understanding and involves the long-term ability of a particu-
lar unit to maintain its existence through transforming or adapting when major
disruptions prohibit the maintenance of or quick return to an equilibrium state.
To adopt Holling and Gunderson’s (2002) dichotomy to the study of societal trans-
formation, the short-term engineering application is conceived of here as political
resilience, while the long-term ecosystem application is viewed as cultural resilience.
Although not couched in terms of resilience, Eisenstadt (1993:xlix–lxv) rec-
ognized the dilemma that rulers of empires faced in trying to balance short-term
“differentiated political orientations” with long-term “traditional” social structure.
He posited that societal collapse represents an extreme example of “how social
boundaries are constructed and reconstructed, with particular reference to the
boundaries of political systems” (Eisenstadt 1988:236). If there is one theme that
resonates throughout all of the papers in this volume, it is that social and politi-
cal institutions experience separate trajectories during societal transformation. I
suggest this is because political structures are linked to the charisma and capa-
bilities of particular leaders, while social entities (e.g., moieties, clans, and ethnic
groups) connect more broadly to cultural traditions that develop over multiple
generations. Consequently, political leaders employ short-term strategies (e.g., in-
vest in legitimacy) to react to stresses in order to maintain their control apparatus
(equilibrium), while social institutions incorporate long-term strategies (e.g., ritual
and tradition) intended to reinforce group identity and a shared desire to adapt
and endure in the wake of political change.
Redman and Kinzig (2003) characterize this contrast as the “paradox of re-
silience and adaptive capacity,” suggesting that institutions employing political
resilience strategies are often at odds with those that employ cultural resilience
strategies. Thus, understanding how specific social and political entities intersect
and articulate with economic, environmental, and social structures is important
for modeling societal transformations, as cultural resilience can have stabilizing
or destabilizing effects on political resilience, and vice versa. For example, the cul-
tural resilience of diverse groups that coexisted in Cahokia probably contributed
8 R. K. Faulseit
to intrapolity violence in the region and the ultimate failure of political resilience
(Emerson and Hedman, chapter 7).
Conversely, Conlee, in her discussion in chapter 9 of ayllu organization in the
Nasca region of Peru, provides an example of the role cultural resilience plays in
the regeneration of complex political systems. Ayllus are mostly organized as social
units with an embedded political component. The social boundaries completely
engulf the political boundaries, and leadership is linked to membership in the
social structure. Though the nature of the political organization among ayllus
varies significantly and is also dynamic with respect to any particular ayllu, the
social aspect generally endures, creating a measure of stability for political reor-
ganization and regeneration. Feinman and Nicholas (chapter 3) chart a transition
from Classic period “collective” leadership strategies to Postclassic “autocratic”
strategies that occurred within existing social structures in the Oaxaca Valley of
Mexico. This political transformation took place within a stabilizing background
of culturally resilient structures, evidenced in the archaeological record by persis-
tent economic and religious practices (Faulseit 2013), “in a system which permits
features of inequality of power and status, localization, and descent to be modified
under changing situations without destroying its basic principles” (Whitecotton
1977:156).
The relationship between resilience strategies and the interaction between
social and political boundaries, although not always explicitly discussed, has
played a significant role in previous research on societal transformation. Attempts
to model these phenomena have become increasing complex because of the need
to incorporate the variable conditions and responses outlined in this section.
Societal stresses and the decision-making apparatuses that deal with them have
both acute, episodic and chronic, gradual components that need to be considered
(Marcus 2008). As noted above, one type of resilience strategy could solve acute
stresses while also exacerbating the effects of chronic stresses. In the following
section, I outline some of the prominent previous research on modeling these
phenomena, as well as how the chapters in this volume contribute to the dialogue.
Modeling Societal Transformation
There have been a number of excellent critical reviews and informa-

tive essays concerning previous research on the factors and causes that contrib-
ute to the collapse of complex societies (e.g., Cowgill 1988, 2012; Middleton 2012;
Schwartz 2006; Tainter 1988; Yoffee 1979, 1988). Railey and Reycraft (2008) identify
a dichotomy between internal (e.g., system organization) and external (e.g., war-
fare, drought, etc.) factors, which is informative for developing general models
of societal transformation. With few exceptions, archaeologists have eschewed
monocausal explanations in favor of approaches that account for the interplay of
multiple factors (internal and external); finding conclusions, such as “in the end,
the food and water ran out—and they died” (Gill et al. 2007:299), insufficient to
explain the mechanisms in which societies transform. Instead, it is better to iden-
tify both acute and chronic societal stresses and study how societies cope with,
adapt to, or transform because of them. This has generally been the ultimate goal
of developing models for societal transformation.
Timothy Kohler and his colleagues (Kohler et al. 2012; Kohler and Varien
2012) have recently developed computer-based algorithms “to study ecological,
economic, social, and political processes among prehispanic Puebloan (‘Anasazi’)
populations in the Northern US Southwest in the context of a dynamic natural
environment” (Kohler et al. 2012:30). Their agent-based village simulation model
is tested for predictive capability with respect to human-environmental interac-
tion, including the use/depletion of resources and abandonment of settlements
(Kohler and Varien 2012). These models are generally evaluated on the household
scale, where decision making is employed as a heuristic tool for systematically
conceptualizing observable trends in anthropological data. Rather than computa-
tional models, the papers in the current volume deal with conceptual approaches,
constructing models as heuristic devices for understanding change in complex
societies. This builds on a long tradition of previous research leading up to modern
trends, which I summarize below.
Declining Marginal Returns

In a seminal volume on the collapse of complex societies, Tainter (1988)
employed the economic theory of declining marginal returns to model the growth
and decline of a number of complex societies. Tainter (1988:118–123) suggests that
societies expand and become more integrated through problem-solving strategies
that increase sociopolitical complexity. For example, as populations grow, new hi-
erarchical structures are created to address such problems as water management
and the allocation of agricultural resources. These solutions are beneficial to the
system initially, but they invoke costs related to the training and support of new
specialists. Once the most simple and beneficial solutions are exhausted, problems
arise that require more specialization at a much-greater expense, thereby reducing
the overall benefit they provide. Finally, the society reaches a point where “increased
costs are undertaken merely to maintain the status quo” (Tainter 1988:120–121; emphasis
in original), and at that point, the polity becomes vulnerable to collapse because
“productive units across the economic spectrum increase resistance to the demands
of the hierarchy, or overtly attempt to break away” (Tainter 1988:120–121). The pro-
ductive units include peasant food producers, tradesmen, and intermediate elites,
who begin to aggressively or passively challenge and reject the governing political
order. These threats are usually met with increased investments in legitimization
by the elites in order to maintain control, but Tainter (1988) argues that without the
acquisition of new resources, eventually the political structure will no longer pos-
sess the wherewithal to prevent its disintegration, fragmentation, or reorganization.
General Systems Theory (GST)

The general systems theory (GST) approach considers complex societies
as systems made up of separately functioning but interdependent components
that relate to one another in a hierarchical manner, producing positive feedback
10 R. K. Faulseit
loops between governing institutions on various levels. Because these approaches

focus on the control mechanisms of the individual institutions, GST models track
trajectories relating to political resilience, or ability of the control features to main-
tain equilibrium states. Although models based on GST have fallen out of use in
archaeological applications in favor of new conceptualizations of political change
(Flannery 1999; Marcus 2008; Marcus and Flannery 1996), some of the introduced
concepts clearly inform newer models of societal transformation, particularly
those incorporating the tenets of resilience theory (RT) (see “Resilience Theory”
below), and, therefore, it is useful to summarize some of these approaches.
Simon (1965:70) proposed that “near decomposability is generally very promi-
nent” in sociopolitical systems because decision-making processes involve the flow
of information through individuals at successively higher levels of authority, form-
ing a highly compartmentalized system of nearly independent components. At each
level, leaders have great potential to act independently and separate themselves
from the greater system. Therefore, fragmentation and reorganization of the sys-
tem are expected outcomes. Rappaport (1978) went further, suggesting that human
sociopolitical systems are “maladaptive” because of their inefficient and ineffective
means for passing information both laterally and vertically among the component
institutions. Therefore, “pathologies” develop that ultimately lead to collapse.
Flannery (1972) proposed that complexity is measured by the amount of seg-
regation (specialization of lower-order institutions) and centralization (integration
of lower-order institutions) that exist within a specific system. Collapse occurs
when the system produces “pathologies,” such as “meddling,” where the direct
control of higher-order institutions negatively affects the ability of lower-order
institutions to function independently, and “usurpation,” where specialized in-
stitutions gain control over generalized higher-order systems (Flannery 1972:414,
418–420). Eventually these pathologies cause a state of “hypercoherence,” which
“results from the breakdown of whatever autonomy the various small subsystems
(or institutions) in a large system may have; one by one, they are coupled more
closely to each other and/or to the centralized hierarchical control” (Flannery
1972:420). Therefore, when an individual institution suffers stress, it negatively
affects all of the other interdependent institutions, causing the breakdown or
collapse of the hierarchical organization of the system.
Renfrew (1984:372–373) similarly suggested that systems evolve to become
specialized and integrated but at the risk of developing a “high measure of in-
terdependence.” For Renfrew, positive feedback loops maintain a desirable equi-
librium condition through continuous growth, but once a system experiences a
period of “zero growth” (1984:374–375), it becomes unstable and can experience an
abrupt and dramatic decline, or “catastrophe.” Renfrew (1984) maps this process
with the aid of a mathematical tool known as the cusp catastrophe, where socio-
political organization is a function of the degree of the system’s centralization, its
marginality (cost-to-benefit ratio for members of the society), and the investment
in the legitimization of the system’s authority. Renfrew argues that the system
becomes more complex as centralization and investment in legitimacy increase.
At some point, investment in authority becomes equal to the degree of centraliza-
tion, therefore increasing marginality and reaching the zero-growth condition,
making the system unstable. Finally, the system reaches a point on the “cusp”
(Renfrew 1984:379), where the benefits of centralization are outweighed by the
costs of maintaining the authority, and the state experiences a rapid decline in
centrality, or collapse.
Yoffee (1988) and Cowgill (1988) formulated two of the more prominent criti-
cisms of the GST approaches to collapse. Yoffee argued against the notion of so-
cieties developing and devolving in discrete stages and suggested that systems
models inaccurately envision collapse as an inevitable outcome of sociopolitical
evolution (but see Marcus 2008). Cowgill (1988:253) questioned the notion that com-
plex societies ever form highly ordered functional systems “with well-developed
mechanisms for self regulation.” However, he did see the need to “look at social
phenomena in this broadly systemic way if we are to understand them” (Cowgill
1988:252). Other scholars (see Hodder and Hutson 2004) argued that systems theory
is too focused on abstract notions of structures and organizational mechanisms
at the expense of downplaying specific human contributions.
Many of the concepts from GST, however, are valuable and relate to recent
understandings of the vulnerability of social and political systems, an important
component of modern resilience thinking (Keck and Sakdapolrak 2013). Addition-
ally, more recent conceptualizations of social evolution envision a complex combi-
nation of both gradual, accumulative and episodic, transformative change (Marcus
2008). These concepts form important characteristics of the more recent treatments
of sociopolitical evolution, especially dealing with collapse and its aftermath.
Political Cycling
Contrasting the resilience trajectories of social and political institutions
forms an integral part of theoretical models that combine collapse and reorganiza-
tion into cyclical or episodic understanding of the evolution of complex societies
(e.g., Adams 1978; Marcus 1992, 1993, 1998; Stark 2006). For example, Anderson’s
(1994) model of political cycling for the Savannah River chiefdoms of the late
prehistoric southeastern United States envisions resilient, small-scale social insti-
tutions that remain intact during periods of decentralization and serve to hasten
political reintegration in periods of reorganization. For Anderson (1994), “simple
chiefdoms” in the Savannah River Valley were integrated through social tradi-
tions that evolved over long periods of time, and “complex chiefdoms” formed
rapidly and were constituted mainly through the political integration of socially
diverse simple chiefdoms. Because the more complex societies lacked the long-
term development of unifying social structures, they were relatively unstable and
susceptible to fragmentation through a variety of external or internal stresses.
One of the most convincing and wide-reaching treatments of political cycling
is Marcus’s (1998) dynamic model, which outlines cycles of peaks and valleys in
political centralization that corresponded to the rise, fall, and reorganization of
archaic states over a variety of geographic regions and temporal scales. Marcus
(1998) viewed these states as expansionist entities whose leaders extend their
political boundaries well beyond their core social boundaries through conquest.
At some point, the state reaches a maximum territory of control, after which
12 R. K. Faulseit
peripheral entities, which probably do not share social boundaries with the core,
begin to assert their autonomy and disarticulate from the political integration
of the state. Like Anderson (1994), Marcus identified resilient social units (e.g.,
Maya provinces) that remained intact while regional political systems oscillated
between high and low levels of integration.
Resilience Theory
One cyclical treatment of sociopolitical complexity that is gaining pop-
ularity in archaeology incorporates the tenets of resilience theory (RT), which has
been adopted from the work of environmental scientists Holling and Gunderson
(2002). In archaeology, RT has been employed most extensively to model human-
environmental interaction related to the decline, resilience, and reorganization
of societies in the regions of the U.S. Southwest (Nelson et al. 2006; Redman 2005;
Redman and Kinzig 2003; Redman et al. 2009) and U.S. Southeast (Delcourt and
Delcourt 2004; Thompson and Turck 2009). Although these studies have focused
mostly on “socioecological systems” and mapping the trajectories of human-
environmental interaction within ecosystems, RT may also provide a promising
explanatory tool to model societal transformation in general.
Resilience theory is centered on the concept of the adaptive cycle (Holling
and Gunderson 2002), which envisions ecosystems cycling through four phases:
exploitation (r), conservation (K), release or collapse (Ω), and reorganization (α).
Rather than a sinusoidal undulation between peaks and valleys, however, the
adaptive cycle is represented by a figure-eight-shaped recurring loop (Figure 1-1),
which is modulated by the overall potential in the system and the connectedness
or vulnerability of its parts. The system is resilient while potential is high and
connectedness is low but becomes unstable and susceptible to collapse as key
elements become more interconnected and interdependent. The Ω-phase rapid
release, or collapse, however, is not triggered by the unstable conditions of the
conservation phase but by outside factors or stresses that induce the transition.
In this way, RT does not replace or refute GST and political cycling models
of sociopolitical collapse and reorganization but builds on them by allowing for
more nuanced and complex understandings of societal transition. For example, in
the K-phase, just prior to collapse, an ecological system becomes “overconnected
and increasingly rigid in its control,” which eventually leads to a sudden release
that is triggered by “agents of disturbance such as wind, fire, disease, insect out-
break, and drought or a combination of these” (Holling and Gunderson 2002:35).
Conceptually, this recalls the notions of “hypercoherence,” “declining marginal
returns,” and “cusp catastrophe” as outlined by Flannery (1972), Tainter (1988),
and Renfrew (1984), respectively. Similarly, the trigger agents are reminiscent of
the causal external factors, such as drought (Gill et al. 2007) or warfare (Drews
1993), which are hypothesized to have induced the collapse of specific polities.
Because of these similarities, resilience theory is also subject to some of the
same criticisms as these earlier models, particularly GST (Cote and Nightingale
2012). For some (e.g., Emerson and Hedman and Hutson et al., this volume), the hu-
man-environmental focus of RT and “phases” of the adaptive cycle are reminiscent
Figure 1-1. Adaptive cycle. (Holling and Gunderson 2002:Figure 2.1; from
Panarchy, edited by Lance H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling; copyright © 2002
by Island Press; reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C.)
of environmental determinism and developmental “stages” of neo-evolutionary

models, limiting the possibility for different outcomes based on human agency.
Holling and Gunderson (2002), however, conceptualize socioecological systems
and their components as dynamic (continuously changing at varying rates), and
the nature of change within them is episodic and not uniform. Thus, the “phases”
of the adaptive cycle merely relate to a set of conditions and not recurring social,
environmental, economic, or political structures. Furthermore, Holling et al. (2002)
suggest that each adaptive cycle is contained within a larger regional structure,
known as a panarchy, which consists of nested adaptive cycles that interact in
a hierarchical manner, providing mechanisms for noncollapse outcomes. The
hierarchy in this approach differs from GST applications in that panarchy is not
structural but refers to the time scales in which individual adaptive cycles oper-
ate. Small-scale, quickly evolving cycles are nested within large-scale, slowly
evolving cycles. In a panarchy (Figure 1-2), interactions between adaptive cycles
operating on different temporal scales can foster multiple outcomes for the indi-
vidual systems associated with particular adaptive cycles. Therefore, the unstable
conditions of the K-phase do not always lead to collapse, and the interactions are
not deterministic but to a certain extent unpredictable.
Holling et al. (2002) characterize two possible mechanisms by which large and
slow adaptive cycles influence small and fast cycles and vice versa (see also Delcourt
and Delcourt 2004; Holling et al. 2002; Redman and Kinzig 2003) (see Figure 1-2).
Long-term, slowly evolving adaptive cycles provide the impetus for short-term,
14 R. K. Faulseit
Figure 1-2. Nested adaptive cycles and cross-cycle interaction. (Holling et al.
2002:Figure 3.10; Panarchy, edited by Lance H. Gunderson and C. S. Hol-
ling; copyright © 2002 by Island Press; reproduced by permission of Island
Press, Washington, D.C.)
rapidly evolving cycles to skip from the K-phase of one cycle to the r-phase of
another through a process characterized as “remember” (Holling et al. 2002:76).
Likewise, smaller and faster-evolving cycles can trigger release and reorganization
in larger cycles through a process described as “revolt” (Holling et al. 2002:74–75).
These are not the only possibilities for cross-cycle interaction, and there is much
potential in the use of RT as an excellent explanatory tool for modeling a variety
of conditions and circumstances surrounding societal transformation.
Resilience Theory and Societal Transformation

Redman and Kinzig (2003; see also Redman 2005) have addressed the
need for further efforts to theoretically conceptualize the use of adaptive cycles
and panarchies for modeling patterns generated from archaeological investigation.
As a stand-alone concept, Holling and Gunderson (2002) assert that the efficacy of
the adaptive cycle (see Figure 1-1) is limited to its application as metaphor rather
than a sophisticated tool for modeling ecosystem dynamics. Several of the papers
in this volume (e.g., Pool and Loughlin, chapter 12; Torvinen et al., chapter 11)
suggest the same is true for sociopolitical system dynamics, as the authors critically
assess the application of adaptive cycles to model societal transformation. Their
assessments provide significant insight into how the notion of political and cultural
resilience discussed above may be employed in RT models. For instance, Torvinen
et al. (chapter 11) appear to have identified unexpected patterns in small-scale
cycles that may be related to large-scale, slowly evolving cycles associated with
cultural resilience (e.g., continuities in household behavior). Additionally, Thomp-
son’s (chapter 13) and Rodning and Mehta’s (chapter 14) concepts of “landesque
capital” and “persistence of place” provide evidence for the type of long-term
interaction and adaptation that contribute to cultural resilience.
Combining these insights with the concepts of Anderson’s (1994) and Marcus’s
(1998) cyclical models, social institutions, which are related to common ritual and
ceremonial practices, can be characterized as slowly evolving adaptive cycles that
operate on large time scales, while political institutions, which are related to the
charisma and capabilities of leaders, are better envisioned as rapidly evolving
adaptive cycles that operate on relatively small time scales. Therefore, we can
construct regional panarchies that consist of nested adaptive cycles that reflect
the extent to which social and political boundaries overlap with institutions that
control or influence religious, economic, environmental, and ecological structures.
Holling and Gunderson (2002:38–39) suggest that in the α-phase, leftover
institutions from the release, or Ω-phase, begin to “sequester and organize re-
sources in a process that leads to the r species establishing founding rights over
the remaining capital.” Returning to Marcus’s (1998) dynamic model, the r species
can be equated to the lower-level political leaders or intermediate elites that per-
sist in the aftermath of political collapse, such as those that belong to the loosely
integrated provinces Marcus (1993) describes in the Maya lowlands. Similarly, the
available resources can be equated with the resilient structures (e.g., persistent
places or landesque capital) that maintain social integration between communities
after the disintegration of political ties. Therefore, opportunistic leaders can take
advantage of cultural resilience through the “remember” process (Holling et al.
2002), leading to the reorganization of sociopolitical complexity (Faulseit 2013).
Iannone (chapter 8) demonstrates how the “revolt” mechanism (Holling et al.
2002) is a useful tool when modeling societal transformation in Southeast Asia,
where local leaders were able to induce the transition from r-phase or “early K-
phase” to the Ω-phase release of higher-level political entities. In this case, region-
ally diverse social structures aided the local leaders. Pool and Loughlin (chapter
12) provide a similar example of a revolt transition that was then tempered by the
remember mechanism. In this case, the political structure quickly adapted to stress
by employing a power-sharing strategy, effectively skipping from the K-phase of
one cycle to the r-phase of another. In contrast to Iannone’s example, the small-
scale political institutions at Tres Zapotes shared a larger social structure. Sedig
(chapter 10) demonstrates how cultural resilience can negatively affect political
resilience. He suggests that in the wake of the collapse of Chaco Canyon polities,
quickly evolving political institutions attempted to create new social structures but
faced significant, violent opposition as “social acceptance of these new institutions
16 R. K. Faulseit
was slower.” Although we do not yet have a revolt- or remember-type mechanism

to model this process in a panarchy, further archaeological treatment will likely
produce such mechanisms for a variety of new possibilities discovered as this
research line advances.
Although there is significant potential in examining the nested adaptive
cycles of various institutions to social and political organization, there are still
some features to iron out. Even in the most catastrophic historic examples of politi-
cal collapse (e.g., the European conquest and colonization of the Americas), there
is always demonstrated social continuity at some scale, such as the individual
household. For example, Hoggarth and Awe (chapter 20) demonstrate significant
continuity in behavior between Mayan households at Baking Pot, Belize, before
and after the disarticulation of the local political apparatus. This introduces a
problem of conceptualizing units of various physical levels (residential, site, region,
macroregion) in RT, which will affect interpretation of societal transformation in
complex societies (Redman 2005). Do we conceptualize each site in a region within
a single adaptive cycle or group them all together? Should intrasite sociopolitical
entities, such as neighborhoods and households, be associated with their own
particular adaptive cycles? I suggest that adaptive cycles are best conceptual-
ized with institutional structures and not various components of physical scale.
For example, it is better to envision the social structure that dictates household
organization as a slow and large adaptive cycle rather than attempting to model
individual households, neighborhoods, or sites with individual adaptive cycles.
The challenge is in developing a consistent and comparative means for con-
textualizing adaptive cycles and panarchies within complex societies. Without
that, we run into problems of equifinality, or countless possibilities for fitting
adaptive cycles to sociopolitical phenomena. Several authors in the second and
third sections of this volume hold critical perspectives toward the employment
of RT in archaeology and raise various concerns. The result of these critical ap-
proaches will ultimately engineer the modification of systemic approaches, such
as RT, and effectively enhance our understanding of the mechanisms of change
inherent in complex societies, allowing for more predictive capability and deeper
understanding of societal transformation. That being said, systemic models ap-
pear more apt to address questions of how societies evolve, rather than why they
evolve. This is where approaches that focus on unique historic trajectories enhance
comparative approaches by explaining diversity among cultural traditions, thus
providing a more holistic understanding of societal transformation.
Understanding Diversity
In contrast to comparative approaches, scholars who concentrate on

explaining diversity are more often concerned with the unique historic trajecto-
ries of particular social and political entities. For example, Hutson et al.’s (chap-
ter 6) application of the historical processual concepts introduced by Pauketat
(2001) demonstrates how these studies strive to understand the archaeological
record through the specific cultural context of the Maya polities surrounding
Ucí in northern Yucatan. As Cote and Nightingale (2012) point out, these inter-
pretive frameworks can provide great insights toward understanding societal
transformation when coupled with systemic approaches like resilience theory.
In the following sections, I discuss two of the more popular approaches: agency
and collective action.
Agency and Eventful Archaeology

Several scholars advocate for an agency-based approach to interpreting
culture change (Dobres and Robb 2000), which involves a variety of adaptations
of the concepts presented by scholars Bourdieu (1977) and Giddens (1979). In es-
sence, these approaches contrast individual and group action (agency) with the
background of social structure. While the social structure defines the boundar-
ies or limits within which specific agents can act, people also have the ability to
negotiate the restructuring of such boundaries (Kidder et al., chapter 4). Joyce
(2010) and his colleagues (Joyce et al. 2001) present one of the better-articulated
agency-based approaches to the study of societal transformation. They argue
that the power relationship between leaders and laypeople is negotiated through
social structure in a particular society. Underlying this understanding of power
relations is the concept that no matter how much power is wielded by leaders, the
social structure presents a means for commoners to resist. On the Pacific coast of
Oaxaca, Joyce et al. (2001:360) found evidence that “not only indicate‍[s] the collapse
of political institutions, but also the denigration of sacred objects, symbols, spaces,
and buildings by commoners,” which defines the “undertheorized” role (i.e., the
power of resistance) that commoners play in societal transformation.
Lantzas (chapter 18) outlines a similar trajectory for events surrounding the
decline of palatial centers during the Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age transition
in the Argolid region of Greece. She suggests that as the “corporate” organiza-
tion surrounding the palatial centers experienced stress and went into decline,
“new practices and a new ideology” were negotiated. Like Joyce et al. (2001), she
discusses archaeological evidence in the postcollapse settlement of these sites to
map out patterns of rejected and restructured practices. Her discussion of the
“built environment” recalls Beck et al.’s (2007) concept of eventful archaeology.
Overall, these studies provide much insight into the role of specific historical
figures and groups in the structuring and restructuring of social and political
boundaries. Certainly, it is easy to see how the concepts of structure and agency
may relate to the notions of political and cultural resilience discussed above. Addi-
tionally, critiques of the systemic models derived from agency-based perspectives
have forced researchers toward deeper theoretical consideration. In this volume,
this is demonstrated by Iannone’s (chapter 8) adoption of entanglement theory to
further contextualize the mechanisms of revolt and remember in his discussion
of societal transformation in Southeast Asia.
A recent approach for interpreting the impact of agency and structure in
the historical record, espoused by Sewell (2005), provides a promising avenue
of investigation for coupling RT and agency-based interpretations. Sewell (2005)
contrasts gradual change in sociopolitical systems with episodes or events that
18 R. K. Faulseit
cause major transformations, making this approach quite well suited to theoreti-
cally enhance our understanding of the dynamic interactions between adaptive
cycles in a panarchy as outlined in RT approaches. According to Sewell (2005),
social structure is made up of schemas and resources, with the former relating to
established rules and norms within societies, which are not static but dynamic.
Periodically, human-driven events cause cascading ruptures in the social struc-
ture, effectively forcing significant restructuring. In this volume, Kidder et al., to
address societal transformation in Han period China, aptly employ the metaphor
of resources and schemas woven as fabric in a net. This work shows significant
potential for further characterizing how the concepts of political and social resil-
ience can be related to environmental, economic, religious, and ideological factors
to inform our understanding of societal transformation.
Collective Action
The principles of collective action, first applied in the field of political
science and economics (e.g., Levi 1988; Olson 1965, 1982), are gaining traction as
an explanatory tool in archaeological thought (e.g., Blanton and Fargher 2008,
2009; Carballo 2013). Several of the concepts from this theoretical approach are
potentially useful for higher theoretical explanations of the concepts of political
and cultural resilience outlined here. In this volume, Feinman and Nicholas pro-
vide an example of this trend in their discussion of reorganization in the Oaxaca
Valley of Mexico after the decline of Monte Albán. In particular, their discussion
of the transition from autocratically vs. collectively organized social formations
certainly provides a means to explain the specific human behavior and action
behind mechanisms such as revolt and remember in RT-based models. Olson’s
(1965) discussion of resource allocation and the development of competing special-
interest groups may further our understanding of the factors that create vulner-
ability and effect change in political structures.
Additional concepts from Olson’s (1965) logic of collective action may also
prove useful for better understanding the resilience of particular sociopolitical
structures. For example, Olson (1982:31) states, “In the absence of selective incen-
tives, the incentive for group action diminishes as group size increases, so that
large groups are less able to act in their common interest than small ones.” This
is essentially because as group size increases, individuals receive less personal
reward for their effort to further the group’s goals and, therefore, require addi-
tional incentive. Political structures tend to make use of negative incentives, as
leaders employ punitive measures to get the populace to comply with their rules.
Conversely, social organizations rely more on positive incentive, which involves
measures to establish shared identity. Olson (1982) suggests that the latter are more
effective and less costly than the former. This contrast in incentives has potential
for linking collective-action strategies to the strength of political and cultural
resilience in particular groups.
The agency-based and collective-action approaches yield valuable under-
standings of human behavior that address the questions of why the heuristic mod-
els function the way they do. Thus, modeling trends and explaining diversity are
complementary research goals: together they address the how and why questions
of societal transformation. The efficacy for coupling and contrasting alternative
perspectives is perhaps the most valuable contribution of this volume, providing
a holistic examination of societal transformation.
Organization of the Volume
Schwartz (2006:17) suggests that the volume After Collapse: The Regen-
eration of Complex Societies (Schwartz and Nichols 2006) was “intended to stimu-
late scholars of complex societies to think more seriously about what happens
after collapse.” Subsequent research has done just that, and the present volume
represents two paths of scholarly progression since that seminal work. The first
involves expanding the topic beyond collapse and even postcollapse regenera-
tion to include a broad spectrum of outcomes, including sociopolitical decline,
reorganization, and adaptation. The second involves taking the logical next step
of critically evaluating potential theoretical tools for studying societal transfor-
mation. In this way, the current volume addresses the “three capacities of social
resilience” identified by Keck and Sakdapolrak (2013:10): coping capacity, adap-
tive capacity, and transformative capacity. This book is, therefore, divided into
sections generally addressing these strategies as they relate to particular sets of
archaeological data.
“Setting the Stage” and “Reframing Narratives of Societal Transformation,”
the first and second sections of this volume, provide a framework for the overall
discussion of societal transformation and present new theoretical directions for
research. Tainter’s important paper addresses the problems inherent in previous
studies of societal collapse, establishing the need for a more comprehensive and
expansive approach to the subject. The second section builds on the first, in that
well-established scholars call on vast experience to address their extensive data
sets with novel theoretical frameworks for interpreting societal transformation
in specific archaeological cases. These chapters address “big picture” ideas and
demonstrate the variety of stresses societies encounter on multiple scales as well
as the strategies social and political groups employ to cope with, adapt to, or
transform in the wake of change. As the section title suggests, these works serve
to reframe the discussion of societal transformation, not just for their particular
regions of study but in general.
The second section and the third, “Resilience Theory and Societal Transfor-
mation,” relate to one another in that several questions regarding the efficacy of RT
for interpreting the archaeological record are raised in the former and are directly
addressed in the latter, as the authors, using their particular sets of data, take a
critical approach to evaluating the tenets of RT. These papers together provide a
strong foundation for the application of RT in archaeology as well as providing
exciting new avenues for future research.
According to Keck and Sakdapolrak (2013:11), “adaptive capacities refer to
the ‘pro-active’ or ‘preventive’ measures that people employ to learn from past
experiences, anticipate future risks, or adapt their livelihood accordingly.” In this
20 R. K. Faulseit
case, the associated strategies relate to long-term planning. Thus, the papers in
“Long-Term Resilience and Adaptive Strategies,” the fourth section of this volume,
focus on reconstructing adaptive capacities and discussing the factors that con-
tribute to long-term resilience in societies. For example, Meyers (chapter 15), like
Thompson (chapter 13) and Rodning and Mehta (chapter 14), examines important
social aspects of constructed communal space (e.g., mounded architecture, canals)
in communities in the U.S. Southeast that provided continuity or adaptive capacity
during political instability. In Meyer’s example, the location and restrictive use of
“trade house” structures change with the changing nature of political organiza-
tion, but at the same time, they continue to serve similar economic roles related
to established cultural traditions, thereby providing stable, long-term platforms
for reorganization.
The papers in the final section of this volume, “Postcollapse Resilience and
Reorganization,” address the coping capacity of societies in the aftermath of political
collapse, by examining the impacts of specific factors that enable the restructuring
of social and political boundaries. According to Keck and Sakdapolrak (2013:10),
coping capacity involves the “‘re-active’ and ‘absorptive’ measures of how people
cope with and overcome immediate threats by the means of those resources that are
directly available.” In this case, the threat involves the loss of the integration small
communities encounter after the disarticulation of a particular political entity, and
the resources refer to social and economic structures that are left over. For example,
Sharratt (chapter 16) investigates the relationship between economic organization
and cultural and political resilience in the Andes before and after the decline of the
Tiwanaku state. She not only identifies evidence for the disruption of long-range
trade and exchange mechanisms associated with the Tiwanaku polity (loss of po-
litical resilience) but also discusses continuities in postcollapse, local production
systems designed to reaffirm cultural identity (endurance of cultural resilience).
Archaeological investigation is uniquely positioned to provide great time
depth to the study of societal transformation (Redman 2005). When taken together,
the chapters in this volume represent a comprehensive investigation of how com-
plex societies transform, adapt to, or cope with conditions of stress evoked by the
disruption of environmental, economic, and political structures. By expanding
beyond addressing how and why polities collapse to investigate multiple outcomes
and adaptive strategies, these papers collectively contribute to identifying struc-
tures that provide what Keck and Sakdapolrak (2013:11) refer to as transforma-
tive capacities, or “people’s ability to access assets and assistance from the wider
sociopolitical arena (i.e., governmental organizations and so-called civil society),
to participate in decision-making processes, and to craft institutions that both im-
prove their individual welfare and foster societal robustness toward future crises.”
Closing Remarks
The conference on which this volume is based took place in 2013, 25

years after the works of Tainter (1988) and Yoffee and Cowgill (1988) were pub-
lished. Those early studies of societal transformation, along with a few others
(e.g., Culbert 1973), focused on the collapse of complex societies. Subsequent

investigations have produced a significant amount of data, particularly with
respect to postcollapse environments, and have taken the discipline into new
theoretical territory. The research presented in this volume demonstrates the
extent to which these studies have built and expanded on those seminal works.
The broad range of theoretical application and scope of research problems the
authors address have certainly taken the study of societal transformation be-
yond collapse. As with any worthy academic endeavor, I expect these works
will provoke considerable dialogue leading to further revelations and new
research questions.
Acknowledgments
I extend a heartfelt appreciation to the three anonymous reviewers

who took time out to read and suggest revisions for a previous version of this
manuscript. I am humbled by the amazingly quick response, in-depth analysis,
and thoughtful critiques that they made. Their comments and criticisms have most
assuredly improved the works presented here, especially this chapter. Addition-
ally, I thank Chris Rodning and Gary Feinman for their suggestions for revision
of a previous version of this introduction.
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1979 The Decline and Rise of Mesopotamian Civilization: An Ethnoarchaeological
Perspective on the Evolution of Social Complexity. American Antiquity 44(1):5–35.
1988 Orienting Collapse. In The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations, edited by
Norman Yoffee and George L. Cowgill, pp. 1–19. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
2010 Collapse in Ancient Mesopotamia: What Happened, What Didn’t? In Question
ing Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire,
edited by Patricia A. McAnany and Norman Yoffee, pp. 176–206. Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, Cambridge.
Yoffee, Norman, and George L. Cowgill (editors)
1988 The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations. University of Arizona Press,
Tucson.
2. Why Collapse Is So Difficult
to Understand
Joseph A. Tainter
Abstract: The study of collapse and similar phenomena has a distinguished

history, extending perhaps 3,000 years. Yet, in that long time span, there has
been no consensus on what causes collapse. Collapse theories have come and
gone over this period, sometimes mirroring societal concerns, such as class
conflict or climate change. Across this literature there have been two implicit
themes. The first is a bias toward valuing complexity. The second, emerging
from the first, is to view collapse as the loss of something desirable. Both
themes derive from a progressivist framework that sees complexity as an
achievement, something toward which societies aspire. This framework is
value-laden and ignores the fact that sociopolitical complexity imposes meta-
bolic costs. The progressivist bias has prevented theorists from adequately
explaining collapse. Collapse studies would be better served by situating the
phenomenon within the more value-neutral question: What causes societies
to vary and change in complexity?
Empires being neither up nor down do not fall.

—Abbé Galiani, 1744
It is difficult to pinpoint when collapse studies began. Much depends

on how one defines the term. It is common to look to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire (1776–1788) as the ancestor of modern collapse literature.
Many students of collapse do not know that Gibbon considered the ends of both
the Western and Eastern Roman empires. He thereby subsumed two different

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
27
28 J. A. Tainter
historical processes—loss of political unity and overall simplification in the

West vs. replacement of one empire with another in the East—under the single
term “decline and fall.” This problem of terminology gives an early hint of
why collapse has been so difficult to explain. Another hint is given by what
may be Gibbon’s greatest insight: The wonder is not that Rome fell, he repeat-
edly wrote, but that it lasted so long. Such an institution, Gibbon thought, was
intrinsically impermanent.
Gibbon’s discussion of what today we call the Byzantine Empire illustrates
his conception of decline and fall. The Eastern Roman Empire did not undergo
the dissolution and simplification experienced by Western Europe. Instead, the
empire of the Byzantines was replaced by various Islamic regimes and ultimately
by the Ottoman Empire in much the same territory that the Byzantines once ruled.
This reveals Gibbon’s conception of decline and fall: It is the loss of power and
territory by a specific regime. To some analysts today this is what the term col-
lapse still means. Search the term state collapse on the internet, and you will find
thousands of web pages. It is a topic of major concern to political scientists as
well as government analysts in international relations, intelligence, and defense.
Many others in Gibbon’s era addressed decline and fall. Volney ascribed col-
lapse to greed and class conflict, and as a result of this, “a holy indolence spread
over the political world; the fields were deserted, empires depopulated, monu-
ments neglected and deserts multiplied; ignorance, superstition and fanaticism
combining their operations, overwhelmed the earth with devastation and ruin”
(Volney 1793:51). Montesquieu (1968) advanced an argument based on morality:
Roman power derived from Roman virtue, which declined when the Romans
advanced beyond Italy.
The great Arab historian Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century continued
the ancient tradition of considering history to be cyclical (1958 [1377–1381]). Dynas-
ties, he thought, have a natural life span like individuals. In the course of dynastic
succession, rulers become ever more addicted to luxuries and security. Taxes are
raised to pay for these. Whereas at the beginning of a dynasty, large revenues are
received from small assessments, at the end of a dynasty this situation is reversed.
When taxes are low, the population is more productive, and the tax yield is greater.
Yet, as the dynasty evolves, increased spending on luxury leads to higher taxes.
Eventually, taxes become so burdensome that productivity first declines and then
is stifled. As more taxes are enacted to counter this, the point is finally reached
where the polity is destroyed.
The greatest cyclical theorist was the Greek historian Polybius. In the second
century b.c., he predicted the fall of the Roman Empire 600 years before it hap-
pened. Societies, to ancient historians like Polybius, develop like the biological
cycle through growth, maturity, senescence, and death. It was thus no challenge
to predict that Rome would eventually fall. It was also a comfort to his Greek
readers, recently conquered by Rome. The biological analogy of societal evolution
also appears in Plato’s Laws, no doubt based on long-established thinking.
Although long in disrepute, cyclical theory has been resurrected recently by
the population biologist Turchin (2003), who bases his approach on Ibn Khaldun.
Holling’s resilience theory (e.g., 2001) is a nuanced update to cyclical theory. In
Why Collapse Is So Difficult to Understand 29
resilience theory, the basic model derives from forest succession rather than from
the growth and death of organisms.
Yoffee (1988) has pointed to early Mesopotamian literature that may be the
oldest surviving explanation of collapse. In considering the fall of Sargon of Akkad
and of the Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. twenty-first to twentieth centuries b.c.), the
decline of empires was ascribed by later Mesopotamian writers to the impious-
ness of rulers and to marauding enemies sent by the gods as punishment. Cities
flourish under good kings but suffer under impious ones.
Later, literature in China ascribed the problems of the Western Chou dynasty
(1122–771 b.c.) to a similar cause: the failure of rulers. This is expressed in the
poem Shao-min:
Compassionate Heaven is arrayed in anger

Heaven is indeed sending down rain,
Afflicting us with famine,
So that the people are all wandering fugitives;
In the settled regions and on the border all is desolation.
Heaven sends down its web of crime;
Devouring insects weary and confuse men’s minds,
Ignorant, oppressive, negligent,
Breeders of confusion, utterly perverse;
These are the men employed to tranquilize our country.
.............................................
Oh! Alas!
Among the men of the present day,
Are there not still some with the old virtue?
(Hsu and Linduff 1988:283–284)
Another poem asked, “Why does (the King) not stop these things?” (Hsu and
Linduff 1988:281).
Today, collapse themes seem to wax and wane in popularity with trends that
receive media attention. Class conflict was once a favorite theme (e.g., Rostovtzeff
1926) but has largely disappeared since the end of the Cold War and the fall of
communist regimes. Environmental explanations in one form or another are es-
pecially popular at the moment. In an age concerned about climate change, there
are repeated efforts to show that climate change caused past societies to collapse
(e.g., Weiss et al. 1993; Haug et al. 2003). Where collapse was once ascribed to the
actions or inactions of rulers, in today’s age of democracy and mass consumption,
the people in general must be responsible. A future collapse will come about, au-
thors like Ponting (1991) and Diamond (2005) argue, not because rulers consume
too much but because we all do.
If we consider the writings on the fall of kings and dynasties and on the de-
cline and fall of states and empires to be ancestral to today’s studies of collapse,
then we have perhaps 3,000 years of literature on our topic. This is a distinguished
ancestry, but it also poses a disturbing question: Why, after 3,000 years of effort,
do we still have no consensus on what causes collapse? My purpose is to address
that question.
30 J. A. Tainter
A number of years ago, I reviewed the literature on collapse and found that
it falls into a limited number of themes (Tainter 1988). These include such things
as climate change, resource depletion, catastrophes, failure to respond to chal-
lenges, invaders, class conflict, and a variety of mystical factors. Each of these
approaches relies on an implicit, underlying question. That question is, “What
went wrong?” This is the dominant question in collapse studies, even if it is not
expressed as such. To cite climate change, resource depletion, conflict, intruders,
or mystical factors as causes of collapse is to suggest implicitly that collapses
occur because of circumstances that are adverse. Therefore, the absence of such
circumstances would be desired. The overall implication is that when a complex
society collapses, something has been lost. We would prefer that it had continued.
We have a tendency to value complex societies and a corresponding tendency to
see collapse as a failure, leading to what we pejoratively call “dark ages.” This
tendency arises from what I call the bias of valuing complexity.
The bias of valuing complexity is most evident in the recent works of Dia-
mond (1997, 2005). In Guns, Germs, and Steel, for example, he writes of cultural
evolution as a race to achieve complexity, a race in which some societies leap
ahead while others fall behind (Diamond 1997). Complex societies are to Dia-
mond (2005:159) “advanced and creative.” Collapse, then, is “an extreme form
. . . of decline” (Diamond 2005:3), surely the worst that can befall a complex
society. Given such a perspective, “What went wrong?” is the natural question
to ask.
This is, of course, a widespread view of complex societies. Cultural complex-
ity is deeply embedded in our contemporary self-image, although colloquially
we do not know it by that term. Rather, cultural complexity is known in popular
discourse by the more common term civilization, which we believe our ancestors
achieved through the phenomenon called “progress.” The concepts of civilization
and progress have a status in the cosmology of industrial societies that amounts
to what anthropologists call “ancestor myths.” Ancestor myths validate a contem-
porary social order by presenting it as a natural and sometimes heroic progression
from earlier times. Just as Pueblo Indians tell how their ancestors emerged from
the underworld and California Indians tell how the trickster Coyote changed
the world, so in industrial societies we tell how our ancestors discovered fire,
agriculture, and the wheel and conquered untamed continents.
Thirty years ago, Landau (1984) observed that descriptions of human biologi-
cal evolution have a narrative structure like myths or folk tales. In such stories,
the hero starts from humble beginnings, just as humans began as merely another
unassuming primate. The hero undergoes various trials, acquiring new capabili-
ties in the process—just as humans acquired an opposable thumb, upright posture,
and a large brain. The hero finally triumphs—as did humans—although this
triumph is often not the end of the story. In this narrative structure, we can also
see our ancestor myths about the evolution of complex societies. Human society
began as small, humble, and threatened. But through heroic efforts, we discovered
fire and agriculture and invented the wheel. These new capabilities facilitated the
emergence of civilization, making humanity triumphant over nature. The hero—
humanity—had achieved its quest. In many myths, though, the hero is destroyed
through pride or hubris. Just so, civilizations have collapsed, often through their
own faults, and many people worry that it could happen again.
This is commonly termed a “progressivist” view of human evolution. It is
based on the supposition that cultural complexity is intentional and that it emerged
merely through the inventiveness of our ancestors, the outcome constituting prog-
ress. Progressivism is the dominant ideology of free-market societies today. But
inventiveness is not a sufficient explanation for cultural complexity. Innovation
is not a constant in human history (Strumsky et al. 2010). Rather, inventiveness
must be enacted in facilitating circumstances. What were those circumstances?
Our colleagues in the study of the past once thought they had the answer: The
discovery of agriculture, it was thought, gave our ancestors surplus food and,
concomitantly, free time to invent urbanism and the things that comprise “civiliza-
tion” (e.g., Childe 1944). The facilitating circumstance, in other words, was energy.
Childe may be the prehistorian most influential in propagating this argu-
ment. He contended: “On the basis of the neolithic economy further advances
could be made . . . in that farmers produced more than was needed for domestic
consumption to support new classes . . . in secondary industry, trade, administra-
tion or the worship of gods” (1944:12). Eventually, in this line of reasoning, prog-
ress facilitated by agricultural surpluses led to the emergence of cities, artisans,
priesthoods, kings, aristocracies, and all of the other features of what are called
archaic states (Childe 1944:22).
This argument long seemed plausible. Its seeming reasonableness, though,
stems from its logical consistency with the progressivist ideology of industrial
societies. Give humans the resources to invent cultural complexity, and axiomati-
cally, it is believed, we will. Progressivism is the dominant ideology not only of
free-market societies but also of much archaeological practice (Stahl 1999). Histori-
cal scientists, after all, are themselves socialized members of industrial societies.
We are all raised to believe the values and ideologies of our societies, so it is
natural that we internalize a progressivist view. This, unsurprisingly, influences
our interpretations of the past. Archaeology emerged as a pastime of the middle
and upper classes, and early frameworks for arranging the past—ages of stone,
bronze, and iron, for example—reflect a belief in material progress. Consider,
moreover, the implied progressivism of the titles of some prominent books: Man
Makes Himself (Childe 1951), Man’s Rise to Civilization: The Cultural Ascent of the In-
dians of North America (Farb 1978), and The Ascent of Man (Bronowski 1973). These
are popular works, as are Diamond’s books.
Lest we think that popular writers alone are susceptible to the bias of valuing
complexity, it is important to point out that we professionals are guilty as well. A
symposium for the Seventy-Eighth Annual Meeting of the Society for American Ar-
chaeology was subtitled “Alternative Pathways to Complexity” (Society for Ameri-
can Archaeology 2013:101), implying that however a society gets there, complex is
what any society would strive to be. There is progressivist bias in words that we
use every day. Consider the term florescence, so common in Mesoamerican archaeol-
ogy. Complexity, in the usage of this term, is a flowering, growing inexorably from
a bud, beautiful in its full maturity but perhaps short-lived. Consider as well this
description of the thirteenth-to-fifteenth-century Caddo “florescence” in East Texas.
32 J. A. Tainter
Life was good: the rains fell, wildlife, nuts, and fruits were abundant,
and the Naconichi Caddo people were content. The good rains insured
success with the crops: it had been several generations since the people
began to regularly plant corn, beans, and squash, but they always felt
blessed when the crops were successful. Feasts and ceremonies ac-
companied the gathering of another year’s crops. All the people felt
proud of their accomplishments when the crop was safely stored away
in each family’s storage pit [University of Texas at Austin].
Presumably one would not use such language to describe a dark age.
Terms based on the word Classic are similarly biased. Preclassic is an anticipa-
tory term, a period that will not last forever. Classic must surely follow, and we will
be glad when it does. Postclassic, in turn, suggests that we must mourn something
lost. Terminal Classic sounds like a fatal disease or a sentence of execution. What
would it feel like to know that one is living in the Terminal Classic? How would
we feel to be told that we are living in the terminal industrial age? Yet, such terms
are established jargon. Budding professionals are trained to absorb them, and to
succeed they must do so. We all use such terms without thinking about what they
mean. The fact that we use such terms so freely reveals our hidden bias—the bias
of valuing complexity.
It is not only in the study of complex societies that we have succumbed to a
progressivist bias. Anatomically Modern Humans (Homo sapiens) emerged perhaps
200,000 years ago, but students of the Upper Paleolithic believe that modern hu-
man behavior appeared fully only tens of thousands of years later than this date.
This is known as the appearance of behavioral modernity, supposedly manifested
in such things as material residues of art and symbolic behavior, personal adorn-
ment, more diverse and complex technologies, architecture, and other things. The
appearance of modern-like behavior has been conventionally thought to reflect
the emergence of the cognitive capabilities that made such behavior possible.
Shea (2011a, 2011b) has thoroughly criticized this view. Firstly, he notes, behav-
ioral modernity is culturally biased. It rates the Upper Paleolithic in much of the
world by how closely it approximates the Upper Paleolithic in Europe. Secondly,
behavioral modernity is empirically incorrect. In East Africa, supposedly modern
behaviors are present throughout much of the Upper Paleolithic. Moreover, some
behaviors (such as the production of prismatic blades) apparently appeared early,
disappeared for a long time and then appeared again. Shea argues that this re-
flects behavioral variability rather than modernity. People adopted behaviors and
technologies as circumstances required, reverting to simpler ways of life when
circumstances allowed. Rather than developing cognitive capabilities through
time, Homo sapiens had those capabilities from the beginning.
Behavioral modernity comes from the same progressivist mindset as our
ideas about the evolution of complex societies. Both approaches assume that the
development of complex behavior is desirable and is solely a function of the ca-
pacity for such behavior. In studies of the Upper Paleolithic, the question is when
such capacity emerged. In the study of complex societies, it is assumed that this
capacity is present but depends on consistent food supplies. In both instances,
the capacity for increasingly complex behavior is assumed to be determinant.

If complex behavior can emerge, we assume it will. The fact that we encounter
progressivist bias in the study of both the earliest humans and some of the most
recent ones reveals how pervasive this bias is.
Even the terms of this volume, such as complexity and collapse, have connota-
tions, negative ones. To say that something is complex is not a compliment. To say
it of a person is an indirect way of saying that the individual may be deranged. To
say it of electronic equipment or software means that these will be hard to master.
Collapse is something that happens to unsound structures. I wish there were
alternatives to these terms, but nothing satisfactory has appeared. The popular
term of the last few years, reorganization, is the pablum of collapse studies. It is so
bland and vague as to be without substance.
The best that can be done with terms like complexity and collapse is to define
what one means by them. I have elsewhere defined collapse as the rapid loss of
an established level of social, political, or economic complexity (Tainter 1988).
Obviously, there are threshold problems with identifying what is “rapid” or what
is an “established level of complexity.” I don’t have a solution to the threshold
problem, and I’ve had debates with colleagues about whether particular cases
count as collapses.
Complexity is a different matter. There are many conceptions of it. The ap-
proach I prefer is an old one in social science, dating at least to Durkheim’s (1964
[1893]) distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity. Cultural complex-
ity consists of differentiation in structure and variation in organization. As hu-
man societies have evolved, they have developed more differentiated structures.
Steward (1955:81), for example, once noted the difference between the 3,000 to
6,000 cultural elements early anthropologists documented for native populations
of western North America and the more than 500,000 artifact types that U.S.
military forces landed at Casablanca in World War II. Similarly, hunter-gatherer
societies incorporate no more than a few dozen distinct social personalities, while
modern European censuses recognize 10,000 to 20,000 unique occupational roles,
and industrial societies may contain overall more than 1,000,000 different kinds
of social personalities (McGuire 1983:115).
But structural differentiation alone does not equal complexity. The behav-
ior of structural elements (such as roles and institutions) must be constrained
for the elements to function as a system. This constraint is provided through
organization. Organization limits and channels behavior, making the activities
of behavioral elements predictable. Organization gives a system coherence. For
example, although the matériel that U.S. forces took to Casablanca was highly
differentiated (500,000 artifact-types, as noted by Steward), it was not fully a
complex system. The matériel was loaded on transport ships in a haphazard
fashion (Atkinson 2002). The results were predictable. Atkinson describes how
“guns arrived on the beach with no gunsights; guns arrived with no ammuni-
tion; guns arrived with no gunners” (2002:138–139). About 260,000 tons of maté-
riel, enough for six weeks of fighting, simply disappeared in Britain (Atkinson
2002:50). There was a clear lack of organization, which is what differentiated
structures require to form a system. Without organization (normally provided
34 J. A. Tainter
by “combat loading”), the impressive lot of matériel was merely an assemblage.

In human history, complex societies evolved through increasingly differentiated
structures that were integrated by increasing organization. Although complex
systems are often considered to be complicated, it is ironic to observe that com-
plexity actually simplifies. That is, the elaboration of structure and organization
simplifies and channels behavior.
My colleague Timothy Allen likes to say that if fish were scientists, the last
thing they would discover would be water. He believes he got the saying from
Marshall McLuhan. Fish—even sentient ones—would be unlikely to discover
water because it is the context in which they are immersed. While any organ-
ism’s context includes large-scale intangibles, such as water or air, humans have
a context that is peculiar to us, similarly intangible, and special. That context
is our culture. Culture for us is, in some ways, like water for fish. It is invisible.
The bias of valuing complexity arises from the natural tendency to assume the
inherent correctness of cultural phenomena that seem to us most familiar or
intelligible. This includes the cultural phenomena associated with complexity.
It is a truism of anthropology that in the socialization process, a human child
is taught to regard a cultural order as a natural order. That is, an amalgamation
of symbols, technologies, and social and political relationships, which arise
from a myriad of expedient adjustments in a people’s history, appears to be the
normal and natural state of affairs. If the socialization process is successful, a
normal human being develops a commitment to the essential correctness of
his or her cultural environment. This is fundamental, for an integrated cul-
tural system cannot operate any other way. And so to those of us socialized
in a complex society, it rarely occurs to ask whether complexity itself is an
unusual phenomenon.
Complexity thus seems to us to be natural and normal. Implicitly or other-
wise, we even regard it as commendable. And so we develop stories about how
our ancestors invented technologies, tamed continents, built cities, and created
the arts. When these things disappear from the historical record, it is natural to
ask, “What went wrong?”
What, then, is wrong with the progressivist view? Valuing complexity is,
after all, a preference that one should be free to choose. The problem is in under-
standing the means by which complexity comes about. Aside from obvious cul-
tural bias, the progressivist view posits a specific relationship between resources
and complexity. It is that complexity develops because it can and that the factor
facilitating this is surplus energy. Energy precedes complexity and allows it to
emerge. Although industrial societies have found this a beguiling view, there are
significant reasons to doubt whether surplus energy has actually driven much
of cultural evolution.
One strand of thought that challenges progressivism emerged in the eigh-
teenth and nineteenth centuries in the works of Wallace (1761), Malthus (1798), and
Jevons (1866). The economist Boulding derived from Malthus’s essay on population
three theorems: the dismal theorem, the utterly dismal theorem, and the moder-
ately cheerful form of the dismal theorem. The utterly dismal theorem directly
challenges the progressivist view:
Any technical improvement can only relieve misery for a while, for as
long as misery is the only check on population, the improvement will
enable population to grow, and will soon enable more people to live in
misery than before. The final result of improvements, therefore, is to
increase the equilibrium population, which is to increase the sum total
of human misery [Boulding 1959:vii; emphases in original].
The implication of this strain of thought is that humans have rarely had surplus
energy. Surpluses are quickly dissipated by growth in consumption. Because hu-
mans have rarely had surpluses, the availability of energy cannot be the primary
driver of cultural evolution.
Beyond a Malthusian view, there is another factor that undermines progres-
sivism. It is that complexity costs. In any living system, increased complexity
carries a metabolic cost. In nonhuman species, this is a straightforward matter of
additional calories. Among humans the cost is calculated in such currencies as
resources, effort, time, or money or by more subtle matters, such as annoyance.
While humans find complexity appealing in spheres such as art, architecture,
and music, we usually prefer that someone else pay the cost. We are averse to
complexity when it unalterably increases the cost of daily life without a clear
benefit to the individual or household. Before the development of fossil fuels, as
we know, increasing the complexity and costliness of a society meant that people
worked harder.
In the progressivist view, surplus energy precedes and facilitates the evolution
of complexity. Certainly, this is sometimes true: There have been occasions when
humans adopted energy sources of such potential that, with further development
and positive feedback, there followed great expansions in the numbers of humans
and the wealth and complexity of societies. These occasions have, however, been
rare, so much so that we designate them with terms signifying a new era: the Agri-
cultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution (which depended on fossil fuels).
When human societies do have surplus energy, as industrial societies have
over the past two centuries, it interacts with problem solving to generate still more
complexity. I term this the energy-complexity spiral (Figure 2-1). Abundant, inex-
pensive energy generates increasing complexity and simultaneously produces new
kinds of problems, such as waste and climate change. Addressing these and other
problems requires complexity to grow, imposing a need for still more energy. As
Boulding pointed out, though, the times when humans have had surplus energy
have been rare and short-lived. The fact that we are in such a period today biases
us to think that surplus energy is normal.
How, then, does complexity usually come about? On a day-to-day basis,
complexity increases to solve problems. Confronted with challenges, we tend
to invent more complex technologies, differentiate economically, establish new
roles and specializations, create more levels of organization, gather and process
more information, and the like. Think of the new government agencies and the
new controls on behavior that emerged after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Or
think of how the problems of pollution and fossil fuels spurred the development
of hybrid automobiles that have two means of propulsion, where previously one
36 J. A. Tainter
Figure 2-1. Energy-complexity spiral.
was sufficient. Complexity that emerges to solve major societal problems will usu-
ally appear before there is additional energy to support it. Rather than following
the availability of energy, cultural complexity often precedes it. Complexity then
compels increases in resource production.
What, then, of those 3,000 years of being uncertain how to explain collapse,
decline and fall, or whatever one calls it? It seems like an extraordinarily long time.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, perhaps nowhere else in the study of history
has so little been clarified by so many working so long. The reason for our failure
is the progressivist framework in which collapse has been approached. Valuing
complexity and considering it an achievement, we are dismayed when suddenly
it disappears. The archaeological record of dark ages is rarely as appealing as that
which precedes them. We have failed to understand that complexity costs and
that human creativity alone does not explain it. Conversely, we have also failed
to understand that a diminution of complexity lowers metabolic costs, bringing
economic gain. Why have we failed to understand collapse? The answer is that
for 3,000 years we have asked the wrong question.
Considering collapse to be a catastrophe, it was natural that we would then
look for factors that might cause a catastrophe. Hence, we have focused on such
explanations as barbarian invaders, peasant revolts, climate change, or environ-
mental damage. Yet, one lesson of this essay is that nothing necessarily goes wrong
in a collapse. Collapse is a normal evolutionary process.
Rather than asking, “What went wrong?” it would be more productive and
less biased to situate collapse within the broader anthropological question, “What
causes societies to vary and change in complexity?” Within such an approach, both
increasing and decreasing complexity would be given equal status. Neither would
be privileged above the other. Neither would be evaluated by weighty terms like
success or failure. Neither is considered “progress,” achieved solely by creativity.
We would realize, within such a framework, that both the development and the
collapse of complexity are outcomes of the same process. That process is long-term
change in the economic return to complexity in problem solving.
In conclusion, I suggest three lessons. The first is that culture matters. It
matters not just for the “others” that we study but also for ourselves. Culture
deeply influences what we study and how we study it. It influences, perhaps even
determines, what questions we ask. We are usually not aware that this is happen-
ing. In the present case, culture and socialization make us fish unable to discover
water, the metaphorical water being the bias of valuing complexity. The second
lesson is that often in science, the hardest step is asking the right question. This
is where the study of collapse has stumbled. There are, of course, no guidelines
for determining the right question, but 3,000 years of conceptual failure should
have been a signal that something in our approach is wrong. Finally, the study
of complexity is best approached by reducing cultural bias in our research. This
requires self-awareness, and for each of us there is no greater challenge.
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II. Reframing Narratives of
Societal Transformation
3. After Monte Albán in the Central
Valleys of Oaxaca: A Reassessment
Gary M. Feinman and Linda M. Nicholas
Abstract: After more than a millennium as the principal center in the Valley of
Oaxaca (Mexico), the political power of Monte Albán significantly waned, and
its population declined. This episode of political decentralization, often tempo-
rally linked to the Classic-Postclassic transition in the region (and beyond), has
for generations been interpreted in many ways, including ethnic replacement,
societal collapse and drastic population loss due to climatic change, shifts
in key aspects of socioeconomic organization and leadership, and/or part of
macroregional processes that rippled across Mesoamerica. Although some
of these interpretive positions maintain more empirical support than others,
all have been handicapped by chronological limitations that have channeled
explicatory analyses into the consideration of a single transformation from one
phase (Classic period, Monte Albán IIIB-IV) into another (Postclassic period,
Monte Albán V). Recent advances in archaeological and ethnohistorical re-
search have begun to define an extended temporal framework for this lengthy
episode, allowing for the recognition of change along a range of dimensions in
a less transformational and more continuous manner. The broadening of the
temporal and spatial frame in which we examine this Valley of Oaxaca tran-
sition provides little support for the centrality of catastrophic or cataclysmic
events. Instead, we find support for models that focus on shifts in the regional
organization of political and economic coalitions, the manifestations of power,
and the nature and directionality of human networks. We also emphasize
elements of continuity within this broader context of change.

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8
43
44 G. M. Feinman and L. M. Nicholas
In prehispanic Mesoamerica, the period often glossed as the Classic-

Postclassic transition (ca. a.d. 800–1000) was unquestionably a time of significant
change that included marked spatial shifts in the balance of power across the mac-
roregion. Few contemporary scholars any longer would view this era as a simple
categorical transition from theocratic to militaristic societies or the dawn of a new
world order, ways in which it was described a half century ago (e.g., Wolf 1959).
Over the last decades, concerted research has carefully fleshed out the decline of
Teotihuacan in central Mexico (starting as early as the sixth and culminating by
the seventh century a.d.) as well as the fall of many inland Maya centers during the
eighth through tenth centuries (Cowgill 2012). More recently, greater consideration
has been given (e.g., Blomster 2008; Faulseit 2011; Feinman and Nicholas 2011a) to
another long-enduring Mesoamerican city, Monte Albán in the Valley of Oaxaca
(Mexico), which also declined in size and hegemonic influence during that era.
Our prime geographic focus is the Valley of Oaxaca (Figure 3-1) and the
changes that occurred in that region over the more than 1,000-year period between
the time (ca. a.d. 500) when the mountain-top city of Monte Albán dominated the
region to the more fragmented political landscape that the Spanish encountered
at their conquest. Because our analysis of change in the Valley of Oaxaca ulti-
mately takes into account a wider spatial vantage, we intentionally opened this
discussion with a broader-scale perspective. To reassess and reframe this dynamic
episode in Oaxaca’s history, we first consider relevant theoretical approaches and
the principal interpretations that have been previously advanced to account for
the decline of Monte Albán and the Classic-Postclassic transition in this region.
As Cowgill (2012:301) recently remarked, when it comes to human institutions
and cultural traditions, much ambiguity has been caused by repeated failures to
specify what is in fact collapsing or regenerating. A more precise consideration of
what changed and what endured forces us to cut conceptual cords with the organ-
ismal model of societal collapse that we inherited long ago from Ibn Khaldun and
Oswald Spengler (Butzer 2012:3632), thereby requiring us to reframe our investiga-
tory considerations in new ways. Given the explicitly comparative and theoretical
focus of this volume, we devote as much attention to conceptual issues and framing
as we do to the specific case of concern (see Feinman and Nicholas 2011a, 2013).
In line with Cowgill (1988:255–257, 2012:301–302) and Tainter (1988:4–5,
2008:343, chapter 2), we must thoughtfully disentangle what we mean by col-
lapse. Do we reference the fall of large cities or centers, the breakdown of large
polities, significant regional population declines, the termination of cultural or
civilizational traditions, all of the above, or some combination of these? In history,
none of these four aspects of transformational change or collapse always implies
even one of the others, and our explanations for these phenomena need not be
the same or necessarily equivalent. Generally, major societal transformations, like
the Industrial Revolution or the dawn of the Neolithic in the Levant, are not one
thing or the product of one event; they are more heterogeneous, having multiple
causes and often taking place over extended time frames. For example, over mil-
lennia, global regions and landscapes, such as China, have been characterized
by oscillating episodes of political centralization and fragmentation while the
associated civilizational traditions endured much longer.
After Monte Albán in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca 45
Figure 3-1. State and Valley of Oaxaca in southern Mexico.
Reframing Collapse
The problems with organismal models of collapse, which include some,

although not all, recent archaeological applications of resilience theory (e.g., Red-
man 2005), are at least threefold. First, as already noted, they conceptually tend
to fuse different elements of change or collapse. But some of these elements may
endure while others rapidly shift in specific cases; the fusing of these elements
makes it analytically difficult to address what changes significantly and what
is more resilient. Second, like Wolf’s (1982:6–7) metaphor of societies as billiard
balls, organismal models tend to see societies inaccurately as closed, rather im-
permeable entities, which also fosters a too-simple dichotomy between external
and internal causality (e.g., Railey and Reycraft 2008) when we envision the fac-
tors that led to episodes of change or collapse. This perspective may obscure the
critical interplays between stressors and perturbations, on the one hand, and
politicoeconomic dynamics on the other (Butzer 2012), leaving little or no room
for considerations of human agency or responses to challenges that are the crux of
transformational societal change. Third, organismal models carry the presumption
that societies necessarily cycle in a highly regular (stage-by-stage) and temporally
consistent manner. Yet, a predictable tick-tick-tick-boom formula or timetable for
the life cycle and ultimate collapse of societies has never been advanced and is
simply not demonstrable with empirical data (e.g., Turchin 2003:26). Although
history repeatedly has illustrated that the power of particular states and specific
dynasts ebbed and flowed over time, the precise timing of these oscillations is
neither externally preset nor regular and instead relates to the dynamic relations
between people and the challenges they face. As Boettiger and Hastings (2013:158)
state more generally, “no ‘one-size-fits-all’ property has been found that signals
the imminent collapse of a complex system.”
Instead of organismal models, which artificially privilege and often may
restrict analysis to the scale of whole societies, the examination of collapse and
transformation requires multiscalar approaches. These should probe the “black
boxes” of human social dynamics and organization, which in a basic sense entails
the consideration of the shifting relations between followers and leaders (e.g.,
Blanton 2010) while also taking into account networks and relations that extend
beyond regions and political boundaries. The construction of models that recog-
nize the agency of subalterns in conjunction with those who wielded power is a
significant reframing for anthropological archaeology but one that holds promise
for understanding the different elements of transformation or collapse and why
they do not always co-occur. Basically for our entire disciplinary history, the
constructs we have employed have seesawed between functionalist or systems
approaches, which falsely presume that all participants act in the interests of the
society as a whole, and Marxist or culture history constructs, which assume that
agency and action flow strictly from the top-down (see discussion in Blanton and
Fargher 2008). While power must be seriously considered, leadership is always
dyadic and implies a consideration of the objectives of followers as well as those on
top (Ahlquist and Levi 2011:5), although the specific forms of these interpersonal
relations take variable forms (e.g., Blanton and Fargher 2008; Levi 1988).
This relational aspect of leadership is a particular consideration for ancient
states and empires where the frictions of distance placed real constraints on the
degrees of control, the maintenance of boundaries, and a reliance on force and
power alone (Smith 2005). In lieu, following broader social science literature on
collective action (e.g., Adger 2003; Blanton 2010; Blanton and Fargher 2008; Levi
1988), we frame our consideration of the Valley of Oaxaca more in terms of social
contracts, coalitions, and networks rather than the metaphorical billiard balls
referenced by Wolf (1982).
In broad alignment with core arguments advanced by Olson (1965) but specifi-
cally building on the comparative theoretical works and theoretical expectations of
Blanton (Blanton and Fargher 2008, 2009), Levi (1988; Ahlquist and Levi 2011) and
others (e.g., Acheson 2011; Hardin 1968; Ostrom 2009; see also Carballo 2013), we
start with the recognition that humans have a “breathtaking ability to cooperate”
(Nowak 2011:xiv). Yet, when participating in social coalitions, individuals tend
not to submerge or subvert their self-interests entirely in order to toe the broader
aims of the group. As Lichbach (1996:32) describes it, a collective action problem
“arises whenever mutually beneficial cooperation is threatened by individual
strategic behavior.”
Collective action approaches imply a universality of human agency (Blanton
and Fargher 2008:5; Sewell 2005), and although that agency is generally bounded
or constrained, it needs to be taken into account when we model societies, institu-
tions, and groups. The formation, contraction, and diversity of human groupings
reflect (albeit often to variable degrees) the strategic behaviors of rational and
self-interested actors, both those with and without power (Blanton and Fargher
2008, 2009; Levi 1988). Through the direct consideration of such relations, collective
action approaches address directly the complex interplays between the mechanics
of group formation (the macro problem) and the rational behaviors of social actors
(the micro problem), a tension (e.g., Coleman 1990:21–23; Hedström and Swedberg
1996; Mayntz 2004) generally ignored or minimized by other relevant theoretical
constructs focused on this research question.
With an emphasis on both the relational dimensions of human social networks
and the factors to which those coalitions and groups continually respond, collective
action theorists are centrally focused on explaining human organizational diversity
(Blanton and Fargher 2009:134; Levi 1988). In certain respects, the comparative aims
of collective action theorists, developed largely in political science, broadly parallel
our efforts (e.g., Blanton et al. 1996; Feinman 2012) to outline and identify patterned
variation (and change) in social formations or societies that are considered to have
comparable or similar degrees of organizational complexity (e.g., states).
Most relevant, in line with Levi’s analysis (1988), as amplified by Blanton and
Fargher’s study (2008), we recognize important contrasts between more collectively
and more autocratically organized social formations that relate importantly to the
resource base that supported and maintained leaders and their initiatives. Simply
put, in more collective aggregations, leaders tend to rely for their funds of power on
the labor and/or production of proximate followers. As a consequence, to ensure
a steady supply of tax or tribute and to avoid the loss of these supporters, it would
not be in the interest of those with power to act in either an excessively autocratic
or greedy manner. Instead, in these collectively organized formations, leaders are
more apt to utilize a portion of the revenues or assets that they collected to provi-
sion public goods and services that had general benefits for the local populace.
Such interdependence corresponds with greater degrees of economic equity and
subaltern voice. Collective action may be encouraged through corporate codes of
behavior and ideological constructs that emphasize shared values and collective,
nonexcludable investments, such as in infrastructure.
In contrast, less-collective social formations generally are supported by funds
of power that can be more directly monitored, such as delimited (spot) resources,
the control of trade networks, ruler-owned estates, and/or the booty secured
through military actions. In these contexts, loyalty often is secured through direct
patron-client relations and/or the coercion wrought by those bought through

patronage or selective incentives. In other words, whereas collective formations
generally invest in nonexcludable public goods and services as a means to main-
tain support, less collectively organized institutions rely to a greater degree on
selective benefits and/or sanctions (Fireman and Gamson 1979). With weak central
institutions and little investment in public goods, including infrastructure, fac-
tionalism often emerges (Acemoglu et al. 2004). The checks on ostentatious and
aggrandizing behaviors by those with power in such formations are relatively
minimal and so often result in greater disparities in wealth and in rituals that
legitimate the exalted status of specific families, factions, or individuals (Feinman
1996; Feinman and Nicholas 2011a, 2013).
Of course, the patterns of variation outlined above should be considered more
as an important axis of potentially continuous variation and not as any kind of
simple or stark dichotomy. Nevertheless, the application of this theoretical frame
(Table 3-1) yields new analytical insights and perspectives concerning the social
mechanisms that link different structural aspects of human formations (Hedström
and Swedberg 1996:283; Merton 1967) as we turn to the Classic-Postclassic transi-
tion and the decline of Monte Albán in the Valley of Oaxaca.
Table 3-1. Tendencies in Politicoeconomic Mechanisms
Political formations
More collective Less collective
Fund of power Internal External
Recruitment Public goods/services Selective incentives
Inequality Lower Higher
Ideological legitimation Collective action/ Justification of elite status
cooperation
Classic-Postclassic Transition in Oaxaca:

Prior Perspectives
The longest-standing interpretation of the Classic-Postclassic transi-

tion in the Valley of Oaxaca is a direct outgrowth of the organismal model. This
interpretation was framed around a proposed ethnic replacement of Zapotecs by
Mixtecs (Bernal 1965; Caso and Bernal 1965; Paddock 1966, 1983a) and early on
short-circuited more precise considerations of Monte Albán’s fall and whether
this event was wrapped into one rapid transformational episode or part of a more
strung-out and complex set of events (see Feinman and Nicholas 2011a). Yet in fair-
ness, chronological challenges also hindered such interpretative efforts until the last
decade or so (e.g., Faulseit 2011, 2012; Feinman and Nicholas 2011a; Markens 2004).
A subsequent hypothesis (Winter 1989, 2008:415–418; see also Markens et al.
2008) proposed drought as a key factor that led to the fall of Monte Albán and a
presumed catastrophic decline in regional population. Yet, even this work noted
that the driest parts of the Valley of Oaxaca experienced the greatest degree of
demographic continuity during this period late in the first millennium a.d., and no
climatic data specific to this era are available for the region. Other works, including
our own (Feinman 1996; Flannery and Marcus 1983; Kowalewski et al. 1989; Mar-
cus 1989), have drawn marked organizational contrasts between regional settle-
ment patterns and organization during the later Classic period (ca. a.d. 600–900)
and the more decentralized but densely populated patterns of the Late Postclassic
(ca. a.d. 1519). Neither the Monte Albán–centric distributions of settlement and
public architecture nor the iconic Zapotec effigy vessels (urns) endured through
to the Late Postclassic. And yet, even though new iconic symbols associated with
the Mixteca-Puebla tradition were introduced by the Late Postclassic, the case for
a massive invasion or ethnic/population replacement leading to the fall of Monte
Albán or the valley’s Classic-Postclassic transition has not stood up well (Marcus
and Flannery 1990:201–202). Nevertheless, the causal connections, processes, and
timing of these significant changes have remained less fully elaborated due to
chronological limitations (Faulseit 2012).
New Data, New Framing
Space does not allow for an in-depth review of new empirical findings
from archaeology and documentary research relevant to the Classic-Postclassic
transition in the Valley of Oaxaca (but see Faulseit 2011, 2012, 2013; Feinman and
Nicholas 2011a, 2013 for more in-depth discussion and presentation of data). Here
we briefly outline how improving chronological controls and other findings have
underpinned our ability to reframe the decline of Monte Albán and its relationship
to a series of subsequent shifts. Archaeological research at a number of Late Clas-
sic/Early Postclassic sites in the eastern or Tlacolula arm of the Valley of Oaxaca by
Markens (2004, 2008), Faulseit (2011, 2012), and ourselves (Feinman and Nicholas
2011a, 2013) has illustrated that there is an identifiable Early Postclassic ceramic
complex (a.d. 900–1300) for the Valley of Oaxaca and that it is, not surprising,
transitional in appearance between the pottery used in the region before (during
the later Classic period) and after (later in the Postclassic) (Figure 3-2).
In fact, the generation of the long debate over the nature of the Early Post-
classic ceramic complex in the Valley of Oaxaca (Kowalewski et al. 1989:251–254;
Lind 1994; Marcus and Flannery 1990) owes almost as much to the absence of
radically distinctive ceramic diagnostics for this phase as it does to unfortunate
presumptions and methodological choices (see Feinman and Nicholas 2011a;
Markens 2004) made by the original excavators of Monte Albán’s Main Plaza many
decades ago that stemmed from their assumption that the collapse of this city
must have occurred in one rapid episode. Yet, our investigations at the secondary
center of El Palmillo, roughly contemporaneous with Late Classic Monte Albán,
have illustrated that abandonment occurred over an extended period (Feinman
and Nicholas 2011a); there are mounting indications that a similar, lengthy, slow
decline occurred at Monte Albán (e.g., Acosta 1958–1959). Another key recent
Figure 3-2. Late Classic/Early Postclassic sites in the Valley of Oaxaca.
archaeological finding is the recognition that many aspects of Late Classic period
subaltern domestic life and ritual practice in the prehispanic Valley of Oaxaca did
not change radically prior to Spanish Conquest (Faulseit 2011, 2012; Markens et
al. 2008), indicating the resiliency of these traditions during and after the decline
of Monte Albán.
These new archaeological findings have been bolstered by documentary
analyses that have traced dynastic and community relations back in time from
the colonial period into the last centuries of the Postclassic (Jansen and Pérez
2007; Oudijk 2000, 2002, 2008a). In conformance with the emerging archaeological
findings, these ethnohistoric analyses illustrate that change during the roughly
600–700-year period (a.d. 800/900–1519) between the Late Classic and Spanish
Conquest was in actuality a long continuous sequence of somewhat more incre-
mental, albeit significant, changes rather than a cataclysmic event-driven col-
lapse due to invasion, population replacement, or catastrophic environmental/
climate change.
The growing recognition of an extended time scale for these transitions and
processes in the Valley of Oaxaca, nevertheless, still leaves us with most of our
original questions unanswered while opening up new puzzles. For example, even
if the full suite of changes took place over time, we still have yet to explain or
understand the causes and ramifications of the fall of Monte Albán. Was there
a complete loss of elites and their associated “great tradition,” as Markens and
colleagues have proposed (Markens et al. 2008), or a near-total regional-scale
population abandonment due to drought as Winter (1989) postulated? Or, alter-
natively, might we see the Late Classic–Late Postclassic in Oaxaca as a series of
transitions in the way that power was wielded, where it was situated, and how
political-economic coalitions were built and ideologically legitimized? Clearly,
such shifts would have significant implications for people and polities both inside
and outside the valley.
Classic-Postclassic Transition in the Valley of Oaxaca
For the Classic-Postclassic transition in the Valley of Oaxaca, there

is now sufficient chronological resolution (although there is still much work to
be done) and ample archaeological and historical evidence (e.g., Oudijk 2000,
2002, 2008a) to endeavor to address one set of circumstances surrounding Monte
Albán’s decline, which began during the Late Classic, and another set of factors
that provoked significant shifts later in the Postclassic period (when demographic
growth and extraregional flows of people and goods appear to have intensified).
From founding (ca. 500 b.c.) and throughout most of its history, Monte Albán was
unique in the Valley of Oaxaca. As the region’s largest settlement, situated at the
nexus of the valley’s three arms, its monumental construction dwarfed all other
sites in both scale and diversity (Blanton 1978), and most of the valley’s carved
stones prior to the last centuries of the Classic period were mounted there (Marcus
2009). Into the seventh century, this corpus of carved stones focused principally
on militarism, with only rare glimpses of specific power wielders. The iconic urns
or effigy vessels (Marcus 1983; Sellen 2002, 2011) featured either supernaturals,
such as Cocijo (associated with lightning and rain), revered across the region,
or unnamed, masked persons who were portraying these supernaturals. Monu-
mental architecture was clustered in central places generally consisting of plazas
(large and small, often partly restricted and sometimes more open), temples, and
other monumental public buildings. Ballcourts when present were usually part of
these central ceremonial complexes and were not attached to a specific residence,
such as on the Main Plaza at Monte Albán. Throughout its early history, Monte
Albán exemplified symmetry, order, and vertical messaging conveyed by those
with power to the larger community (Marcus 2009). Across the region, most of
Figure 3-3. Sites in the Valley of Oaxaca with genealogical registers.
the Classic period population resided in terraced hilltop towns (Kowalewski et

al. 1989; Kowalewski et al. 2006), at which intracommunity cooperation and/or
interdependence has been evidenced and clearly was essential for community
longevity (Feinman and Nicholas 2012a, 2012b).
During the seventh and early eighth centuries, coincident with the decline
of Teotihuacan, threads of data can be interwoven to underpin key indications
of change in the relations between Monte Albán’s rulers and secondary elite as
well as between rulers and commoners more broadly. At Monte Albán and more
than a dozen other sites (Figures 3-3 and 3-4), rulers erected carved stones (or
used other media) to legitimate their status through genealogy and marriage
Figure 3-4. Genealogical registers from Tomb 6 at Lambityeco (top) and

Matatlán (bottom).
(Marcus 1992:283–285, 2006, 2009; Masson and Orr 1998; Urcid 1992, 2003; Urcid et
al. 1994). It is not insignificant that this interelite messaging, in which generations
of leaders were depicted in a manner that conveyed descent, was implemented in
somewhat different ways at each site. For example, at Late Classic period Santa
María Atzompa, often considered part of greater Monte Albán, no such stone
registers have been found, yet the skilled potters at that site made ceramic effigy
vessels in the basic style of earlier iconic urns but with a twist: specific persons
were portrayed, named, and found in sets (Zorich 2013). In other cases, this infor-
mation was conveyed in stone or plaster busts, but in each case, the intended mes-
saging was directed more horizontally toward peers or other lords (Marcus 2009).
Figure 3-5. Residences and ballcourt of the penultimate surface in the upper
precinct at El Palmillo.
At the same time that the identities, genealogies, and affinal ties of rulers
were elevated to greater prominence, so were elite residences, which late in the
Classic period became more elaborate, often including multiple patios (Barber
and Joyce 2006; Feinman and Nicholas 2011a) (Figure 3-5). Palaces took on a more
central role as seats of civic-ceremonial governance, and at a number of Late Clas-
sic sites (Feinman and Nicholas 2011b), including Monte Albán, Atzompa, and
El Palmillo, ballcourts were specifically built adjacent to high-status residences
with private accessways between these buildings (Figures 3-6 and 3-7; see Fig-
ure 3-5). Given the long-standing link between the Mesoamerican ballgame and
militarism (e.g., Fox 1996; Kowalewski et al. 1991), the presence of these courts
in direct association with high-status families would seem to signal heightened
Figure 3-6. Late Classic ballcourt next to elite residence at Monte Albán.
intraregional competition among valley elites. Across the region, warrior and
ballplayer figurines became more common (Figure 3-8), while the previously
widely distributed Zapotec urns, with their broadly shared iconographic motives,
declined in abundance. The middle tomb chamber of a stacked array of three
tombs, recently excavated by Roblés and her Instituto Nacional de Antrología e
Historia (INAH) team at Atzompa, features painted ballgame imagery in a man-
ner not previously seen (Atwood 2012).
With Monte Albán’s hegemony weakening, rising local elites at the end of
the Classic period appear to have extended and expanded their array of socio-
economic networks beyond the valley. Based on a recent compositional analysis
(using portable X-ray fluorescence) of contextualized obsidian samples from three
sites where we have excavated, Ejutla, El Palmillo, and the Mitla Fortress (Feinman
et al. 2013), we see both increasing variability among the obsidian assemblages at
each site and a wider number of distinct sources present at all three sites by the
tail end of the Classic as compared to earlier in that period (Figure 3-9). In other
words, the residents of each of these sites not only were procuring obsidian from
an expanded number of sources but the specific networks or links for these sites
were also becoming more distinctive (one vs. another) compared to earlier. Pre-
vious scholars (e.g., Scott 1993) have proposed that the aforementioned ceramic
Figure 3-7. Late Classic ballcourts at Atzompa including two associated with
elite residences.
warrior figurines as well as the presence of imitation fine orange and imitation
fine gray pottery also signal stylistic affiliations that extended well beyond the
valley’s physiographic boundaries.
By a.d. 800 to 900, population declines began at a number of large settlements,
including Monte Albán, El Palmillo, and others. When looked at in conjunction
with the shifts in public architecture and overarching ideologies (as indicated by
the decline of Zapotec urns), Markens et al. (2008) describe these shifts as the loss
of the Zapotec “great tradition.” In contrast, we see only a shift in that tradition
from more collective formations of the earlier Classic period to more patron-
client–like coalitions that were further amplified later in the Postclassic and that
tended to use ideological tropes to legitimate the positions and power of select
lines of descent. As Monte Albán’s power waned, elite competition escalated, and
ideological messaging focused on the legitimation of these competing factions as
opposed to more broadly shared and/or unifying themes.
On what do we base this alternative? First, we know that the Classic period
hilltop towns of the Valley of Oaxaca were not depopulated in one rapid episode,
nor were all of these settlements abandoned at the same time. As noted previ-
ously, the population of El Palmillo left the site over an extended time period,
Figure 3-8. Warrior and ballplayer figurines from the Mitla Fortress (top)
and El Palmillo (bottom).
and significantly, the palace dwellers stayed longer than the commoner residents
downslope. At other sites, such as the Mitla Fortress and Cerro Danush (part of
Macuilxochitl) (Faulseit 2012), residential occupation continued into the Early
Postclassic. Based on ceramic descriptions (Acosta 1958–1959; Caso et al. 1967),
we suspect that Monte Albán also was not abandoned in one rapid event and that
some residents remained there into the Early Postclassic (Blanton et al. 1982:117;
Markens 2008:64), although excavations have not been conducted in a manner
that might allow more-precise assessments.
Most of the Late Classic/Early Postclassic excavated contexts in the Valley
of Oaxaca are hilltowns. The shift from a more collective/corporate (Blanton and
Figure 3-9. Obsidian assemblages at the Ejutla site, El Palmillo, and Mitla
Fortress from the Early/Middle Classic (bottom) to the Late Classic/Early
Postclassic (top).
Fargher 2008; sensu Blanton et al. 1996) organization to a more patron-client social
contract would have had the most adverse implications for hilltown dwellers,
where a high level of interhousehold cooperation was requisite to maintain the
residential plan and conserve water (Feinman and Nicholas 2012b; Kowalewski
et al. 2006). Hence, the end of the Late Classic/Early Postclassic appears to have
been a time when commoners frequently voted with their feet, leaving terrace
sites and establishing communities on the valley floor. The discovery of an Early
Postclassic tomb in a house lot underneath the modern town of Santiago Matatlán
is an indication that some of El Palmillo’s occupants moved there. The patron-client
relations of this period likely represent the roots of the Postclassic palace–focused
architectural complexes at Mitla and Yagul (Pohl 1999) as well as the even later
cacicazgo (small state) formations that were in place at Spanish Conquest.
As our chronological understanding of the later prehispanic period in the
Valley of Oaxaca begins to clarify, independently studied documents also pro-
vide new insights that Mitla appears to have been in decline when the Spanish
arrived (Esparza 1983; Oudijk 2008a). Based on these findings, we proposed that
a number of sites, long dated inspecifically to the Postclassic, including Mitla and
Yagul, had significant Early Postclassic occupations (Feinman and Nicholas 2011a).
The architectural parallels between these two sites and Terminal Classic/Early
Postclassic settlements in Veracruz (El Tajín) and Yucatán (Puuc) have been noted
for decades (Miller 1995:217; Sharp 1970); we would agree with the earlier scholars
who outlined these stylistic affinities as indicative of communication that occurred
between them (we suspect through down-the-line, often largely high-status chan-
nels). A reanalysis of earlier stratigraphic profiles that were placed into the Yagul
palace (Bernal and Gamio 1974), along with more recent unpublished studies at
the site, confirms that this structure was started during the Classic period (Fein-
man and Nicholas 2011a; Roblés and Juárez 2009) and was rather continuously
remodeled during the Postclassic.
If this hypothesis is borne out, it would disconfirm the notions that the Valley
of Oaxaca was largely abandoned in the Early Postclassic (cf. Winter 1989) or that
it was devoid of a great or elite tradition during (and after) the decline of Monte
Albán. Rather, the palace-centric plan of both Mitla and Yagul could be viewed as
an amplification of the growing importance of palaces at various centers toward
the end of the Classic period. The Late Classic renegotiation from more collective
forms of social relations to more exclusionary social contracts (patron-client rela-
tions) laid the foundation for the cacicazgos of the later Postclassic.
The architectural changes that started late in the Classic period and con-
tinued into the Postclassic included a shift in architectural focus from temples
and plazas to palaces. At large settlements outside Monte Albán, the formal and
comparatively uniform public architectural groupings of three to four monu-
mental platforms (Blanton 1989) frequently fell from use. These changes toward
more palace-centric architectural layouts with less site-to-site uniformity were
accompanied by a transition from the iconic urns to figurines and from broadly
shared symbols, such as Cocijo, to a representational focus on specific elites and
lineages that likely were vying for alliances, legitimation, and support (adherents
or followers).
Post a.d. 1250–1300, significant changes occurred again, spurred by the grow-
ing political and economic power of central Mexican polities, in particular the
Aztecs. Across the macroregion, some populations were pushed from north to
south, while higher volumes of resources and goods were transported in both
directions (Beekman and Christensen 2003; Smith and Berdan 2003). As part of
this series of processes, Mixtec lords married into the Valley of Oaxaca, taking
titles to valley land and encouraging the in-migration of small-scale farmers (in
a sense, their clients). Nevertheless, these events were very late (Oudijk 2008b:91),
and the bulk of the Valley of Oaxaca populace remained Zapotec, which explains
the resilience to 1520 of basic domestic traditions and the endurance of the Zapotec
language in the region to the present. These Postclassic political formations in the
valley generally were more fluid than the hegemonic and long-dominant polity
centered at Monte Albán, a reality evidenced in documentary accounts that catalog
the ebb and flow of Postclassic political power (Oudijk 2000; Pohl 2003). No center
or polity dominated for long, nor was there the concentration of architecture and
population at any single place during the later Postclassic as there had been for
centuries at Monte Albán (Figure 3-10).
Figure 3-10. Postclassic small polities in the Valley of Oaxaca.

Conclusions
In closing, our main argument is that conceptualizing collapse as an

event and societies as undifferentiated systems does not enlighten our under-
standing of the significant changes that occurred over the course of the Classic-
Postclassic transition in the Valley of Oaxaca, nor does it explain (in fact, it ob-
scures) why certain fundamental aspects of life were so resilient over that same
era. Still today, many people in the Valley of Oaxaca speak Zapotec and adhere
to traditions and patterns of life that extend to the Classic period and earlier (e.g.,
Feinman and Nicholas 2012a). Rather, the changes that occurred in Oaxaca are
more productively considered as a sequence of significant transitions in which
people responded to conditions that were prompted by micro, macro, and re-
gional factors and internal tensions (Butzer and Endfield 2012). But the region’s
Zapotec heritage was never entirely replaced, nor did it completely lose all of its
long-standing beliefs and traditions.
What shifted were the ways in which these traditions were employed to
establish the authority and legitimacy of those who wielded power, as did some
of the means by which these individuals recruited and maintained followers. For
example, prior to the waning years of the Classic period, Cocijo was a supernatural
force that was personified and represented in repetitive/iconic ways across the
region. By the Late Postclassic period, this supernatural was rarely represented,
even though the name was used in the titles of the certain exalted lords (Marcus
2009). Other Late Postclassic Zapotec elite drew their names from other super-
naturals (e.g., Xipe Totec) (Paddock 1983b; Whitecotton 1990).
The monumental temple-plaza public architectural platforms situated at the
core of many Classic period sites in the region were decentered and replaced by
architectural complexes that focused on palaces, often with small, attached ball-
courts. So ceremonial spaces for community ritual, seemingly the provision of a
public good, declined while the residences of rulers and the portable wealth in
which they trafficked increased in abundance.
The fall of Teotihuacan during the sixth and seventh centuries undoubtedly
changed the political landscape in the Valley of Oaxaca (e.g., Blanton 1983). Not
only was an external threat and/or a sanctifying presence diminished, possibly
removing or diminishing a basis for coordinated collective action (such as de-
fense), but the expansion/redirection of exchange networks and new alliances that
emerged toward the end of the Classic period (e.g., Diehl and Berlo 1989; Webb
1978) may have opened new economic and alliance-building opportunities for
secondary elite at that time. Shifts in the ways that coalitions were formed and
legitimated, social contracts negotiated and funded, and power wielded likely
had implications at the subregional and community levels. As the central au-
thorities at Monte Albán were no longer able to provide public goods, local elites
buoyed by new extraregional links and the goods that moved through them had
the opportunity to attract arrays of supporters, which led to a more factionalized
political landscape whereby important centers were represented by their own
dynastic lineages.
The high amounts of labor and cooperation necessary to maintain hilltowns

in semi-arid Oaxaca (such as Monte Albán) became more risky and challenging to
maintain. By the Late Postclassic, settlements in the Valley of Oaxaca were far more
dispersed, and those hilltowns that were occupied were generally considerably
smaller than those of the Classic period (Feinman and Nicholas 2012b). Whether
drought also figured into these shifts remains to be considered with relevant
empirical information, yet the Early Postclassic resilience of Mitla and Yagul,
situated in the driest part of the region, must be taken into account. At the same
time, based on documentary sources (e.g., Oudijk 2008a), it seems clear that the
less-collective political formations of the Postclassic period tended to be relatively
short-lived compared to the longevity of earlier Monte Albán.
Underpinned by a more precise chronology, it is now evident that the trans-
formations that we (and others) have glossed as the Classic-Postclassic transition
were not an event, nor did the totality of the changes documented occur in one
rapid, cataclysmic episode. The path of transition was more incremental and con-
tinuous, although no less significant when considered over the broader sweep
of history. This realization is key for how we conceptualize and model this and
other episodes of collapse or reorganization in the past. Although history certainly
has been changed by cataclysmic events and the disastrous consequences of ex-
ogenous perturbations, we suspect that most episodes of societal revolution and
reorganization feature more mundane, human elements that were in fact central
to the processes of decline, collapse, and reconfiguration.
Acknowledgments
The fieldwork that underpins this discussion has been supported

generously by the National Science Foundation (BNS-89–19164, BNS-91–05780,
SBR-9304258, SBR-9805288, BCS-0349668), the National Geographic Society,
the Heinz Foundation, the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican
Studies, the Negaunee Foundation, the Field Museum of Natural History, the
University of Wisconsin–Madison, as well as other generous parties. We owe
them all a great debt of gratitude. We also are very thankful for the significant
help we have received over decades from Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antro
pología e Historia, the Centro Regional de Oaxaca, and their incredible staffs. We
also acknowledge the support of the people and authorities of Ejutla de Crespo,
Santiago Matatlán, and San Pablo Villa de Mitla. We are especially indebted
to our field and laboratory crews for the effort and sweat given to advance the
projects on which our interpretations are based. Finally, we express our deep
gratitude to Ronald K. Faulseit for his exemplary leadership and hospitality
that stretched seamlessly from the initial organization of the conference to the
preparation of this volume. As participators, the experience has been stimulat-
ing and a delight for which we also thank Southern Illinois University Carbon-
dale, its administration, and faculty. Faulseit and three anonymous review-
ers provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, for which we
thank them.
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4. New Perspectives on the
Collapse and Regeneration
of the Han Dynasty
Tristram R. Kidder, Liu Haiwang,

Michael J. Storozum, and Qin Zhen
Abstract: China claims an unbroken, 4,000-year-long history. This history, how-

ever, includes multiple episodes of sociopolitical failure and renewal. We use
richly detailed and complementary archaeological, historical, and environmen-
tal data from the lower reaches of the Yellow River to investigate the collapse of
the Western Han Dynasty and its reconstitution as the Eastern Han. In the first
three decades of the Common Era, Yellow River avulsion and massive flooding
prompted the collapse of the Western Han. Although environmental disaster
triggered this event, the Western Han Dynasty’s failure has no single cause.
The weakening East Asian monsoon resulted in greater aridity with increas-
ing variability in the amplitude and frequency of floods and droughts, while
population growth coupled to agricultural and technological intensification led
to significantly enlarged demands on natural resources. Assertions of authority
by the central government and resistance to these claims by rival elites created
domestic political strife at the same time that imperial expansion caused politi-
cal, military, and economic crises at home and along the frontiers. These factors
produced major structural contradictions that the state and society could not
absorb. Thus, a complex interplay of climatic, environmental, demographic,
and technological factors that accumulated over a long period of time led to
a rapid cascade of ruptures in social, political, and economic structures that
undermined the Western Han hold on government while encouraging novel
political opportunities exploited by the Eastern Han to legitimize their claim
to the Mandate of Heaven. The Han Dynasty’s collapse and regeneration exem-
plifies why understanding socionatural systems requires a holistic approach.

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
70
New Perspectives on Collapse and Regeneration 71
The collapse of states and societies fascinates scholars. Frequently,

catastrophic environmental and climate events have been invoked to account
for large-scale political upheavals among a variety of states and societies (e.g.,
deMenocal 2001; Diamond 2005; Fagan 2008; Issar and Zohar 2007; Kennett et
al. 2012; Weiss et al. 1993), but counternarratives that emphasize political, social,
economic, and moral failures are also abundant (e.g., Bárta 2008; Bowersock 1988;
Butzer 2012; Gibbon 2010 [1776–1788]; McAnany and Yoffee 2010; Tainter 1988,
2006; Turchin 2003; Webster 2002). The divergent positions on collapse and its
consequences underscore how little we know about interactions among social,
economic, political, climatic, and environmental changes and their effects on the
stability of both past and present human societies.
China is a useful example. China claims an unbroken, 4,000-year-long his-
tory. This history, however, includes multiple episodes of sociopolitical collapse
and renewal. A case in point is the collapse of the Western Han Dynasty (西汉
代). The Han (206 b.c.e.–c.e. 220) are credited with the founding of the modern
Chinese nation and were one of the world’s great empires. In the last decades
b.c.e. and into the first two decades c.e., the Han underwent a period of eco-
nomic, social, and political upheaval leading to sociopolitical collapse (Bielen-
stein 1986; Loewe 1974, 1986a); the throne was seized by Wang Mang (王莽) (r.
c.e. 9–23), who deposed the House of Han and instituted a new (‍新 Xin, meaning
“new”) dynasty.1 Wang Mang’s reign was brief; he was overthrown in c.e. 23
and replaced by the first Eastern Han emperor after more than a decade of civil
war. There is considerable debate about the circumstances attending to these
events, but Chinese court historians (Ban 19622; Fan 1965) emphasize the moral
and social failings of the late Western Han emperors and note the importance
of diminished governmental control of the economy and courtly intrigues in
the waning years of the dynasty. The most common causes ascribed to the col-
lapse of the Xin Dynasty was that Wang Mang was excessively ambitious, prone
to overreliance on Confucian principles of governance not suited to the times,
and fundamentally incompetent; he thus lacked moral authority to lay claim to
the Mandate of Heaven, the concept that rulers were given the right to govern
from a divine source based on their ability to govern well and fairly (Chen 2007;
Dubs 1955; Fairbank 1992:72; Hu Shi 1928; Loewe 1994; Thomsen 1988; Yü Runze
1935; Yu Yingshi 1980).
In contrast, Western scholars have argued that external climatic factors
caused the end of Western Han and, more emphatically, ensured Wang Mang’s
failure as emperor. Dubs (1955:112) notes, “Undoubtedly the most important
cause [of the Han collapse] was the weather. Wang Mang seems to have come
upon a period of severe droughts, which were quite as bad as those in 1876–9.”
In a similar vein but invoking a different natural disaster, Bielenstein (1947, 1953,
1954, 1986) argues that flooding in the lower Yellow River ca. c.e. 1–11 triggered
widespread famine, political unrest, and ultimately rebellion that directly lead
to the collapse of Wang Mang’s government. Many Western historians accept
the conclusion that drought and flooding contributed to the end of Western Han
and caused the collapse of Wang Mang’s brief reign (De Crespigny 2007:xvi,
196; Fairbank 1992; Hansen 2000:135; Huang 1997:52–54; Keay 2008:162–166;
72 T. R. Kidder, L. Haiwang, M. J. Storozum, and Q. Zhen
Figure 4-1. Historical map of the lower Yellow River Valley in the Western
Han Dynasty (after Tan Qi Xiang 1982–1987) showing Provincial and Com-
mandary boundaries, rivers, and canals. The inset shows the study area loca-
tion. Although this map situates the Yellow River east of the Sanyangzhuang
site, recent research indicates the river was west of Sanyangzhuang in Western
Han times. The course of the Yellow River shown here approximates the river’s
location following the avulsions of C.E. 1–17.
Kruger 2003:142–143; Makeham 2008:148–149; Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens 1982; Tan-

ner 2009:111).
Despite many years of scholarly debate, we still cannot pinpoint what caused
the sociopolitical failure of the Western Han and Xin. Here we discuss new ar-
chaeological and paleoenvironmental data from the Sanyangzhuang site (Figure
4-1) that bear on the question of the Han collapse. These data indicate that although
massive flooding triggered the collapse of Wang Mang’s nascent dynasty, under-
standing the failure of the Western Han and its regeneration as the Eastern Han
requires using new archaeological and paleoenvironmental data to understand
the complex interactions among climatic, environmental, political, technological,
and demographic processes.
Theoretical Considerations
In this chapter, the collapse of Western Han means that the Han state
rapidly loses complexity. But collapse does not occur without reason; the failure
of the Western Han state to retain its integrative functions is the result of compli-
cated and complex interactions among a variety of individuals, institutions, and
processes. These complex interactions cannot be isolated to a single time or limited
set of variables. Rather than pursuing a specific cause-and-effect relationship, col-
lapse should be seen as a process with multiple inputs and highly variable and
likely contingent outcomes. Our objective in this paper is to explore some of these
variable inputs and to try to understand how general structural processes and
specific historical circumstances led to political fragmentation and simplification
(even if only for a brief period of time).
Much of the recent emphasis on thinking about collapses, as well as their
causes and consequences, has been framed in terms of resilience theory (RT). In
contrast with traditional collapse models, which assume that decomposition is
an end state for all social forms (Gibbon 2010 [1776–1788]; Toynbee 1935–1961), RT
posits cyclicity and adaptability (see Faulseit, chapter 1, current volume). However
useful RT may be, it is a systems-based approach that describes a process but fails
to explain how the process is actually transformed. For that, we must think about
the roles of humans as agents of socionatural change, adaptation, and innovation.
Social structures do not change themselves; they change because people (agents)
make decisions. Yet, agency is never wholly free; it is always constrained. These
limits have positive and negative values, and it is the agent’s decisions within the
context of the limitations and routine practices of daily life, what Giddens (1984)
calls “structures,” that defines what shape history will take.
For our purpose: “Agency refers not to the intentions people have in doing
things but to their capability of doing those things in the first place. . . . Agency
concerns events of which an individual is the perpetrator, in the sense that the
individual could, at any phase in a given sequence of conduct, have acted differ-
ently” (Giddens 1984:9). An agent acts within the context of the structures that
sustain the rules of society while creating the structure itself. The rules system
that an agent works within provides a series of boundaries on or encouragements
for acceptable and possible behavior (Hays 1994); these rules also provide channels
or semi-fixed routes for action and define the parameters for responses to changes
in scale and the effects of external forces.
Sewell’s (2005) theory of structure builds on and improves on the work of
Giddens (1984) and Sahlins (1985, 1995, 2004) and is relevant in the context of think-
ing about collapse. Sewell argues that social structures consist of schemas and
actual resources. Sewell’s schemas are the rules and procedures that we use in our
everyday social life. Resources, on the other hand, are tangible, and we use them
in social contexts that are limited to the specificities of place, time, and quantity.
In contrast to Giddens and Sahlins, Sewell places resources on par with schemas
in terms of understanding structural change. In this sense, unlike Archer (1996),
Sewell sees culture as having little autonomy relative to both structure and agency.
Beck (2012) observes that we can therefore think of the social structural fabric
as an interwoven net. At each intersection of resources and schemas—of things
and the rules we invoke to use them—is a metaphorical knot; each of these knots
is a structure. Beck (2012) contends, “In place of conceptions of structure as a
singularity, we should think instead of a vast network of interconnected, overlap-
ping structures.”
Agents are always weaving new threads into structural nets, teasing out exist-
ing ones, and cutting old ones out—adding new schemas to mobilize an existing
array of resources, binding new or modified resources to traditional schemas, or
discarding relationships among rules and resources that no longer serve their
purposes. Some of the knots that bind resources to schemas are loosely tied; oth-
ers are knotted too tightly to be undone easily (Hays 1994:70). The nets we make
are therefore “messy, complex, and subject to continual change and elaboration”
(Beck 2012). Usually, structural nets can absorb these changes, and it is rare for
any transformation or sequence of changes to undo the integrity of the net. Those
that do initiate what Sewell (2005:228) refers to as events: “A single, isolated rup-
ture rarely has the effect of transforming structures because standard procedures
and sanctions can usually repair the torn fabric of social practice. Ruptures spiral
into transformative historical events when a sequence of interrelated ruptures
disarticulates the previous structural network, makes repair difficult, and makes
a novel rearticulation possible.” Sewell (2005:227), borrowing the concept from
Sahlins, defines events as “cascades of occurrences that result in transformations
of structures.” Because structures and structural networks exist at multiple and
intersecting scales and contexts, we can use eventful analysis for understanding
structural transformations at any scale (Beck et al. 2007).
Events evolve in stages: a sequence of context-dependent happenings pro-
duces a cascade of ruptures in the articulation of resources and schemas, creating
an opportunity for innovative recombination. In an event, these ruptures mul-
tiply exponentially until they reach a threshold wherein a novel solution to the
crisis makes rearticulation possible. Rearticulation in turn closes the event—and
transforms the structural network—by rebinding resources to schemas (Bolender
2010:4–5). Critically, it is the concept of the social threshold that defines the op-
portunity for an event to reach a cascade status. Thresholds are not set or fixed;
they are contingent and contextual (Granovetter 1978). We follow Granovetter’s
(1978:1420, 1422) definition of social threshold: “the number or proportion of others
who must make one decision before another actor does so; this is the point where
net benefits exceed net costs for that particular actor.” This definition and its im-
plications differ from those put forward by the RT community, where threshold
is loosely defined as “a breakpoint between two regimes of a system” (Walker
and Meyers 2004:3). From a social standpoint, thresholds are the collective point
at which the communal benefits of action for a given self-defined group are per-
ceived to exceed sociopolitical costs of inaction (Carballo 2013; Feinman 2013).
The important point here is that the threshold may be crossed when net benefits
exceed net costs. Although it is possible to model threshold behavior in the ab-
stract, social theorists have yet to provide a clear predictive model that specifies
how and when a social transformation will occur (Kempe et al. 2015).
Here though, there is a way of joining RT with an eventful approach. RT posits

that the application of fixed rules (schemas) without consideration of scale and
context lowers resilience, which is another way of saying that fixed rules that are
not sensitive to changing articulations of schemas and resources lower adaptive
thresholds. In this instance, then, we can predict that as net social costs (however
defined but including resource costs as well) are increased for the individual, the
potential benefits of rejecting or overcoming these costs grows, too.
The concept of threshold articulated here assumes that the threshold itself
is static, which isn’t always the case. RT theorists have articulated the concept of
“rigidity traps” as a way of exploring and explaining how social systems become
fixed at a certain level (Carpenter and Brock 2008; Hegmon et al. 2008; Scheffer
and Westley 2007; Schoon et al. 2011). Rigidity traps occur in social-ecological
systems when “strong self-reinforcing controls prevent the flexibility needed for
adaptation. . . . Too much control erodes adaptive capacity and thereby increases
the risk of catastrophic breakdown. . . . The rigidity trap is characterized by low
heterogeneity and high connectivity of entities. . . . There is little capacity to dis-
sipate stress, and stress may accumulate to high levels” (Carpenter and Brock 2008).
As noted by Hegmon et al. (2008), rigidity traps may be the outcome of un-
intended consequences: e.g., environmental change creates path dependency that
generates a situation where one response is perceived as or may in fact be the only
viable option. Rigidity traps may also be the outgrowth of sociopolitical groups
or organizations attempting to ensure a favorable circumstance (e.g., homeosta-
sis). Rigidity is the inverse of resilience, and both must be understood as a social
phenomenon; they are an outcome of social choices about how to respond to
other social actors as well as the extant rules and resources. But the explanation
or definition of rigidity trap offered by Carpenter and Brock (2008) fails because
it requires tautology—rigidity ensues when a system becomes inflexible. There is
nothing fundamentally rigid in a human institution that is highly connected or
self-reinforcing. In fact, at large, social scales (e.g., states), high connectivity can
have exceptional benefits by allowing political entities to be able to rapidly respond
to novel situations and to mobilize large numbers of agents to act in a concerted
fashion. For example, the Chinese response to famine relief was for much of its
history and certainly in early Han times quite flexible (Edgerton-Tarpley 2008; Li
2007; Yates 1990) despite the interconnectedness and self-reinforcing tendencies
of the Chinese imperial system and its ever-expanding bureaucracy (Bielenstein
1980; Loewe 1967). The approach of Hegmon and her colleagues (Anderies and
Hegmon 2011; Hegmon et al. 2008; Nelson et al. 2011), which sees rigidity either
as an outgrowth of unintentional actions or of the specific strategies of agents
(or agents acting as a group) seeking to maintain or expand adaptive benefits,
is a better approach than simply seeing rigidity as inherent. In either instance,
however, lack of innovation or flexibility to account for changing circumstances
as contexts change creates situations where thresholds of resilience are fixed or
even diminished.
A problem with Sewell’s theory is that its emphasis on events suggests that
the periods between events are static. Sewell insists that structural change is
unavoidable, but he does not offer ways to link changes that are isolated and
thus absorbed by the structural network to larger-scale, transformative events.

Following Beck (2012; see also Beck et al. 2007) again, here a focus on everyday
ruptures, which we can also think of as structural contradictions, might counter
this critique and offer us a useful way to link events through time.
When agents fail to make sense of their respective resources or when re-
sources and their distributions no longer conform to the expectations of the agents
and their perceptions of schemas, ruptures occur; thus, the structural knots that
tie schemas and resources together unravel. These points of disentanglement,
Beck (2012) suggests, introduce contradictions (or, metaphorically, tears) in the
structural net. People switch schemas to new resources or resource configurations
or interpret the same resources differently using novel schemas. The creation
and reproduction of structures are themselves imperfect processes and create
their own contradictions. Most of these rips and tears, as Sewell (2005) argues,
are absorbed by the net without causing events. But (and here Beck [2012] makes
a critical observation) what Sewell (2005) doesn’t specify is that “absorbed” con-
tradictions do not just disappear. Instead, they accumulate within the structure,
increasing the likelihood that any subsequent rupture will trigger an event. Path
dependency is thus an essential aspect of this perspective. The eventfulness of
any contradiction depends on the historical context of its occurrence (Beck et al.
2007). It is unlikely that we can predict if or when a particular contradiction will
trigger an event, but we can say that as the structural fabric becomes weak, with
more and more uncoupled knots, there is a greater chance that any additional
rupture will undo the entire fabric. Early in the history of the structure, indi-
vidual ruptures are relatively insulated and present little risk to the integrity of
the fabric. Yet, as they accrue, these contradictions have the aggregate effect of
weakening the net, particularly if they accumulate more rapidly in some contexts,
such as spatial, temporal, or conceptual (by conceptual we mean something akin
to metaphysical, e.g., religion, philosophy, ideology), than others. When an event
occurs, there is an exponential increase in contradictions, and the uncoupling of
structural knots is no longer isolated; as one knot comes undone in a part of the net
already weakened by accumulated change, it has the effect of loosening the knots
around it. As each of these junctions of schemas and resources comes undone, it
unbinds its neighbors, unraveling structures and creating a cascade of failures.
Archaeology of the Middle and Lower Yellow River
The Sanyangzhuang Site

The focus of this research is geoarchaeological and archaeological work
in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River Valley, especially at the Han
Dynasty component at the Sanyangzhuang site (see Figure 4-1). We use these data
to present a multicausal and historically informed approach to studying societal
collapse that recognizes the complexities of long- and short-term social, economic,
and political change. In this instance, we focus on five interwoven processes
(recognizing that these are chosen from among many possible processes) that
articulate schemas and resources: climate, environment (and natural resources),
demography, politics and religion, and technology. These elements are intertwined
in the fabric of the political economy of Han China and provide an opportunity to
understand the collapse of Western Han and a means to explore how these forces
and interactions alter the trajectory of history.
Sanyangzhuang is located in the Central Plains north and west of the modern
channel of the Yellow River in Neihuang County, Henan Province (Henan Pro-
vincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology 2004, 2007; Henan Provincial
Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and Neihuang County Office for the
Preservation of Ancient Monuments 2010; Kidder, Liu, and Li 2012; Kidder, Liu,
Xu, and Li 2012) (see Figure 4-1). The site is deeply buried; the Han level is 5 m
below the modern ground surface. Six stratigraphic profiles, including two, 12
m deep excavations, reveal a complex natural and anthropogenic stratigraphic
sequence extending to the beginning of the early Holocene. We have identified six
anthropogenic paleosols: one modern; one recent historic; three dated by artifact
inclusions to the Tang Dynasty, late Western Han, and Warring States periods; and
one by radiocarbon dates and ceramics to the late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age.
Two paleosols are radiocarbon dated to the middle and early Holocene. Further
work for this project has been done at a variety of sites in the Sanyangzhuang
area as well as farther afield in the Yellow River Valley. Along with complemen-
tary archaeological, historical, and environmental data from the lower reaches
of the Yellow River, these data provide richly detailed information that allows
us to investigate the collapse of the Western Han Dynasty and its reconstitution
as the Eastern Han.
The Han era remains have been the focus of archaeological recovery and are
dated to the later part of the Western Han Dynasty and into the Wang Mang inter-
regnum (ca. 140 b.c.e.— c.e. 23). Sixteen Han-era agrarian domestic compounds
have been discovered at Sanyangzhuang, along with an approximately 10,000 m2
building or set of buildings, a kiln, and the walls of a contemporary town or small
city. These remains were buried by a massive flood ca. c.e. 14–17; the floods were
gentle, and this kind of archaeological preservation is unprecedented in China.
Structures are complete, and artifacts are preserved in situ. Plowed fields, human
footprints, cart ruts, fossilized casts of leaves and grasses, and animal hoofprints
are all preserved. Artifacts include ceramics, stone tools, metal tools, coins, weav-
ing remains, and architectural elements. These remains provide unprecedented
glimpses of the daily life of a Han Dynasty agrarian community and show that this
rural community was tightly integrated into the larger Han political economy. For
example, fossilized casts of mulberry leaves and the remains of a warp-weighted
loom suggest that textile production was a fundamental component of household
economy. Historical texts indicate that textiles were often produced to raise cash
for specific tax payments and that textiles were an important part of the national
economy. We also found huo quan (货泉) coins. These were minted in c.e. 14 as
part of Wang Mang’s economic reforms and are a sign that even the rural economy
was caught up in a national economic crisis involving the devaluation of coinage
(Ban 1962:1184; Dubs 1940; Loewe 1974; Pan 1950).
Climate Change
The East Asian (and to a lesser extent, the Indian Ocean) monsoon
influences temperature and, most critical, precipitation in north China. Climate
variability in north China is ultimately determined by fluctuation of the Inter-
Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), which serves to drive the monsoon system.
Multiple lines of evidence demonstrate long-term gradual and short-term rapid
and sharp changes in climate over the Holocene. The long-term pattern is quite
clear: following a mid-Holocene temperature and precipitation maximum, north
China has become increasingly more arid as the ITCZ retreats southward and
the East Asian monsoon weakens. Throughout the Yellow River Valley, climate
proxy data and historical records indicate a long-term trend toward aridity. At the
same time, the climate system in the Han period was also witnessing increasing
amplitude variation, suggesting large-scale departures from average conditions.
Droughts and floods were more frequent and more intense compared with earlier
times (An et al. 2000; Cai et al. 2010; Cook et al. 2010; Cosford et al. 2008; Dong et
al. 2010; Hu et al. 2008; Liu et al. 2009; Maher 2008; Wu et al. 2012; Yancheva et al.
2007; Zhai et al. 2011; Zhang et al. 2011; Zhou 2011). Additionally, historical records
indicate changing climate patterns significantly affected Han-era farmers (Ban
1962; Hsu 1980:Table 12; Yellow River Conservancy Commission 2001).
Environment
Before the Han Dynasty, the Yellow River’s main course had been rela-
tively stable for millennia; however, the Sanyangzhuang record indicates increas-
ing flood frequency following the late Neolithic, suggesting the river had reached
and begun to cross the geomorphic threshold that bound it in this western chan-
nel alignment. The repeated sequences of Holocene flood deposits capped with
organically enriched horizons indicating episodes of landscape stability record
a long-term pattern of changing landscape-climate-human interactions (Kidder,
Liu, Xu, and Li 2012). Sedimentary data from the Sanyangzhuang area show that
episodes of landscape stability become shorter and shorter through the Holocene.
The Han floods of c.e. 1–17 were part of a large-scale avulsion and relocation of
the Yellow River trunk channel east of its previous location along the western
edge of the Central Plains (Liu et al. 2010; Qiao et al. 2011; Saito et al. 2001; Wang
and Su 2011; Xu 1989; Xu 2001; Yi et al. 2003). This avulsion may be the result of
a stochastic event or events. Yellow River flooding is a frequent occurrence, and
it is difficult if not impossible to pinpoint specific causal reasons for any given
historical flood. However, geomorphic, climatic, and/or human influences led to
or exacerbated these floods and triggered a cascade of events leading to the col-
lapse of Western Han.
One of the largest influencing factors pushing the Yellow River over its
geomorphic threshold is the increasing amount of sediment eroding from the
Loess Plateau. Two factors contributing to increasing erosion rates are climatic
changes and human manipulation of the environment. The Loess Plateau, in-
cluding the upper reaches of the Yellow River, marks the northern boundaries
of the Han state. Located at the northern and western margins of the monsoon
frontal boundary, the Loess Plateau is fairly arid (<500 mm annual precipitation),
meaning that agricultural production there requires significant intensification,
especially intensive cultivation and irrigation. During the Han Dynasty, the cen-
tral government relocated several million people to the boundaries of the empire
to protect the area from the northern barbarians. These garrison colonies had to
be agriculturally self-sufficient, and using newly developed iron tools, farmers
quickly cleared and cultivated large parts of the Loess Plateau. Loess, though
fertile, quickly erodes once loosened and exposed to the effects of wind and
water. The increasingly arid climate of Han times meant there was little vegeta-
tion to hold the loess in place; therefore, with the movement of large numbers
of agriculturalists into the upper Loess Plateau, erosion became a significant
problem early in Han times.
Intentional anthropogenic alteration of the environment and the contributions
these modifications played in changing the Yellow River are drivers of environ-
mental change (Chen et al. 2012; Liu et al. 2010; Mei-e and Xianmo 1994; Miao et
al. 2011; Milliman et al. 1987; Qiao et al. 2011; Shi et al. 2002; Xu 1998, 2003, 2008).
Premodern human intervention in the Chinese environment is substantial and
nowhere more acutely seen than in attempts to harness the Yellow River. Chinese
polities were trying to control the Yellow River perhaps as early as the ninth cen-
tury b.c.e. (Sima 1959). Notably, we see increasing emphasis on building of reser-
voirs, dikes, and levees for flood control (Needham et al. 1971). When resources
in the lower reaches of the river became fixed as a result of increasing population
densities and through greater intensification of agricultural and industrial produc-
tion and thus more vulnerable to flooding, resource defenses became increasingly
necessary. Perhaps, the most obvious defense was the construction of levees for
flood control. However, because these levees were not especially well built, their
maintenance was expensive and difficult.
Paradoxically, the more people intervened in the increasingly anthropo-
genically modified Yellow River system, the more effort was required to keep
the system functioning. A cascade of happenings ensued; for example, build-
ing levees to contain the river led to rapid sediment accumulation in the river’s
bed, which increased the height of the bed, which increased the elevation dif-
ferential between the bed and the surrounding flood basin, which increased
the probability of flooding and thus triggered the deployment of even-greater
resources to prevent flooding. The effect was to—at least for a time—reduce
flood frequency but at the cost of artificially increasing flood amplitude. These
processes also shifted the risk profile of any given flood. High-frequency, low-
amplitude floods are damaging but not necessarily catastrophic. Low-frequency,
high-amplitude floods, especially in the Yellow River Valley where the height
differential between the river’s bed and the floodplain was quite steep, are in-
herently catastrophic. In short, the Chinese state created a rigidity trap where
investment in flood control set in motion the need to continue costly investment
in flood control because the alternative was massive systemic failure. This pat-
tern is a persistent theme in the history of the north China Plain (Dodgen 1991;
Pomeranz 1993, 2010).
Population
Rapid and significant population growth in China over the later part
of the Holocene influenced resource consumption and its resultant environmental
effects. By Han times, population numbers were quite high on a global comparative
scale. The Han census taken in c.e. 2 records the national population at about 60
million persons and also gives population breakdowns by local administrative
units (Ban 1962:Di li zhi; Bielenstein 1947, 1987). The North China Plain was then
and is now the breadbasket of China. This region was home to nearly 40 million
people by c.e. 2. In Han times, it had an average population density of ca. 76.4
persons/km2 (compared to the empire-wide average of 42.3 persons/km2) (Sun
1992). In c.e. 2, the population of the provinces composing the Yellow River region
around Sanyangzhuang was 23,928,836 people, and the average population density
for these provinces was 69.18 persons/km2. However, the population density of
the commanderies (roughly, counties) bordering the Yellow River or directly in
the path of the Yellow River floods was 112.74 persons/km2 (see Figure 4-1; Table
4-1). These figures place political, economic, and technological decisions in context.
During Western Han, deliberate governmental policies encouraged migration
north and west into the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River and its
tributaries, partly to relieve population pressures in the eastern provinces but
also in response to Xiongnu incursions along the northern borders of the expand-
ing Chinese state (Ban 1962:Shi huo zhi; Chang 2007; Loewe 1974, 1986a). These
immigrants brought with them new farming technology and were expected to
become agriculturally self-sufficient in rapid order.
Politics and Religion

Structural changes must be situated in a political and social context
because these transformations are perpetrated by agents making explicit choices.
The politics of Western Han and Wang Mang’s times were complex, contested,
and fluid (Ban 1962; Dubs 1955; Huan 1967; Loewe 1967, 1986a; Sima 1959; Thomsen
1988; Wagner 2001, 2008; Wang 1982; Yates 2001). Important points are that the
Han were imperialistic, expansionist, and militarily aggressive in the borders of
the empire; the Han state was strongly centralized and heavily bureaucratized;
the Han economy fluctuated between monopolistic state control and laissez fair
indifference; political and social power shifted over time from the Emperor and the
state to economically privileged private citizens and families; social and economic
elites claimed an increasing share of wealth and control of resources and state
power was considerably diminished by later Western Han times (Hsu 1988); and
the Han adopted an interpretation of Confucian philosophy that emphasized a
particular schema that regulated personal and political/economic governance and
conduct. Forms of Confucian thinking became increasingly rigid and conservative
through Western Han times (Chen 2007; Loewe 1974). The central tensions inher-
ent in Western Han political economy revolved around the question of who could
get access to resources and command economic benefits. The politics of the time
were not culturally or value neutral. Agents asserting claims to resources utilized
particular interpretations of existing social rules and concepts, i.e., schemas, to
bolster their position (see Huan 1967 for an extensive and vivid description of how
Table 4-1. Population and Households of Commanderies along the Yellow River, c.e. 2
Households Individuals Population
Area
Province Commandery Households (% of Individuals (% of Density
(km2)
Province Total) Province Total) (/km2)
Dongjun 東郡* 401,297 24.23 1,659,028 21.06 13,456 123.29
Dongpingguo 東平國* 131,753 7.95 607,976 7.72 3,744 162.39
Taishanjun 泰山郡 172,086 10.39 726,604 9.22 19,048 38.15
Shanyangjun 山陽郡* 172,847 10.43 801,288 10.17 9,000 89.03
Yan
Chenliujun 陳留郡* 296,284 17.89 1,509,050 19.16 12,100 124.71
Jiyinjun 濟陰郡* 290,025 17.51 1,386,278 17.60 5,225 265.32
Chengyangguo 城陽國 56,642 3.42 205,784 2.61 2,748 74.89
Huaiyangguo 淮陽國* 135,544 8.18 981,423 12.46 10,256 95.69
1,656,478 100.00 7,877,431 100.00 75,577 104.23
Weijun 魏郡* 212,849 18.78 909,655 17.57 10,800 84.23
Qinghejun 清河郡* 201,774 17.81 875,422 16.91 4,500 194.54
Julujun 鉅鹿郡 155,951 13.76 827,177 15.98 7,440 111.18
Changshanjun 常山郡 141,741 12.51 677,956 13.09 15,747 43.05
Zhaoguo 趙國 84,202 7.43 349,952 6.76 4,186 83.60
Ji
Guangpingguo 廣平國* 27,984 2.47 198,558 3.84 1,199 165.60
Zhendingguo 眞定國 37,126 3.28 178,616 3.45 937 190.63
Zhongshanguo 中山國 160,873 14.20 668,080 12.90 7,451 89.66
Xinduguo 信都國* 65,556 5.79 304,384 5.88 8,253 36.88
Hejianguo 河間國 45,043 3.98 187,662 3.62 2,324 80.75
1,133,099 100.00 5,177,462 100.00 63,837 82.40
Pingyuanjun 平原郡* 154,387 16.09 664,543 15.86 9,172 72.45
Qianshengjun 千乘郡* 116,727 12.16 490,720 11.71 4,096 119.80
Jinanjun 濟南郡* 140,761 14.67 642,884 15.34 6,888 93.33
Qijun 齊郡* 154,826 16.13 554,444 13.23 3,928 141.15
Qing Beihaijun 北海郡 127,000 13.23 593,159 14.15 4,000 148.29
Donglaijun 東萊郡 103,292 10.76 502,693 11.99 14,592 34.45
Zichuanguo 甾川國* 50,289 5.24 227,031 5.42 916 247.85
Jiaodongguo 膠東國 72,002 7.50 323,331 7.71 7,256 44.56
Gaomiguo 高密國 40,531 4.22 192,536 4.59 1,032 186.57
959,815 100.00 4,191,341 100.00 51,880 80.79
Henanjun 河南郡* 276,444 18.19 1,740,279 26.04 12,884 135.07
Heneijun 河内郡* 241,246 15.87 1,067,097 15.97 13,261 80.47
Jingzhaoyin 京兆尹 195,702 12.88 682,468 10.21 7,145 95.52
Sili Zuopingyi 左馮翊 235,101 15.47 917,822 13.73 22,718 40.40
Youfufeng 右扶風 216,377 14.24 836,070 12.51 24,154 34.61
Hongnongjun弘農郡 118,091 7.77 475,954 7.12 40,177 11.85
Hedongjun 河東郡 236,896 15.59 962,912 14.41 35,237 27.33
1,519,857 100.00 6,682,602 100.00 155,576 42.95
Totals 5,269,249 23,928,836 345,870 69.18
* Flood-affected commanderies based on topography and direction of flood waters.

Sources: Ban 1962:1543–1640; Ge 1986:96–99; Liang 1980:14–19.
Confucian values and doctrines were deployed by both the state and the elites to
emphasize their particular articulation of schemas and resources).
The Han played a crucial role in the global geopolitics of the time; during
the Han, the Silk Routes expanded, and trade in elite goods intensified (Ban 1962;
Fan 1965, 2009; Huan 1967; Hulsewé and Loewe 1979; Sima 1959). The economic
expansion of Western Han brought the state into conflict with “barbarian” neigh-
bors, most notably the Xiongnu to the north and west. The Han maintained a
complex relationship with their contemporary neighbors, best exemplified by
cycles of war and uneasy peace (Barfield 1989, 2001; di Cosmo 2002; Sima 1959).
These relationships again created a cascading set of happenings. One response
to the barbarian threat was to erect the Great Wall and associated military border
defenses. The Chinese also created a demographic barrier in the northwest to
offset barbarian incursions. Populations were relocated from the Central Plains
to the imperial margins as part of a frontier policy to reinforce China’s border
and to form a demographic bulwark against the barbarians (Chang 2007; Chao
1986). This imperial policy created an unintended consequence of moving large
numbers of people into geographic regions that were inherently environmentally
vulnerable. As a result, a rigidity trap developed where political decisions cre-
ated a path-dependent situation. The state required populations on the border
for defense, but these populations, using new technologies, were degrading the
landscape in a way that both demanded more intensive and costly responses on
the frontier but also led to major problems downstream. Despite prohibitive cost
and effort, the state had to maintain these populations because of the Xiongnu
threat, but the Xiongnu threat was in itself partly an outcome of the imperialist
actions of the Chinese state.
Technology
One major theme in understanding how humans interacted with and
altered the environment is the relatively rapid development of technology in the
period ca. 500 b.c.e.–c.e. 23. A significant factor is the emergence of intensive
agriculture and agricultural practices through late Zhou and certainly into Han
times (Bray 1978, 1979–1980) coupled with expanding technological innovation in
iron production. The introduction of iron tools by the fourth century b.c.e. had a
large role in expanding agricultural opportunities, but state intervention through
monopolistic control of iron production, taxation, and economic policy was also
critical (Huan 1967). Iron production expanded rapidly and iron tools became
nearly universal in Western Han times, and technology improved dramatically
(Wagner 2001, 2008). Increased utilization of cast iron for plow shares, rakes,
harrows, and other agricultural implements facilitated increasing intensification
based on putting more land under cultivation. At Sanyangzhuang, for example, a
variety of iron tools were available to the residents. This technological innovation
had two consequences.
One consequence was the expansion of agriculture into regions previously
un- or underutilized (Wang 1982). The Loess Plateau was especially affected be-
cause iron-tipped plows, harrows, rakes, and similar implements are more efficient
for clearing and loosening soil than ones made of bronze, stone, or wood. Erosion
rates in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River increased, and sedi-
ment loads transported into the lower reaches of the river as it emerged onto the
Central Plain skyrocketed. Throughout Han times, sedimentation rates roughly
tripled compared to the periods before ca. 500 b.c.e., and data indicate massive
increases of several orders of magnitude by the end of Western Han (Shi et al.
2002; Xu 1998, 2003, 2008).
Another consequence was significant deforestation for field clearance and
for wood for charcoal used in iron smelting and other agricultural and industrial
uses (Cao et al. 2010; Elvin 1993, 2004; Fang and Xie 1994; Huang, Jia, Pang, Zhaa,
and Sua 2006; Huang, Pang, Chen, Su, Han, Cao, Zhao, and Tan 2006; Huang et
al. 2002; Marlon et al. 2013). The effects of deforestation for iron smelting were
amplified by large-scale anthropogenic modifications to the environment from
agricultural intensification, resource consumption for a growing population (Lee
et al. 2008), and widespread interventions in the natural world, such as the con-
struction of canals, irrigation facilities, reservoirs, and especially levees and dikes
to constrain the Yellow River and its tributaries. These activities led to greater
erosion and increased aggradation within the Yellow River channel, which en-
larged and compounded the effects of environmental disasters.
The connection between anthropogenic change in the Loess Plateau and
elsewhere in the Yellow River watershed and lower Yellow River sedimentation
is very complex. At Sanyangzhuang, sedimentation rates significantly escalated
following the mid-Holocene. Episodes of flooding at Sanyangzhuang in the War-
ring States and Han periods were related to changing human intervention in the
landscape leading to growing sediment accumulation within the Yellow River
channel and increased frequency and magnitude of flooding. The frequency of
major floods and their consequences was being felt by an ever-growing popula-
tion over an increasingly large area.
The Han Floods of c.e. 1–17

Rigidity traps and cascades of happenings came together in massive
flooding in the first two decades of the Common Era. Considerable climatic and
fluvial variability marked the beginning decades of the Common Era in central
China. Droughts and floods were frequent, and several major floods are recorded
in the historical texts (Ban 1962; Dubs 1955; Fan 1965; Hsu 1980; Pan 1955). Major
floods occurred in c.e. 1 or 2 (Fan 1965:116, 2464), in c.e. 11 (Ban 1962:4127), and
in c.e. 14–17 (Kidder, Liu, Xu, and Li 2012). The first two floods were limited in
their geographic extent and their effect on society and government. The flood in
c.e. 14–17, however, was not. The floodplain east of the trunk-channel belt was
lower than the riverbed, and when the river avulsed eastward from the north-
south–running main trunk channel of the Yellow River, then located west of
Sanyangzhuang, it flooded the lowlands, at first forming a shallow lake into which
a sediment splay developed as the Yellow River bank failed. This delta-like splay
covered the west-central part of the Central Plains almost as far as modern Puyang
and buried the Sanyangzhuang area. This flood catastrophically inundated much
of the Central Plains east of the former trunk channel and north of the modern
course of the river. The rapidly advancing crevasse splay buried an area perhaps
as large as 1,800 km2 (Kidder, Liu, Xu, and Li 2012).
This flood devastated the lower reaches of the Yellow River Valley. More than
40 percent of China’s total population at the time was distributed in this area
(Ban 1962:Di li zhi; Sun 1992). Yan Province, which lay most directly in the path of
these floods, had a population of 7,877,431 persons living in 1,656,478 households
(Ge 1986; Liang 1980) (see Table 4-1). Because most of the land in this province lay
below the elevation of the bed of the river, the flooding affected nearly all inhabit-
ants. Fossilized casts of mature mulberry and elm leaves confirm that the flood
happened toward the end of the growing season, which is when the monsoon
rains fall. Flooding disrupted the harvest, destroyed infrastructure, and buried
communities. Starvation, disease, and political and social unrest followed (Ban
1962:4151, 4154, 4174). Flooding across the Central Plains during Wang Mang’s
time was catastrophically disruptive at the local, regional, and national levels
(Bielenstein 1954, 1986).
Discussion
The Western Han was a period of significant sociopolitical and so-

cioreligious transformation. These changes rippled across every level of society
and through all political, economic, and social contexts. Political change was con-
stant and the source of considerable disputation. Following the apogee of political
centralization of the Han state under Emperor Wu Di (汉武帝) (r. 141–87 b.c.e.),
wealthy landowners and elite families increasingly resisted the central govern-
ment’s attempts at political and economic control. By the end of Wu Di’s reign,
major expenditures associated with foreign wars and imperial aspirations had
drained the treasury and forced currency devaluation and increases in taxation
(Ban 1962:Wu Di ji; Huan 1967; Pan 1950). Confucian values became increasingly
rigid as this moral code developed into a form of state religion (Loewe 1974), and
moral orthodoxy became political orthodoxy. At local levels, the highly contested
political system was felt in the form of land and currency “reforms” that left the
small farmer at the mercy of significant political and economic uncertainty (Pan
1950). To adopt Sewell’s terminology, a long-term disjunction between schemas
and resources led to the accumulation of major contradictions between what the
rules said and what reality presented. A cascade of ruptures followed.
At the governmental level, the later part of Western Han was a time of con-
flict and crisis. Instability in government, religious conservatism, and the con-
tested nature of resources among and between the state, elites, and commoners
emphasized the increasing application of fixed rules—social, religious, political,
economic, technological—to try to achieve constant returns. These sociocultural
and political contradictions were playing out against a backdrop of climatic and
especially anthropogenically induced environmental change that was constantly
shifting and reconfiguring the resource base on which so many relied. Structur-
ally, a rigidity trap developed from which the state and its citizens could not be
easily or painlessly extricated. The clearest example of this pattern is the increasing
investment in flood-control strategies through levee building.
Sociopolitical responses (schemas) failed to account for changing resource
scales and contexts, and thus we see a simultaneous concatenation of diminishing
resilience and increasing contradictions and structural change. The floods of the
early part of the Common Era were devastating but not unusual in the context of
Han history (Ban 1962:Wu Di ji, 182; Sima 1959). The floods of c.e. 14–17 triggered
a cascade of ruptures because the accumulation of change was beyond the capac-
ity of the structure to absorb these transformations. The late Western Han was
governed by politically inept emperors working in a rigid bureaucratic system
who were fighting for control of resources with powerful nobles who put their
own family interests ahead of those of the state. Through the later Western Han
and into Wang Mang’s time, Confucian orthodoxy became increasingly important.
The conduct of persons and government was held to a strict interpretation of a
fixed canon of texts. These texts emphasized the application of rules of behavior
and of governmental action, generated hundreds of years before Han times. For
example, Wang Mang spent a great deal of time practicing what was known as
the rectification of titles. This was a process of renaming government offices,
officials, and territorial units by their “correct” names. Once accomplished, this
process would lead to balance and correctness, and governance would be achieved
through harmony rather than the imposition of power or the will of government.
These ideas backfired on more than one occasion (Dubs 1940).
In one instance, Wang Mang insisted the vassal leader of the Xiongnu receive
a new seal and new title, “Respectful Slave,” instead of the former title, “Ferocious
Slave” (Pan 1955:99B, 16b; Dubs 1955:120–121). This demotion and loss of respect
caused the Xiongnu to go to war. The war was inconclusive but consumed money,
manpower, and resources that China could not afford. Following the flood of c.e.
14–17, Wang Mang increased his attempts to control events by instituting new and
supposedly correct titles to government officials. In one memorial, he noted that
his previous actions in changing a title had been inaccurate. and so he altered a
title from “General of a Peaceful Beginning” to “General of a New Beginning” to
“conform to the Mandate [of Heaven given through] portents.” As the histories
record, the people were not amused, and the “vulgar all laughed at him” (Pan
1955:99C, 4b/5a). The constant changing of names and responsibilities of bureau-
crats and their offices did nothing to foster the efficiency of the government. Wang
Mang looked back to a legendary time for inspiration for governance (Ban 1962;
Chen 2007; Loewe 1974; Thomsen 1988); as a result, strict adherence to these fixed
rules created chaos because the rules being promulgated by the emperor were
rigid and not concordant with the available resources or with the actual schemas
deployed in daily life.
At the same time, late Western Han emperors (including Wang Mang) were
involved in expensive military actions along the imperial borders. These activi-
ties drained the treasury and necessitated “economic reforms” (the institution of
imperial monopolies on the production of salt, iron, and liquor, land reform and
reallocation, and the devaluation of coinage) to provide fiscal resources in sup-
port of the state’s actions. Agents (elites and commoners alike) resisted political
and economic reform, leading to considerable uncertainty about governmental

policies. New offices and imperial titles were created and distributed to elites
and their families in an attempt to secure cooperation with imperial objectives,
placing further strain on the treasury and putting into positions of power those
who lacked critical political, administrative, and military skills. Frequent floods
and droughts sapped the government’s economic capacity (Ban 1962; Bielenstein
1986; Loewe 1974, 1986a), and endemic corruption disrupted state services and
engendered considerable hostility to the government (Ban 1962). The political
system increasingly lacked the elasticity to cope with these human and natural
catastrophes. Existing responses to natural catastrophes that had worked in the
past—storage of foodstuffs to buffer short-term crop losses, deferral or waiver
of taxes, government mobilized food-relief programs, and resettlement schemes
(Ban 1962:Shi huo zhi, 1162, Wu Di ji, 182)—did not work because of bureaucratic
ineptitude and corruption or were not employed because they were too costly
to the treasury (Bielenstein 1986; Pan 1955; Thomsen 1988). When faced with the
massive floods of 14–17 c.e., the metaphorical net completely unraveled result-
ing in the event identified here as the collapse of late Western Han. The disjunc-
tion between rules and resources reached a threshold so stark that agents at all
social levels stood to gain more by challenging the status quo than they did by
conforming to it.
The massive floods of c.e. 14–17 triggered popular unrest in the affected re-
gions of modern eastern Henan, southern Hebei, western Shandong, and northern
Anhui and Hubei. Historical documents record peasant rebellions and “banditry”
that the government could not suppress because of military incompetence, corrup-
tion among government officeholders, political indifference, and active resistance
by the poor and dispossessed. Wang Mang’s seizure of power incited many elite
families once connected to the Han throne but now no longer able to access the
new seat of power to rebel against the newly established government (Bielenstein
1959). Rebellious elites co-opted peasant armies to channel the peasants’ anger
directly against the Xin dynasty. By c.e. 22–23 there was a full-scale civil war,
and by c.e. 23 rebels sacked the capital at Chang’An and slaughtered Wang Mang,
along with his family and supporters, completing the collapse of the Western Han
Dynasty (Pan 1955:99C).
Although seemingly sudden, the collapse of the Western Han and Wang
Mang shows that contradictions accumulated and compounded themselves over
time through a combination of both intentional and unintentional human actions
and natural processes—in short, the very concepts Hegmon et al. (2008) propose
for a rigidity trap. Repeated political, environmental, and hydraulic crises over
the 200 years of Western Han destabilized the economy, and the agents who
constituted the government were unprepared and/or unwilling to respond to
the problems these crises engendered. The final cascade of ruptures began with
the Yellow River catastrophically flooding one of the most densely populated
regions of the empire. This flood pushed the structure over an irreversible thresh-
old, almost surely because the extent of suffering and the failure of government
to respond were so great that the costs of action by any one agent far exceeded
those of inaction. A process that had been in motion for a very long time became
a historical event in a remarkably short time. In six to eight years (depending on
the exact date of the flood), the Western Han Empire collapsed entirely. However,
the collapse of Western Han actually spans multiple temporal cycles from minutes
to millennia, which is, we suspect the case for most collapse events.
Following the collapse of Western Han and Wang Mang, we see the reart-
iculation of a centralized state following several decades of civil war (Bielenstein
1959). This process and the form it acquired were the outcomes of the novel op-
portunity afforded by the demise of Wang Mang. However, the reconstitution
of Eastern Han took a considerable period of time. In general, the Eastern Han
would prove less bold than their predecessors and were prone to many more
crises (Beck 1986; Fan 1965; Loewe 1986b). The new imperial family had come to
the throne and was able to consolidate power only through the help of a limited
number of elite families (Bielenstein 1959). The Eastern Han Dynasty therefore
was dependent on this limited political base and was less able to resist their calls
for access to resources and political power. The role of the elites in relation to the
emperor had changed, and the tensions between central authority and distributed,
elite power that were exhibited in Western Han times play out repeatedly to an
even greater degree during the Eastern Han.
By ca. c.e. 140, we see the acceleration of power devolution from the state to
the economic and social elites embodied by a limited number of families and clans
(Yang 1936). As the central authority diminished, elites took on roles of leadership
and power that allowed them to exert their authority at the expense of the state.
In this regard, it was only a matter of time before the state collapsed and power
transferred into the hands of competing warlords who stepped into the politi-
cal void left by the failure of the Eastern Han emperors. While the Eastern Han
Empire was a time of remarkable artistic and economic accomplishments, the
Western Han Dynasty’s political achievements dwarf the Eastern Han. Although
Eastern Han spans two centuries (c.e. 25–220), politically their first eight decades
were characterized by “laborious reconstruction, the next eight brought a painful
unraveling, and the last four saw them reduced to a pitiful irrelevance” (Keay
2008:167). The next three hundred years are lumped together by some as the “Era
of Disunity,” reflecting a lengthy episode of “fragmentation of states into smaller
political entities . . . along with the loss or depletion of their centralizing functions;
[and] the breakdown of regional economies” (Schwartz 2006:5). In short, this is
the complete political collapse of the Han imperial political system.
Conclusions
In the grand sweep of China’s history, the collapse of Western Han is

a brief and seemingly fleeting event. The Eastern Han emerged out of the power
vacuum opened by the collapse of Western Han. Thus, collapse, while real, is also
relative. There are always winners and losers in these matters. The collapse of
the Han was a complicated affair that evolved across multiple temporal, social,
political, economic, and environmental cycles and processes. Close analysis shows
that it was a consequence of external forces acting on the distribution of natu-
ral resources and, at the same time, the outcome of changes in internal social
structures generated by agents. It was in part an environmental crisis, in part a
climatic crisis, and most important, the consequence of human failure to adapt
to changing circumstances.
The collapse of the Han Dynasty reminds us that these events are not just
transient historical failures; they are the accumulation of structural changes and
have deep and lasting consequences for the future. The Han floods set in motion
a large-scale peasant rebellion that led to the overthrow of Wang Mang and the
eventual reinstatement of the Han imperial clan, albeit in a very different form.
The floods caused a large population decrease in the Central Plains and may
have stimulated the internal migration of Chinese populations from north to
south as refugees sought to escape the ravages of drought, flooding, and social
disruption that so deeply affected north China (Bielenstein 1954, 1986; Pan 1955;
Sun 1992). Although there is considerable debate about how deeply these floods
affected historical demography, this demographic shift from the Yellow River to
the Yangtze River and the southeast coast of China is arguably the beginning of
a nearly two-thousand-year trend of displacing the center of political, economic,
and social gravity in China away from the Yellow River Valley.
These changes are not isolated in space, time, or causation. For example,
similar circumstances manifest themselves in late Song times (twelfth century),
leading to many of the same changes (political fragmentation, dynastic succession,
population relocation, political and economic shifts) (Lamouroux 1998; Zhang
2009). In the late nineteenth century, we again see similar patterns of climatic,
environmental, demographic, political-religious, and technological changes asso-
ciated with major structural cascades (Dodgen 1991; Pomeranz 1993, 2010) associ-
ated with the protracted collapse of the Qing Dynasty. It is not entirely unrealistic
to see these changes as a historical precedent leading to the development of the
modern Chinese state. In this vein, while the Han state was not resilient—it could
not return to its original shape after being bent or deformed—Chinese civilization
itself did not disappear. These same processes and patterns are playing out in the
modern era. The scales and contexts have changed, though, and collapse today
will have different effects and global consequences.
Acknowledgments
We are indebted to the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics

and Archaeology and especially to Director Sun Xinmin. Our work has been
facilitated by Professors Mo Duowen and Song Yuqin of Peking University. Li
Minglin drafted Figure 4.1 and provided the data for Table 4.1. Funding has been
provided by the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology,
the McDonnell Academy Global Energy and Environmental Partners, and the
International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability.
Notes
1. Although we understand that upon naming himself emperor, Wang Mang

instituted a “New” Dynasty, we still lump the Xin Dynasty with the Han because,
name aside, Wang Mang was, in every regard, effectively the last Western Han
emperor. He had cut his political teeth in the Western Han court and rose to power
as imperial attendant and later commander of the imperial armed forces under
emperor Cheng. He was named regent for emperor Ping in 1 b.c.e. by the grand
dowager Wang Zhengjun, and upon Ping Di’s death in 6 c.e., he was effectively
acting emperor; his seizure of power in c.e. 9 is thus a continuation of the politics
and traditions of the Western Han.
2. Unless otherwise noted, references to Ban 1962 are to the Wang Mang
zhuan, or the “Memoire of Wang Mang,” a “chapter” (in a loose sense) in the
Hanshu (Ban 1962; see also Pan 1955 for English translation).
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5. Requestioning the Classic
Maya Collapse and the Fall
of the Roman Empire:
Slow Collapse
Rebecca Storey and Glenn R. Storey
People are going to get hurt, aren’t they?

—Disney’s Hercules (1997)
Abstract: Two of the most famous cases of collapse are the Roman Empire and
the Classic Maya. Recent scholarship about the Late Antiquity of the Roman
Empire tends to describe a “transition,” rather than a decline and fall. There is
also a concerted effort, long overdue by Maya scholars, to stress the continuity
of the Maya and their resilience into the Postclassic period. While many are
mistakenly under the impression that the Maya disappeared, scholars have
started to question the whole idea of a Classic Maya collapse. There is strong
evidence that both societies suffered collapse, which involved a quick political
“fall” and then a slower decline of infrastructure and population, a process that
is defined as slow collapse. There were continuities with successor societies, but
many unique cultural features of the Western Roman Empire and the Classic
Maya were forever lost. These slow collapses took several centuries, but to
claim there was no collapse, only transition, is an inadequate description for
the new reformulations that took place, the Germanic Christian kingdoms
and regional Byzantine Empire of Europe and the Postclassic Maya of coastal
Yucatan and the Mexico-Guatemala highlands.

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
99
100 R. Storey and G. R. Storey
Although anthropologists know that evolution—change through

time—is the rule of our species, a fundamental Western attitude, first articu-
lated by the Greek poet Hesiod in Works and Days, holds that change can mean
that things in our culture have been getting progressively worse. We are thus, by
definition, always living at a time of decline from a past golden age. The Romans
frequently thought that “things are going to hell,” and Europeans, claiming their
Roman heritage, came to repeat the ancient habit of decrying their own time
as inferior to the past. From Gibbon (2010 [1776–1788]), we received the evoca-
tive phrase “decline and fall,” which has practically sanctified this attitude and
tinged the systematic study of cultural evolution with the idea that everything
must, at some point, inevitably fall apart. The scholarship of cultural evolution,
deeply immersed in the cultural context of this attitude, found and documented
plenty of examples of cultures that appeared, flourished, and ran their course,
thus supporting this notion.
The most extreme form of change, when everything has completely fallen
apart, is called collapse. The term itself suggests something drastic and has an
aura of finality. Recently, scholars of the past have begun to question the utility
of the concept as a proper reflection of past reality. Those seeking alternatives
that have less-dire connotations prefer terms such as transition, transformation, or
resilience to characterize past cultural change, rather than the older terms decline,
fall, or collapse, which are biased and full of preconceptions (e.g., McAnany and
Yoffee 2010). However, as Middleton (2012:263–264) correctly pointed out, none
of the terms are free of bias and without preconceived baggage. Therefore, previ-
ously used terms should not be abandoned, but each investigator simply must
clearly define what he or she means with their use, as Tainter (chapter 2, current
volume) strongly recommends. We will thus define our terms here and introduce
a new concept in this discourse: slow collapse. Our working definition: We define
collapse as a major disjuncture in the trajectory of a complex culture; the political
integration completely fails, and the Great Tradition (the assemblage of material
culture and reflected ideologies unique to that culture, as defined by Redfield
in 1956) similarly comes to an end. That process also entails loss of human life
on a large scale, largely through diminution of population, which almost never
means total disappearance of a population; there is significant loss of life, and a
smaller population is left behind. The people (in most cases) survive, persist, and
regenerate into another complex society; usually there is a gap (large or small)
before reestablishment or reintegration of complexity into a new political system
with a new Great Tradition.
Our most important point follows: contrary to a common notion that a col-
lapse should be rapid, we argue that it need not be quick. It can take a long time
for the political system and Great Tradition of a culture to disappear. Middleton
(2012:267) implies this, as does Shelach (2014:118), who noted in an article on the
collapse of the Qin empire in China that the rapidity of collapse in archaeologi-
cal and historical terms might appear long and drawn out; he specifically stated
that the Maya collapse took several generations. Commonly, as illustrated by the
two case studies here (the Romans and the Classic Maya), a political fall occurs
The Classic Maya Collapse and the Fall of the Roman Empire 101
quickly, followed by a long, drawn-out decline. We owe this insight to Ward-Per-

kins (2001), who correctly characterized the Roman Empire as experiencing a fall
followed by decline. So, the fall is when the political system fails, as the Western
Roman Empire fell in 476 c.e. and when the lowland Maya sites stopped erecting
Long Count–dated monuments between the eighth and tenth centuries c.e. The
decline is when the complexity of the cultural system, especially as represented
by resource utilization and, ultimately, energy capture and consumption, begins
to diminish, and the physical infrastructure of construction gets simpler and
simpler. Archaeologists deal in physical remains, and the most notable of these
are human constructions. The collapses of the Romans and of the Maya are dra-
matically illustrated by the ceasing of structure construction and material culture
in the style of their Great Traditions.
In this volume, there is much presentation and discussion of resilience theory,
which is currently popular among archaeologists who wish to go “beyond col-
lapse.” Our view of collapse fits into the main features of the resilience approach.
Figures 5-1 and 5-2 represent the adaptive cycle model as familiarly presented in
the figure eight, or Möbius strip, and applied to the Roman Empire (see Figure
5-1) and the Maya (see Figure 5-2). In both cases, the culture begins in the α-phase
and proceeds around the figure eight, ostensibly returning resilient in a new
regenerated α-phase manifestation.
We are content to follow this model—to a point. To us, there are two chief
features to emphasize. First, in both cases, the cultural trajectory falls off before
alpha-state reconstitution takes place. The Roman Empire ended, and Classic
Roman society short-circuited and disappeared (due to Germanic and Arabic
invasions capitalizing on internal weaknesses). There was no resilient Roman Em-
pire. Balkanized Germanic kingdoms and the smaller, regional Byzantine Empire
took over. For the Maya, Spanish Conquest short-circuited any tendency for the
restoration of Classic Maya civilization, which was never really reconstituted in
the Postclassic. So, in both cases, there is no return, reconstitution, or resilience
of the Classic Romans or Classic Maya. Real change took place.
The second feature is perhaps most important for our purposes. Most ver-
sions of the adaptive cycle model are similar to our Figures 5-1 and 5-2. The
Ω-phase is said to be the phase of sudden release or collapse, and there are cas-
cades of changes and regime shifts (Faulseit, chapter 1, current volume). Although
one might argue that the figure-eight model is merely a heuristic device, it suits
us that in a regular figure eight, both lobes are roughly the same size. As in our
Figures 5-1 and 5-2, the Ω-phase is the same size as the other phases, such as
growth and conservation. So, one concludes that the figure models an Ω-phase
that is as extensive as any other phase. Therefore, the Ω-phase can legitimately be
described as slow, as consistent with other features of the model, suggesting a
long, not short, period.
It might be argued that slow collapse is nothing new, merely another way of
describing degradation, which can be drawn out. We do not think that is correct
because the Roman Empire in the fifth century c.e. was not degrading. It was
falling apart with consecutive losses of constituent regions. One might argue,
Figure 5-1. Adaptive cycle model of Roman Empire.
Figure 5-2. Adaptive cycle model of Classic Maya.
as we would, that signs of weakness or the first hints of problems appeared in

the second century c.e. However, no Roman scholar would describe the sec-
ond century c.e. as a time of degradation—quite the opposite. To many, that
was the height of the Roman Empire—the Golden Age of the Antonines. After
the political fall of Western Rome in the fifth century c.e., lifeways and social
institutions continued to function until much later, when they simply began
to disappear.
Similarly, the Maya were not degrading between the ninth and eleventh cen-
turies c.e.—the system was falling apart and with it, the Great Tradition, which
persisted in new places for some time but also finally failed. For both the Romans
and the Maya, the collapse was a mosaic of starts and stops, some places flourish-
ing, other places struggling. Those starts and stops are nowhere depicted in the
adaptive cycle model, and that is why we find resilience theory, as expressed in the
rather static and overly formulaic manner of the adaptive cycle model figure eights,
as not sufficiently nuanced at depicting the rises and falls that occur in all phases.
However, we note that many chapters of this volume succeed in nuancing and em-
bellishing the model with proper appreciation of this variability. We merely point
out that one can do this without necessarily invoking the adaptive cycle model.
The four parts of the figure-eight are useful heuristic categories. However, we
prefer to see them as stages in overall evolutionary trajectory of complex society,
one of which commonly occurring is fragmentation or dissolution. Frequently,
the tendency to fragment is combatted and defeated. The Romans faced centuries
of civil war and yet maintained political and territorial integrity for the most
part. However, perhaps just as often, that integrity is lost. The complex culture
can achieve some sort of sociopolitical reorganization, much as in China the Qin
Empire failed and very quickly was reconstituted in the Han Empire (Shelach
2014). The culture might also balkanize, splitting into smaller sovereign states as
did the Western Roman Empire in the late fifth century c.e. But it can be argued
that these really are not collapse in our terms.
Balkanization may be a special case—an aspect of collapse but not a separate
type of collapse. We think that many cases of dissolution are not necessarily col-
lapses at all. But scenarios treated as stages by us are bad in one important sense:
people got hurt. Change, especially political change, often brings with it (among
humans) violence and death. Our main point about the collapse of the Romans
and the Maya is the same. Thousands, if not millions of lives were seriously
disrupted and in many cases ended by the collapse of these world systems. The
settlement data for both the Romans and the Maya are clear: populations dimin-
ished. Not all of these people died (the collapse of human complex cultures has
never yet meant biological extinction, contrary to recent opinion [McAnany and
Yoffee 2010]), but all too many people die. That is a tragedy, and it is the reason
why collapse is of concern to so many people; it also why a moral dimension is
present and must be addressed.
Sometimes, and it appears unintentional, the tenor of prevailing opinion on
collapses is that they are due to a moral failure. This was explicit in the Chinese
response to the collapse of the Qin Empire, that its agents were at fault (Shelach
2014). However, we emphasize that collapses are morally neutral in terms of the
human agency behind them. Collapse is about the infrastructure that has been
weakened and ceases to exist because of diminished ecological equilibrium, result-
ing in net loss of directed manipulation of energy. Resilience theory is correct in
that there will be some reconstitution of human society in the place where there
has been a collapse. We maintain that more often than not, as exemplified by the
Romans and the Maya, it is a different complex society—a different civilization.
Major world systems collapse, and there is dramatic change.
The Collapse of the Roman Empire
The first issue of the Roman collapse is when it took place. The Roman
political system failed in the West in 476 c.e., when the last Roman emperor,
Romulus Augustulus, abdicated, and the Gothic king Odoacer took over Italy.
However, the Roman Great Tradition lasted for the next two to three centuries
before it disappeared. The Gothic kingdoms retained many institutions of the
Roman state. For example, there were still two consuls, the traditional dual an-
nual magistrates of the city of Rome. The list of consuls begins in 509 b.c.e. and
continues unbroken until 542 c.e with the last consuls. Roman statesmen, such
as Sidonius Apollinaris (Harries 1994), continued their lives of service in the Ro-
man church, continuing the tradition of Latin literature in the service of the new
religion, Christianity.
But between the third century c.e. and the eighth century c.e., regions and
institutions of the Roman Empire failed and disappeared. There were two chief in-
dicators of this: the ceasing of the building of Roman civic structures and concen-
tration instead on churches and episcopal palaces (Bowden 2001; Cameron 2011:82)
and the empire-wide diminution in occupation of the landscape demonstrable
in regional surveys, which show decrease in the number of sites everywhere
from the fourth century c.e. to the eighth century c.e. (Ward-Perkins 2005). That
conclusion has been vigorously challenged by Late Roman archaeologists who,
though they acknowledge the drastic diminution in the number of Roman sites
in Late Antiquity, deny that this indicates significant population loss. Instead,
the populations were archaeologically invisible. We believe that explanation is
inadequate and that the summary of population loss presented by Ward-Perkins
(2005:138–142; 184–187) is accurate. Figure 5-3 illustrates a survey of southern
Etruria, the region just north of Rome, for three different periods. This is a pow-
erful illustration of population loss and is a result repeatedly seen in much Late
Roman survey data, although many investigators do not believe the data are a
true reflection of population history. Instead, they question the efficacy of survey
itself (Bowden and Lavan 2004:xxii), which we regard as unjustly impugning a
well-established archaeological procedure.
Economic Failure
Tainter (1988) identified the cross-cultural problem of “diminishing
marginal returns” of complexity. This means that as a cultural system evolves,
it simply acquires more working parts that consume more of the available en-
ergy. Acquisition of new resources (largely through territorial aggrandizement
and assessment of tribute on newly conquered peoples) starts to become less
effective. Costs of running the complex system start to exceed income. A good
example of this is the Roman takeover of Holland, which carried increased
costs (chiefly military) with insufficient return to pay for it (Willems 1988; Wil-
lems and Van Enckevort 2009). Furthermore, the increasing mismatch between
sources of revenue and costs was reflected in the inefficiency of the bureaucratic
structure—due chiefly to increasing corruption. Ever since Gibbon, the astounding
Figure 5-3. Three phase maps from the southern Etruria survey, indicat-
ing the distribution of archaeological sites before the rise of Rome, during
Rome’s height, and in the early medieval period, after the political fall of the
government of the Roman Empire in Italy. (After Potter 1979: A, Figure 12;
B, Figure 35; C, Figure 41.)
corruption of the later Roman government has been a prominent theme, for good
reason (MacMullen 1988).
This was especially clear in the level of privatization. Elites of the empire
began to receive more money from officeholding than they got from their landed
wealth. We call this the privatization threshold. A whole new structure of fees (i.e.,
bribes) appeared in the imperial bureaucracy, which (although always corrupt)
reached new heights of rapaciousness in officialdom’s private skimming off of
the taxes earmarked for the imperial treasury. This resulted in a paradox regard-
ing Roman taxation—it was both too harsh and too lenient. Too harsh because
tax rates, probably overall averaging about 10 percent, inexplicably varied from
region to region and unpredictably varied in the efficiency of collection (Garn-
sey and Saller 1987:21). Because of the “fees,” people were often paying taxes
twice—once to the corrupt collectors charging “fees” to pay the tax at all and
the real tax itself. Taxation was too lenient because of the remissions. Roughly
every 14 years (the equivalent of one generation, when a male reached adulthood
and thus became subject to taxation), the Roman administration went over the
books of collection and estimated the (usual) shortfall of assessment. Because

Roman emperors had to appear generous as part of the political ideology of the
Roman system, very often these assessments would result in a “write-off” of
what was owed. Of course, this was very popular as a theatrical gesture with
the people, but it clearly caused problems in cash flow for the imperial govern-
ment. By the fifth century c.e., when the Roman administration was starving for
cash and basically no longer had an army, taxation was written off constantly
(Jones 1964:467).
Another drain on the finances of the empire was the Christian Church. Be-
cause of the Roman administration’s extreme blunder in having an official policy of
persecution of Christianity, the church was forced to become an alternate economy
and society. The traditional “pagan” Greco-Roman world functioned by encourag-
ing elites to spend on civic improvement of their communities, in exchange for
recognition and prestige. When the Christian Church began to attract adherents
from all levels of society, converted Roman elites began to put their money into
the church instead. This is certainly one reason that the Roman Great Tradition
of civic improvement began to fail: “politically motivated voluntary munificence
was largely replaced by Christian charity” (Liebeschuetz 2001:174).
Lastly, probably as a result of increasing complexity, the gap between the
very rich and the rest of the population began to widen considerably in the later
Roman Empire. Elites simply came to control much-greater proportions of the
resources than they had in earlier times. The property of the plutocrats of the
later empire dwarfed that of previous elites because later-empire elites had their
landed estates and now greatly increased income from officeholding (which origi-
nally had not been paid at all and then paid poorly because of increasing infla-
tion [Jones 1964:31–32]). It is a truism that wealth tends to attract more wealth, so
the process merely elaborated and created astounding wealth differences, best
illustrated by the converted Christians Melania the Younger and her husband,
Pinianus, whose enormous wealth is documented because they gave it to the
church (Lançon 2000:72–75).
The processes causing costs to exceed income probably began as early as the
beginning of the second century c.e. (some Romanists might say even earlier).
In any reckoning, the decline of the Roman economy took four to five centuries
to play out.
Political Failure
Goldsworthy (2009) argued that the main reason for the fall of Rome was
the problem of succession with no stability. There was constant competition for
becoming emperor, which resulted in endemic civil war. As bad as this was, it
was made worse because people on the borders of the empire took advantage of
the chaos and timed their attacks on the empire during periods of civil war. The
two greatest outside threats to the empire were the Persians in the east and the
Germanic peoples to the north. It frequently seemed that they were in a conspiracy
to attack the empire from both directions on purpose, although it is more likely
that each group, hearing of an attack on one front by the other group, made a
move at the same time deliberately. The twin challenges of internal warfare and
external attack were, in the end, too much for the political system to bear.
Political problems of civil war had plagued the late Republic and reappeared
continuously from the overthrow of Nero in the mid–first century c.e. to the final
deposition of Romulus Augustulus from the throne in 476 c.e. Thus, the political
unraveling of the Roman empire took the same four to five centuries to play out
completely, as the economy did.
Societal Failure
We have just alluded to the great mistake of persecuting a harmless
sect, such as Christianity, a religion based on obedience, that could have been a
strong ally to the Roman way of life and instead was forced into the role of adver-
sary. The significant social result was the creation of social tensions responsible for
chaos and disorder as pagans disputed with Christians and Christians disputed
with other Christians over doctrine.
There was no significant prejudice against Christians as people in the conflicts
between paganism and Christianity. However, the Romans were not immune
from behaving prejudicially, as proved in how they treated the Germanic peoples
outside the empire. Germans never successfully assimilated into the Roman way
of life, although it was not from lack of trying. The Romans were so anti-Goth
that they engineered pogroms around the turn of the fifth century c.e., killing
even Gothic women and children. When the Goths first tried to enter the empire
in large numbers in 376 c.e., they were treated treacherously (Heather 2006). Both
Christianity and the Germans played a major role in ending the Roman Empire.
The Romans failed to make both equal participants in the empire (as they had
with other foreign peoples and religions), and both provided their own answers
to the detriment of the Roman traditional way of life, weakening both the Roman
political system and the Great Tradition.
Christianity’s effect on the Roman Empire began shortly after the religion’s
founding in the first century c.e. Constantine put the empire on the road to full
Christianization early in the fourth century c.e., but many people in the empire
remained pagan until long after that. Only in the fifth century c.e. could one claim
that the Roman Empire had become largely Christian, again a change taking place
in four to five centuries. Goths first were settled in the empire experimentally dur-
ing the reign of Marcus Aurelius (De Ste. Croix 1981:509–518), this time, only three
centuries for them to take control of the remnants of the Western Roman Empire.
Ecological Failure
The Roman Empire was an agrarian empire dependent on climate. It
now seems that the success of Roman imperialism was at least partially due to
climate. The Roman Warm period (300 b.c.e. to 220 c.e.) coincides with the begin-
ning and greatest expansion of the Roman Empire (Tainter and Crumley 2007). In
all probability, Roman success was due largely to the occupation of increasingly
marginal lands that could be profitably farmed due to the upturn in temperature.
When that upturn became a downturn, in the Roman Cold period (220 c.e.–800
c.e.), those marginal lands could not be farmed, and this downturn correlates with
the period of the fall, decline, and final collapse of the Roman Empire (Jongman
2007; Ljungqvist 2010). The cold period gave way to the Medieval Warm period
(950 c.e.–1250 c.e.), when the Gothic and Frankish kingdoms in Western Europe
flourished on the ashes of the empire, and the Byzantine Empire, with a differ-
ent Great Tradition and political system, inherited the territories of the Roman
Empire in the east. These climate trends are not determinative in the sense that
they are the reason the Roman Empire collapsed. That was a multifactor process,
but climate, which has often been ignored in the past, was one of the important
factors in the processes that contributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire.
As part of this casserole of factors, the role of catastrophes has reasserted itself.
Horden and Purcell (2000) argued that catastrophes should have no major role in
explanations of cultural change. But it is more accurate to state that catastrophe
is part of continuity: “Crises, of course, are normal and inevitable” (Tainter and
Crumley 2007:63). The Roman Empire, as with any other cultural system, was
affected by its fair share of major natural disasters. A massive earthquake in 365
c.e. did great destruction in the eastern Mediterranean, even sending a tsunami
that flattened Alexandria (Barreca et al. 2010). But the major relevant catastrophe
was the Ilopango eruption of 536 c.e., perhaps the largest volcanic event of the
last 2,000 years (Larsen et al. 2008), which was followed by Justinian’s Plague
(bubonic) in 542 c.e., which spelled the end of attempts to reconquer the Western
Roman Empire (Rosen 2007).
In a very fundamental sense, the Roman Cold period accurately bounds the
period of slow collapse for the Roman Empire. This period of 600 years represents
the slowest clock to measure the time it took for the Roman Empire to finally col-
lapse. For all the factors we have explored, the period of fall, decline, and collapse
is on the order of at least four centuries. The Roman Empire in many ways thus
defines slow collapse.
In this brief scenario, we have traced the major trends responsible for the
slow collapse of the Roman Empire. Complex cultures, because they are complex
and control and consume vast amounts of energy, take a long time to slow down
and finally fail politically, then culturally. It is not surprising that such entities
should take centuries to finally come to an end and give way to something else.
It is what we should expect.
The Classic Maya
The Classic Maya collapse is still a focus of research and discussion

(Aimers 2007). Nevertheless, part of what has always driven the “mystique of
the Maya” for the general public has been the Maya’s failure to maintain a civi-
lization that left some of the most atmospheric ruins. For better or worse, it is
the Late Preclassic and Classic Maya who have left the impressive remains, the
Postclassic remains being relatively smaller or else largely swallowed up by the
colonial Spanish.
However, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, certain aspects of

the collapse, including that it is often placed in quotes, “collapse,” seem to have
become clearer. The collapse “presents a very complicated, messy problem, rather
than a nice, neat, sudden, and uniform cultural catastrophe” (Webster 2002:216). A
brief review of what defines the Classic Maya is in order, so that what actually “col-
lapses” becomes clearer. There are both a lowland and highland Maya civilization.
The lowland, the focus here, covers the Petén region of Guatemala, the Yucatan
Peninsula, Belize, western Honduras, and parts of El Salvador. This was the area
that was central during the Classic period (ca. 250–1000 c.e.), with the largest and
most elaborate centers and densest population and where the collapse occurred.
During the Late Classic (ca. 600–800 c.e.), the apogee occurred, as the land-
scape was covered with many large centers, some very large and imposing, and
many smaller centers close to the larger ones with a dense but dispersed popula-
tion of the housemounds and plazas of the farmers in between (Figure 5-4). Maya
society was characterized by divine kings or governors and allied nobles and a
large population of farmers and retainers, probably comprising no less than 80
percent of the population (Webster 2002). The sculpture and inscriptions that still
decorate the ruins of centers are about dynasty lists, important life events, rituals
and military exploits of rulers, and the relation of cosmological concepts and the
rulers themselves to human affairs, most dated by Long Count calendar. The Long
Count, a count of days since a creation date, was one of the distinctive aspects
of the Classic period, and it has been translated into month, day, and year of our
Gregorian calendar (Webster 2002). The Great Tradition consisted of the imagery
of this royal and courtly life and its associated elaboration of temples, palaces,
fine pottery, and ornaments in exotic materials, such as jade and marine shell.
In spite of the large centers, Classic Maya society was never politically unified.
Instead, each center and its ruling dynasty had autonomy and its own history in
the local area (Webster 2002).
The number of dated monuments reached a peak in the eighth century c.e.
and then abruptly ceased at various Maya centers, a process that continued into
the tenth century and was discontinuous, with some centers disappearing early
and others hanging on for a couple of centuries more (Webster 2002). This more
protracted and variable event is now referred to as the Terminal Classic period
(ca. 800–1050 c.e., with different length in various parts of the lowlands). The pat-
tern began in the western lowlands and continued to the southern, central, and
eastern lowlands of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras, although some
sites in each area survived for a time. Eventually, many sites of the inland north-
ern lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula, the last to become prominent, were then
abandoned in the tenth and eleventh centuries (Andrews et al. 2003). There was
a probable population of several million present during the Late Classic (Webster
2002), yet evidence of population movement into surviving areas enough to ac-
count for those numbers is missing. The main casualties were the population, the
type of rulership, “the Holy Lords,” and the way the rulership was symbolized
on buildings, monuments, and other arts during the Classic period (Figure 5-5).
The Maya, of course, continued, and there were nobles and rulers when
the Spanish arrived and even a few sites in what had been the Classic period
Figure 5-4. Map of the Classic Maya centers with their last Long Count data
and Gregorian calendar equivalents. The bulk of settlement is in the center of
the map. (Adapted from de la Cova 1997.)
“heartland,” but no longer were the sites festooned with stela of rulers nor with
art dominated by them and their ritual concerns. Less personalized and more
generic depictions of deities and warfare seem to have become dominant. This
cultural shift was accompanied by the abandonment of what had been both
major and minor centers, including their supporting commoner population.
The area remained mostly vacant until only the past couple of centuries. In our
opinion, it is not just the loss of rulership and its associated elements of the
Figure 5-5. Stela A of the thirteenth ruler of Copán, the Classic Maya center
with the most elaborate sculpture of rulers. (Photo by Rebecca Storey.)
Great Tradition but also this population decline and the lack of resettlement
in the southern lowlands that is truly the mystery and should hold the key to
understanding the collapse.
A trend among contemporary Maya scholars is to question the whole notion
of collapse and to prefer to discuss continuity and resilience (Hutson et al., chapter
6, current volume; McAnany and Yoffee 2010). There have been Maya researchers
who have stressed the transitional nature of the change from Classic to Postclassic
Maya (e.g., Chase and Chase 2004, 2006). Partly this was in response to the popu-
lar conception that when the Classic Maya disappeared so did the Maya, which
is not true, and popular conceptions should be changed on this point. A recent
contribution by McAnany and Gallareta (2010) chose to almost completely deny
that there was collapse, only an attribution of our contemporary woes onto the
Maya. The authors list six factors commonly implicated in Maya collapse scenarios:
“(1) escalating warfare, (2) out-of-control population growth, (3) environmental
degradation, (4) drought, (5) effectiveness of divine rulership, and (6) changes
in spheres of trade and influence” (McAnany and Gallareta 2010:145). They find
that the archaeological evidence for these factors is overly influenced by the more
extensive knowledge of the Late and Terminal Classic. There is also too much
influence from “trendy” causes, such as climate change. However, to ignore col-
lapse is to ignore and underestimate the implications of what archaeologists have
been documenting for decades.
As in the Roman example, economic, political, social, and environmental
causes have been implicated by many researchers. Similar as well is the pattern
of quick political failure followed by a more protracted decline of population and
change in cultural traditions. The portent of political troubles probably begins in
Demarest’s (2004) evidence of fortifications and defensible positions late in the
sequence in the western lowlands, which was one of the earliest to be abandoned.
Although this was the most conspicuous area where collapse seems to be tied to
warfare, conflict between elites and polities occurs throughout the Late Classic.
The number of polities, inscriptions, and mentions of war increase shortly before
800 c.e. (Martin and Grube 2008). Many sites seem to have a conflict mentioned
in the last erected monuments. However, it is possible that as conflict intensified,
commoners would have been displaced or subjected to more tribute by victori-
ous centers. As elites lost conflicts, their ability to protect their realm and deliver
prosperity would have been severely compromised, and their political position
would have become tenuous. The loss of moral and ritual authority Classic period
rulers held was perhaps hastened by conflict, but the conflict could have been
driven by environmental factors, as is discussed below.
For the Classic Maya, the loss of the type of rulership that was such an im-
portant aspect of the Great Tradition appears to be the most sudden loss and is
the indicator of the political fall. Dated monuments and construction halted in
the centers, in many cases suddenly, judging by incomplete buildings and monu-
ments. These centers were abandoned fairly soon after, but in some cases, the elites
continued to reside in their palaces but with very limited political power. The de-
cline of the rural population could take longer or could begin slightly before that
of the urban center (see the case studies in Demarest et al. 2004). The example of
Copán as reconstructed by Webster (2002) is an example of the quick political fall
and extended collapse of population and the Great Tradition, although Webster’s
reconstruction is not without controversy. The last date is 822 c.e., and around the
mid-ninth century, the palace where the ruling dynasty lived was burned (also
in Manahan 2008). Based on obsidian hydration dates from excavation of elite
compounds and rural housemounds, some of the elite compounds continued to
be occupied and active until around 1000 c.e. (Webster 2002). Webster postulated
that population remained numerous, even in the Copán Valley, for a century after
the dynastic fall, although Manahan’s (2008) excavation of the small Postclassic
settlement near the central core indicates that “outsiders” moved into the valley
for at least a time. Manahan (2008) interpreted this settlement as evidence that the
Copán Valley had been abandoned soon after the burning of the royal compound,
by the end of the ninth century, and no one was present after around 1000 c.e.
Webster (2002) indicated that although there appears to have been a steep drop,
so that population was less than half the peak by 1000 c.e., significant numbers
were still present. Perhaps another two centuries before population in the region
is gone are required in his reconstruction. Webster argued that Manahan’s settle-
ment does not necessarily indicate that others were not present, but Manahan
(2008) indicated that abandonment was quicker than Webster postulates.
Recent publication of research at La Milpa and Nakum also provides evidence
of a more protracted decline than perhaps was thought recently and supports
more Webster’s (2002) type of abandonment. Previous interpretation was that the
center of La Milpa, northwest Belize, saw a great Late/Terminal Classic increase
in population and monumental construction followed by a rapid abandonment
and interruption of numerous construction projects early in the ninth century
(Hammond and Tourtellot 2004). Recent research indicates that the site grew more
gradually than previously thought, although definitely population was greatest
at that time, and that construction and residence continued in the southern area
of the center by members of the royal lineage until the tenth century (Zaro and
Houk 2012). Although major building appears to have stopped, there continued
to be small renovations to an elite residence and continued deposition of arti-
facts. Although the royal lineage had lost political power, it took three to nine
generations for the abandonment to be complete (Zaro and Houk 2012:157). There
appears to have been a clear, rapid diminution of the political sphere and then a
more gradual decline until the center was abandoned.
As other important centers, such as Tikal or Naranjo, declined, the site
of Nakum in northeastern Guatemala saw its florescence during the Terminal
Classic when it expanded in construction and population (Zralka and Hermes
2012). Nakum’s location on the Holmul River allowed the center to function as
a port and control commercial activities. The surviving Maya sites in the Early
Postclassic were more focused on coastal and riverine locations and became
more commercially connected to each other and more of Mesoamerica. Nakum
foreshadowed what was to come. However, this Terminal Classic period was
relatively short, probably ending mid-tenth century, and then the site was largely
abandoned, with only scarce evidence of late Early Postclassic settlers (Zralka
and Hermes 2012).
Nakum’s population probably began to decline before the end of the Termi-
nal Classic (Zralka and Hermes 2012), but it appears that political fall and then
population decline happened rapidly. Thus, even while Holy Lords came to new
prominence in new sites, such as Nakum and Xunantunich (LeCount and Yaeger
2011), the political system had already been fatally destabilized. Even given the
political fragmentation characteristic of the Classic Maya, that particular type of
rulership was not able to endure.
Archaeologists have been able to identify postabandonment settlement and

activities in many Classic Maya centers, often attributed to pilgrims or squatters
(Stanton and Magnoni 2008). Archaeologically, these settlements are identified by
their stratigraphic position, reuse of stones, less-“sturdy” architecture, and differ-
ent material culture remains in middens. Archaeologically, an Early Postclassic
occupation should be obvious if it was of any size. Instead, the rather ephemeral
remains indicate that the large populations of the Late and Terminal Classic pe-
riods were no longer present. These postcollapse occupations seem to have been
short in time, and the areas then left empty (Stanton and Magnoni 2008).
Most Maya researchers do document peak populations during the Late Clas-
sic. Across the southern lowlands, archaeological evidence indicated a dramatic
increase of population during the Late Classic compared to the Early Classic, as
in recent data from the Xunantunich area that indicate a dramatic increase in the
rural population (Yaeger 2011), as well as the evidence for high rates of popula-
tion growth at Copán compared to the Early Classic (Webster 2002). That there
was ultimately a mismatch between people and agricultural resources underlies
many theories about the collapse. The evidence of terraces, check dams, and other
agricultural features, as found in the Xunantunich area, is used to counter the
argument that the Maya degraded their environment and instead suggests that
the Maya could have produced enough food for the population. However, the
population grew during the Late Classic, and many researchers are inclined to
think that this caused problems through time for Maya farming practices directed
toward supporting the population. Even at Caracol, where there are extensive
agricultural terraces and perhaps an attempt to extend its hegemony during the
Terminal Classic (Chase and Chase 2004), the site was abandoned, and the popu-
lation did not regenerate there.
Climate change and strong drought periods have become new favorite causes
for the collapse. Some weaknesses in the argument include that Maya centers on
rivers were some of the first to have royal dynasties fall; some of those without riv-
ers, such as Caracol and Tikal, lasted a little longer (McAnany and Gallareta 2010).
Also, the drier northern Yucatan Puuc sites had their short florescence while there
was drought. However, modern scholars are not looking for prime movers but a
set of important interacting factors. Drought could destabilize agrarian societies,
which could cause problems to linked polities where climate change was not as
visible. People moving to apparently prospering places could put pressure on the
population-resource balance, even with agricultural terracing and other means
of intensification. The loss of tribute and trade from collapsed polities could also
have affected polities that were somewhat dependent on those economic inputs.
Besides, for some river sites like Copán, the river probably was not preferred for
potable water, as it was probably too muddy from agricultural runoff as it is today,
and there is no evidence that it was used to irrigate land. Thus, some springs, small
creeks, and artificial reservoirs were the source of at least clean-looking water
and might have failed after several years of drought, apart from the potential ef-
fects on agricultural productivity. McNeil (2012) has evidence that drought was
perhaps present at Copán near the end as well. The river levels would probably
also have dropped, which might have disturbed its navigation for trade, like the
Usumacinta at Piedras Negras. Thus, drought at some centers could have caused
almost domino-like falls at other centers.
It appears more and more that drought and lack of water for agriculture
and potable water for residents may be the factors that unsettled social and
political organizations and led to collapse. It seems likely that the large popula-
tions of the Late Classic had already pushed the Maya to adapt agriculturally
quickly, and lack of water for crops and humans may have increased mortality
and emigration. A recent synthesis of the climatic data indicates that there was
in general a 40 percent drop in precipitation, mostly in the failure of summer
rains and tropical storms, which help Yucatan’s water budget (Medina-Elizade
and Rohling 2012). Medina-Elizade and Rohling (2012) note that the drought
was of subtle variability but could have had a high impact on an agrarian so-
ciety. This collapse did have a strong environmental cause, to which the Maya
could have had a hard time adapting. The rulers and elites may not have been
able to respond effectively because of their strong control only of times of war
and of ritual performance to keep the cosmos and their polities in harmony and
prosperity (Demarest 2004). Increasing conflict and tribute demands from their
farmers and conquered polities to support themselves, plus eventually a clear
failure to deliver prosperity in the face of climate challenges, and widespread
conflict, brought down the Holy Lords. This was a slow collapse because it took
almost three centuries from the earliest ends of cities in the western lowlands to
the end of Yucatan centers like Chichén Itzá for the abandonment, faster in some
centers and areas and slower in others.
The problem with ignoring collapse is that to do so is to ignore the human
tragedy that befell so many people by the end of the Terminal Classic. We cannot
think of any contemporary Maya researcher who denies that the Maya continued
and have been resilient up to contemporary times. Many Classic period people
were lost, possibly to violence, drought, and poor living conditions. There are no
mass graves indicative of quick catastrophes, so it was decline caused by higher
mortality and lower fertility for more than a century than had been the case in
earlier periods (Webster 2002).
The Maya collapse is the abandonment of an area, mostly the southern low-
lands. From some descriptions of the population density of individual areas,
such as surprisingly dense populations around and between centers, it is now
apparent that several million people were in the area. Total estimates are as high
as around five million, although Webster (2002) estimates the population was
closer to half of that. However, no one has evidence that several million people
showed up in Belize, the Petén lakes, coastal Yucatan, or the Maya Highlands as
polities collapsed. Most researchers gloss over the size of population that was
lost. Just as the case with some Late Roman archaeologists, some Mayanists are
claiming that the people were there, just archaeologically invisible, as Lucero
(2006) suggests. Or, the Postclassic structures are not easily seen in the tropical
Maya lowlands, as Chase and Chase (2006) hypothesize. As we found the Late
Romanists’ arguments unconvincing, so we find these Mayanists’ pronounce-
ments doubtful. In this case, maybe the Postclassic populations are invisible
because they simply were not there.
Furthermore, according to the Spaniards’ accounts, four centuries later, this

Maya countryside was empty. As Webster (2012:332) puts it, what had been a
populous area of polities, institutions, agricultural strategies, landscapes, and
ideologies that had lasted for hundreds of years in some places disappeared within
a couple of centuries; to call it a collapse is as reasonable a term as any for this
phenomenon. There is a Classic Maya Collapse, and it needs explanation.
As Webster (2002) points out, the true mystery of the Copán collapse is why
this area that still appeared to have good agricultural potential should have re-
mained virtually empty from perhaps 1200 c.e. to the second half of the nineteenth
century; others would put the beginning of abandonment two centuries earlier
for an even-longer abandonment. That is really the mystery about the Classic
Maya, and why it seems reasonable to call it a collapse. A large population was
lost and not replaced.
The Postclassic world of the Maya continues in the highlands of Guatemala
and Chiapas, Mexico, and in the lowlands on the coasts of Yucatan and Belize
(Figure 5-6). The contrast with Figure 5-4 is dramatic, for the sites in Figure 5-6
are mostly along the coast with few inland; the heartland of the Classic Maya, at
the bottom of the map, has only a few sites. For Maya commoners, households of
extended kin living together, the importance of lineage and the local community,
their ancestor veneration, and household rituals continue in much the same way
they had earlier (Demarest 2004). There is more specialization of producers, dif-
ferent material culture, and currency. It is a world where there was an increase in
long-distance trade and a commercialized economy, including the sale of maize
and cotton by farmers and more exchange through markets (Kepecs 2003). The
lowlands is a mosaic of small, competitive polities each with elites, more family-
based ancestor veneration, a more truncated calendar, and different polity ritu-
als. Lacking are the grand architecture of palaces and temples, the Long Count
calendar, the elaborate rituals about rulers’ ancestors, and art about the rulers
that had been such a large part of the Classic Maya Great Tradition. There is defi-
nitely continuity into the Postclassic period, recognizably Maya, but it is a new
Great Tradition (Figure 5-7). Tulum, an important Postclassic center, has smaller
monumental architecture and a defensive wall, compared to the larger temples
and open plazas of Classic period Tikal (Figure 5-8), an illustration of some dif-
ferences between the two Maya civilizations.
Conclusions
It may seem as if the Roman Empire and the Classic Maya are such
disparate social and political entities that there cannot be similarities as to how
they collapsed. However, both had trouble with increasing violence, with elites
who both failed the institutions of governance and actively caused them to
become burdensome, and with climate change and agricultural problems. All
these were factors that led to the end, even though the particulars are different.
The process unfolds in both cases as what we have defined as slow collapse. The
political fall, although becoming unstable for some time, is relatively sudden
Figure 5-6. Map of the Postclassic Maya sites in the lowlands. The Classic
Maya “heartland” (bottom of the map) now has few sites. (Adapted from de
la Cova 1997.)
and complete. It is the loss of population, the infrastructure that held the so-
ciety together, and the Great Tradition that takes longer to disappear, at least
several centuries.
Collapse seems virtually never a complete loss of a culture and a people. The
city of Rome certainly continued and had a new florescence during the Renais-
sance, while populations continued and eventually grew again in the old parts
Figure 5-7. Central temple (Castillo), central area of Tulum, a Postclassic

Maya center in Yucatan. The more compact central area and smaller buildings
are typical of this period. A defensive wall surrounds the Tulum central area.
(Photo by Rebecca Storey.)
Figure 5-8. Great Plaza of Tikal, partial view, one of the largest of the Classic
Maya centers. Temple 2 is in the center with the stelas, and the North Acropolis
buildings are to the right. (Photo by Rebecca Storey.)
of the Western Roman Empire. After the disappearance of the Roman Empire,
Europe was in what is commonly called the Dark Ages for a reason. The Maya do
continue to today, but the area that had been the heartland of the Classic Maya
lowlands was abandoned and stood virtually empty for centuries. The process
was one of slow collapse, and in the case of the Maya, this refers both to the pro-
cess of abandonment of an area and duration that took several centuries for the
process to be completed from the western lowlands to northern Yucatan. To call
this abandonment solely a transition is to ignore a human tragedy and to not rec-
ognize the creative reformulation of the surviving Maya. Classic Maya culture is
gone, and that should be recognized and not abandoned as the focus of research.
These possible results of the collapse require more explanation. Gunn and Folan
(2001) suggest that the collapse concentrated people near coasts and lakes. The
resulting adaptation of sea trade then discouraged resettlement in the interior
lowlands. Gunn and Folan also suggest that perhaps cultural memories of the
human ills of the collapse kept people from resettling the area.
It is possible this area had been damaged in a way that was not conducive to
recolonization by the Maya way of life until many centuries had passed. Human
use of land can have long-term effects on the biota of an environment, partly by
changes in the soil chemistry. While the forests apparently returned quickly,
the underlying soil may have been too impoverished for milpa farming or was
perhaps unbalanced by the products of human waste and garbage. More likely,
the population crash was so severe that there was really no population to expand
into new areas for a couple of centuries. The highlands and coastal Yucatan were
also such congenial environments for Maya adaptations and intensification of
agriculture or resource extraction that there was no need to return to what had
been a more difficult environment. We hope that the increasing investigation of
climate by agricultural and ecological scientists will find more answers to this
important mystery about the Classic Maya.
Humans tend to be a resilient species, and it is not uncommon for human
populations and societies to rebound after a catastrophe (McAnany and Yoffee
2010; Schwartz 2006), as other chapters in this volume testify. Several chapters
are devoted to formal resilience theory, which has been borrowed from ecology
(Holling 1973; Holling and Gunderson 2002; Redman 2005). Our introductory
discussion illustrates how we think slow collapse can be addressed in terms of
resilience theory. However, to us, resilience of cultures is a given and inherent
in the anthropological study of collapse. Our model of slow collapse successfully
accounts for this, because if cultural collapse is slow, there is time for readapta-
tion and new adaptation that is evolving as the old cultural system slows down
and comes to a halt. This facilitates the regeneration of a new complex society
on the ruins of the old or, as often, in slightly different places from the old
system. That is certainly what happened for both the Maya and the Romans,
and it is more consonant with the evidence of all the collapses that have been
studied. This is perhaps the most important lesson from the end of the Roman
Empire and the Classic Maya collapse, that there is almost always regeneration
or resiliency but not necessarily in the same place as before nor in the same
cultural manifestation.
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6. A Historical Processual Approach
to Continuity and Change in Classic
and Postclassic Yucatan
Scott Hutson, Iliana Ancona Aragón,

Miguel Covarrubias Reyna, Zachary Larsen,
Katie Lukach, Shannon E. Plank, Richard E. Terry,
and Willem Vanessendelft
Abstract: In the Early Classic period (ca. a.d. 250–600 ), the local center of Ucí,
in the northern Maya lowlands, reached the height of its power, material-
ized by an 18 km long stone causeway connecting Ucí to smaller centers,
such as Kancab and Ucanha, as well as several small villages. The decline
of Ucí resulted in demographic transformations and continuities as well as
changes in local political organization that are not easily predicted by a cycli-
cal understanding of complex societies. For example, after the decline of Ucí,
the inhabitants of Santa Teresa, a small village 6 km to the northeast, built a
ballcourt that also hosted ceremonies involving food consumption. Earlier
villages did not have such spaces for community-wide events. Thus, after
Ucí’s decline, hinterland villages did not cycle back to an earlier evolutionary
stage of decentralized existence. Rather, the community reorganization at
Santa Teresa and elsewhere represents a new step in a historically particular
political trajectory. We therefore espouse a historical-processual model, rooted
in structuration theory, for understanding continuity and change. This model
helps us to understand a second set of processes that occurred later in the
region: demographic continuity in the Classic to Postclassic transition and
the Postclassic reuse of the Classic period central plaza at Kancab. The former
process adds yet another case study to the growing understanding that if
there was such a thing as a Maya “collapse” at the end of the Classic period,

Paper No. 42. © 2016 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University. Chapter 6 copyright
© 2016 by Scott R. Hutson. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
124
A Historical Processual Approach to Continuity and Change 125
it was at best partial and limited to only some areas of the Maya world. The
latter process shows that Postclassic reuse of Classic period spaces was not an
unreflexive continuation of previous practices but, rather, a strategic attempt
to authorize and make understandable a new form of authority by locating it
in a deeply traditional landscape.
Arguably the most notorious word among Mayanists in the last couple
of decades has been collapse. This shibboleth has been both boon and scourge to
the discipline. Widespread and romantic misunderstandings about a mysteriously
vanished rainforest civilization benefit Mayanists, getting us in the news, securing
us more research support, and drawing more undergraduates to our classes. At
the same time, the word makes most of us wince, quickly eliciting reassurances
that the seven million contemporary speakers of native Maya languages stand as
proof that there was no collapse. We also wince because the word collapse implies
that the society that collapsed was a failure. The subtitle of Diamond’s book Col-
lapse clearly implies this: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Diamond 2005).
The cover of the book features Maya buildings from the ruined, and presumably
failed, city of Edzna. The course of Maya history, like the trajectory of all human
societies, does indeed contain failures, but these are counterbalanced by successes
(McAnany and Gallareta 2010). At the same time, most changes are neither un-
equivocal successes nor failures but something complicated that falls in between
these two extremes. This middle ground can indeed be found in the northern
Maya lowlands, home to both Edzna and our own research. In this chapter, we
use data from the region of Ucí (Figure 6-1) to address two instances of continuity
and reorganization. The first instance concerns a response to the weakening of a
small, centralized polity in the Late Classic (ca. a.d. 600–900). The second instance
concerns perseverance and change in the subsequent time period, when other
powerful polities diminished amidst alleged droughts.
In discussing these two instances of continuity and reorganization, we ad-
dress the nature of social and political change. Many of the papers in this volume
utilize a cyclical model of change in which societies progress through a series
of stages outlined by Holling and Gunderson (2002): exploitation, conservation,
release, and reorganization, followed by new cycles or spirals of exploitation,
conservation, release, and reorganization. In contrast to cyclical models, histori-
cal models try to understand change in a particular society not with the help of
general stages but, rather, with the expectation that the previous social, economic,
and political structures specific to that society constrain but do not determine
later developments. What came before has an effect on what happens next. In
other words, meanings, traditions, and conventions guide practices and events,
but these practices and events can play out in unexpected ways. Unexpected
results transform the original meanings, traditions, and conventions but do not
eliminate them completely. In his article “Practice and History in Archaeology,”
Pauketat (2001) calls this approach historical processualism and acknowledges
fundamental links with structuration theory.
126 S. Hutson et al.
Figure 6-1. Map of the northern Maya lowlands. Many locations are men-
tioned in the text.
Historical processualism has clear implications for understanding cases

where complexity and/or centralization decrease. Whereas cyclical models em-
phasize some of the general similarities in the trajectories of diverse societies,
the historical processual model emphasizes the ways in which each historical
trajectory is unique. Though reminiscent of the early twentieth-century his-
torical particularism, historical processualism differs, because the recursive
relation between structure and agency replaces diffusionism as the mechanism
of change.
Historical and cyclical models are not necessarily incompatible. For example,
Schwartz and Nichols’s edited volume After Collapse: The Regeneration of Complex
Societies (2006) contains case studies in which societies collapse and become less
complex but then undergo regeneration resulting in increased complexity. At an
abstract scale, such cases could be construed as confirming a cyclical pattern in
the waxing and waning of complexity. At the same time, at the scale of the specific
case study, many examples in the book, such as the transition from Bronze Age
to Archaic Greece (Morris 2006) or the transition from the Early Middle Horizon
to the Late Intermediate period in the Nasca Valley, Peru (Conlee 2006), show
evidence of transformations, particularly in the political sphere, that are histori-
cally contingent. For example, the Greek case sees not just a decrease and then
increase in complexity but a shift from kings to democracies. We argue that such
specific though profound changes are not well understood by subsuming them
under broad cycles.
At the level of specific case studies, two concrete and contrasting examples
of political change from Mesoamerica help flesh out the differences between the
cyclical and historical approaches. We take Marcus’s 1993 chapter on ancient
Maya political organization as an example of a cyclical model because it was
developed using data from the same region as our own study: the northern
Maya lowlands. In her well-known contribution, Marcus observes fluctuations
in political complexity from the end of the Classic period (approximately a.d.
900) to Spanish Conquest. These fluctuations represent movements from peaks of
political complexity, represented by a large regional state, to troughs of political
complexity, represented by multiple autonomous provinces. Stability underlies
these fluctuations in that the basic political units, the provinces, persevere across
all time periods. These basic units, essentially building blocks, consist of either
strong or weak alliances of towns, with or without leaders above the level of
the town head. Change consists of the building blocks consolidating into larger
states or larger states breaking back down into the constituent building blocks.
The building blocks themselves do not appear to change nor does the nature
of authority.
Joyce’s 2008 history of political change on the Oaxaca coast provides an
example of the historical processual model. Like Yucatan, the Lower Rio Verde
Valley in Oaxaca also presents shifts to and from centralized polities. During
the first period of political centralization, in the Terminal Formative (100 b.c.
to a.d. 250), rulers could not emphasize their individual power because they
were constrained by the communal and corporate principles that developed
in the Late Formative and continued in the Terminal Formative. Archaeologi-
cally, corporate principles are seen in community-wide feasts, repetitive use of
communal ceremonial spaces, burial of people from a variety of status levels in
communal cemeteries, and modifications of those burials that can be interpreted
to emphasize the importance of the collectivity and downplay individual differ-
ences (Joyce 2008:224–225; Barber and Joyce 2007). Amidst this communal ethos,
the leaders of Río Viejo, the emergent Terminal Formative regional center, did
not erect stone monuments identifying them as rulers. An increase in inequal-
ity accompanied the emergence of a political capital in the Terminal Formative.
The first high-status residences as well as increased long-distance exchange
networks that brought green stone and iron ore to some burials helped form a
noble identity. Joyce argues that this tension led to the collapse of centralization
at the beginning of the Early Classic. Centralization occurred again in the Late
Classic, but the form of authority taken by Late Classic leaders was qualitatively
different from that of the Terminal Formative: Late Classic leaders initiated the
practice of portraying themselves on carved stone monoliths. Thus, in Joyce’s
view, history cannot be predicted by a general model: new instances of central-
ization are not returns to previous stages through which that society has already
cycled. Each point is unique, though contingent upon and partly constrained by
antecedent conditions. Thus, political dynamics are not cycles of centralization
and decentralization.
Figure 6-2. Map of the Ucí-Cansahcab causeway showing the location of

sites researched by the Ucí-Cansahcab Regional Integration Project (UCRIP)
Background
The site of Ucí has drawn attention from Maya archaeologists because
of an 18 km long stone causeway that connects it to several smaller sites, terminat-
ing at the site of Cansahcab (Figure 6-2). The causeway between Ucí and Cansahcab
is unusual because the vast majority of raised stone causeways, also called sacbes
in the Maya lowlands, are less than 200 m long and connect important buildings
within the core of single sites (Shaw 2008). Figure 6-1 shows the only other inter-
site causeways in the northern Maya lowlands. If one thing is clear about Ucí’s
sacbe, it is that it indexes regional integration. One could not find a more obvious
indicator of integration between sites than a long, stone platform that physically
connects those same sites. Moreover, these platforms required hundreds if not
thousands of people to build them. Ucí’s causeway measures between 6 m and
9 m wide and between .2 m and 1.1 m high. The sacbe did not tower over the
landscape, but over 50,000 m3 of stone were needed to build it. The large amount
of labor required to build the causeway means that the interactions between Ucí
and its neighbors penetrated into a broad swath of society.
In 2008 Hutson initiated the Ucí-Cansahcab Regional Integration Project
(UCRIP) as an attempt to understand the purpose of the causeway and the nature
of regional integration. UCRIP combines systematic research along the causeway
with research at the endpoints. Building on fieldwork by Maldonado (1995) be-
tween 1979 and 1982, UCRIP’s four field seasons have established six points that
will set the stage for the reorganizations discussed later in this chapter. First, the
causeway was constructed toward the end of the Late Preclassic (a.d. 1–250). Exca-
vations across the sacbe at the small, rural site of 21 de Abril revealed Middle and
Late Preclassic pottery in the fill of the sacbe. The domestic compound closest to
this trench (about 20 m away) has ceramics from the same periods but also from the
Early Classic. Since none of the Early Classic garbage from this household ended
up in the fill of the sacbe, we believe that the builders completed the construction
of the causeway in the Late Preclassic.
Second, prior to the construction of the causeway, the settlement pattern
around Ucí contained small villages with no public architecture. These villages
include, at the least, 21 de Abril, Ticopo-2, and Santa Teresa, each of which has
modest amounts of Middle Preclassic ceramics. Of the three sites in the microre-
gion that have monumental architecture (Ucí, Kancab, and Ucanha), we do not
yet know how early these monuments were built. Though Ucí’s largest buildings
exhibit a Late Preclassic/Early Classic construction style, they may bury a Middle
Preclassic core; Middle Preclassic monumental architecture has been well docu-
mented at other sites in northwest Yucatan, such as Xocnaceh and Poxila (Bey
2006). At Kancab, Middle Preclassic sherds are at the bottom levels of the central
plaza, and small quantities of Middle Preclassic ceramics are in seven of the other
sixteen contexts excavated.
Third, Ucí was the political capital of the region. The site covered an estimated
7.5 km2 and contained about 900 households. Ucí also has the largest architecture
in the vicinity of the causeway, with about 111,000 m3 of mound volume in the
seven largest architectural compounds. This estimate surely underrepresents an-
cient mound volume at Ucí because bulldozers removed substantial fill from the
site core to build a road in the 1950s. Two other sites along the causeway, Ucanha
and Kancab, also have large mounds. After Ucí, these sites are the second and
third largest in the vicinity of the causeway. The sum of the mound volume of
the largest buildings at Ucanha and Kancab is less than half that of Ucí. Kancab
has only a sixth of the households and covers a sixth of the area of Ucí. A survey
conducted in 2013 suggests that Ucanha was twice as large as Kancab but a third
the size of Ucí. Though Ucí was the dominant site on the causeway, we have rea-
son to believe that Ucanha and Kancab retained a degree of autonomy in terms
of ritual expression (Hutson and Welch 2014). Furthermore, Ucí itself may have
been a vassal or client of the immensely larger site of Izamal, located 37 km to
the southeast.
Fourth, Ucí reached its peak during or soon after the causeway’s construc-
tion and went into decline during the Late Classic. Surface collections and a small
sample of test pits reported by Maldonado (1995) suggest Ucí reached the height of
its occupation during the Late Preclassic and/or Early Classic. In particular, a test
pit within structure E1N1-2, the third tallest pyramid at Ucí, revealed that only the
top .5 m of this 9.5 m high structure was built after the Early Classic. UCRIP has
not yet excavated at Ucí, so our assessment of Ucí’s peak and decline is tentative.
Nevertheless, UCRIP’s systematic mapping of the site and nonsystematic surface
collections lend support to the data Maldonado collected. For example, many of
the platforms at the site are megalithic. The megalithic construction style, which
features large, dressed facing stones laid horizontally in the platform retaining
walls, dates to the Late Preclassic and Early Classic in the vicinity of Ucí and
elsewhere (Burgos et al. 2006; Mathews 2001; Mathews and Maldonado 2006).
Though megalithic structures at other sites, such as Kancab, were reoccupied in
the Late Classic, Terminal Classic, and Postclassic periods, in such cases potsherds
from these time periods are abundant and easily visible on the ground surface
(potsherds from the Late Preclassic and Early Classic are never abundant on the
surface). Much to the distress of students instructed to make surface collections at
Ucí, nearly all of Ucí’s megalithic constructions lack potsherds on their surfaces or
off to the sides. Thus, architectural style suggests a Late Preclassic/Early Classic
florescence at Ucí, and the lack of later ceramics, which are normally abundant
when present, suggests little or no continuity or reoccupation into the Late Classic.
When we speak of a decline at Ucí, we refer to a reduction both in the demography
as well as the scale of monumental construction, though we admit we crave more
data to support this.
Fifth, the time when Ucí reached its peak and when the causeway was built
also saw a peak in occupation at other sites in the region that have been tested
thus far. For example, test excavations in a representative sample of platforms at
21 de Abril, located on the causeway about 4.5 km east of Ucí, show that the site
reached its maximum occupation during the Early Classic. At the much larger
site of Kancab, which has about 140 households covering about 1.2 km2, we have
excavated in 13 households and four architectural contexts that appear to be pri-
marily ceremonial. Twelve of the thirteen households and all four ceremonial
contexts yielded pottery from the Early Classic (common Early Classic ceramic
groups include Oxil, Shangurro, Huachinango, and Carolina found in contexts
with ceramic groups that have earlier origins but continue into the Early Clas-
sic, such as Xanaba and Saban). At least eight of these households and three of
the four ceremonial contexts were definitively occupied earlier. Thus, Ucí’s rise
and the construction of the causeway coincided with a peak in the occupation of
hinterland sites.
Sixth, people in the hinterland did not appear to receive any material ben-
efits from the regional integration symbolized by the causeway. Exotic artifacts,
such as obsidian and polychrome pottery, are scarce in Late Preclassic and Early
Classic contexts. At Kancab, 271 m2 of excavations down to bedrock, spread over
17 different locations, yielded only two prismatic obsidian blade fragments that
pertain to Late Preclassic or Early Classic contexts. Furthermore, of the 8,196 sherds
recovered from excavations at Kancab, only two (both Timucuy orange) come
from Early Classic polychrome pots. At 21 de Abril, 386 m2 of excavations down
to bedrock, spread over 11 different architectural contexts, yielded only one small
piece of obsidian debitage. More polychrome pottery was found at 21 de Abril
(eight sherds of Tituc and 13 sherds of Timucuy out of 2,580 total sherds) than at
Kancab, though over half of these polychrome sherds came from a single platform
that housed the leaders of the community.
These six points form a baseline of information for moving forward into
the subsequent history of the region. Summing up, the Late Preclassic and Early
Classic were a time of political centralization, with a large capital at Ucí that
presided over regional population growth. Yet, at the peak of Ucí’s power, in the
Early Classic, the people that were incorporated into Ucí’s realm do not seem to
have benefitted from Ucí’s leadership. Moving into the Late Classic, Ucí appears
to decline, as discussed above. This sets the stage for the first instance of reorga-
nization and continuity discussed in this paper.
Figure 6-3. Topographic map of the ballcourts (Structures 8a and 8b) and
other structures at the core of the Santa Teresa site. Darker gray areas have
lower elevation.
Rural Innovation during the Decline of Ucí
In the Late Classic period, a surprising development occurred in Ucí’s

hinterland. Residents of the site of Santa Teresa, located 6 km northeast of Ucí and
2.5 km north of the causeway (see Figure 6-2), built a ballcourt. Ballcourts in the
Maya area have a central alley flanked by parallel sloping mounds. The eastern
mound at Santa Teresa, Structure 8a, measures 26 m by 6.5 m, reaching a height
of 1.2 m; the western mound, 8b, measures 22 m by 6 m and also reaches a height
of 1.2 m (Figure 6-3). The long axis of the mounds is 10° east of north, and the
alley between them is 8 m wide. Stone carvings and painted pottery from other
parts of the Maya area show ballplayers padded up and poised to knock the ball
with their hips. Reconnaissance of Santa Teresa in 2009 registered 30 platforms
in an area of approximately 40 ha. No platforms stand more than 1.5 m tall. We
excavated in the vicinity of seven platforms, and most of the ceramics from these
platforms date to the Late Classic.
We conducted excavations at Structures 8a and 8b in 2010 and 2011 in order

to see whether these structures comprised a ballcourt, to explore other activities
that took place there, and to get firm dates for construction and use. Excavations
consisted of a network of ninety-five 50 cm by 50 cm pits placed at the corners of a
5 m by 5 m grid (Figure 6-4). We also excavated test pits placed opportunistically
at the corners of buildings and the center of the alley and in areas where the 50 cm
by 50 cm pits turned up lots of sherds. Finally, we excavated 58 m2 of the northern
part of Structure 8a. The latter excavations exposed a long, rectangular platform
that was widened twice in antiquity (Figure 6-5). We did not find masonry sloped
in the direction of the alley (a common feature of other ballcourts), but the alley
itself had a flat-stone pavement that created a level and bouncy playing surface.
On the periphery of the building, below the level of the walls, we exposed several
massive, irregularly distributed stones. We suspect that these stones pertain to
an earlier construction that was disturbed. In sum, certain aspects of Structures
8a and 8b suggest that this compound was not a ballcourt (the alley is somewhat
wide, sloped masonry is missing), but we should not expect hinterland ballcourts
to be exact copies of the better-known ballcourts from sites like Uxmal and Chi-
chén Itzá. The general shape, orientation, and dimensions as well as the presence
of the pavement in the alley convince us that this was a ballcourt.
Ceramics from the ballcourt come from types that were produced from the
Middle Preclassic all the way to the Postclassic. However, our excavations did not
uncover any sealed ceramic contexts, and many excavation contexts had ceramics
from multiple time periods. Of the classifiable sherds from the block excavations
(184 of 242), 76 percent date to the Late Classic (67 of these 184 sherds are from
types that are known to have been produced in the Terminal Classic as well as
the Late Classic, but the absence of pure Terminal Classic sherds suggests that
these Late Classic/Terminal Classic sherds were produced in the Late Classic); 15
percent of the sherds predate the Late Classic, and 9 percent of the sherds date to
the Postclassic. Despite the small quantity of Postclassic pottery, no ballcourts are
known to have been built in this period at any other northern Maya lowland site
(Masson et al. 2006). The style of construction of the walls of the ballcourt structure
is not megalithic although there are megalithic stones in disturbed contexts at
lower elevations than the ballcourt walls. It appears that these stones might have
pertained to a Late Preclassic or Early Classic megalithic structure, which would
account for the 15 percent of the sherds that date to these periods. We place the
construction of the ballcourt in the Late Classic.
The 50 cm by 50 cm pits showed accumulations of ceramics off the back side
of the eastern mound (see Figure 6-4). The next nearest architectural compound is
about 50 meters to the east (see Figure 6-3), so it seems clear that the trash pertains
to the ballcourt. The ceramics from the 50 cm by 50 cm pits date to the Late Classic
and come from jars and food-service bowls and plates. Quantitative phosphate
analysis of soil samples from each of the 50 cm by 50 cm pits showed that the
highest phosphate readings came from precisely the area with the highest density
of ceramics (see Figure 6-4). High phosphates generally accumulate where organic
materials have been deposited. In phosphate analyses from previous excavations
in the Maya area, the highest phosphate readings come from areas where food was
Figure 6-4. Map of Santa Teresa ballcourt showing the location of the ninety-
five 50 cm by 50 cm test pits, the large test pits, and the distribution of ceramics
and phosphate concentrations.
prepared and/or consumed and deposited (e.g., Dahlin et al. 2007). In summary,
the ceramic and chemical evidence support the hypothesis that food consumption
took place behind the ballcourt to the east. Our excavations at the ballcourt also
recovered three small shell adornments. Only two other adornments have been
found in all other UCRIP excavations, and neither of these date to the Late Clas-
sic. Thus, activities at the ballcourt involved a degree of ceremony and pageantry.
The ballcourt was located at the center of the Santa Teresa site and, as Figure 6-3
shows, was not connected with any other residential settlement. Thus, the ballcourt
served the site as a whole, as opposed to a single household or residential group.
Combined, these lines of evidence (ceramics, adornments, soil chemistry,
and location within Santa Teresa) suggest that the ballcourt was an arena for
community-level sport, ceremony, and commensal politics. Archaeologists in
Mesoamerica recognize ballcourts as materializations of community solidarity,
as stages for rituals that enable communication with supernaturals, and as nodes
of political action where local leaders negotiate their relations with other leaders
Figure 6-5. Plan of block excavations on the north end of Structure 8a, a Santa
Teresa ballcourt, showing location and stone walls.
through ballgames, ceremonies, and/or feasts (Fox 1996; Gillespie 1991; Miller and
Houston 1987; Schele and Freidel 1991).
Given that Classic period ballcourts in northern Yucatan are mostly con-
fined to the largest sites (Kurjack et al. 1991), the case of Santa Teresa brings up
the question of why a small, rural community hosted the ballgame and its as-
sociated ceremonies. The same question can be asked of other Maya ballcourts
found beyond regional centers. In the northwest corner of the Yucatan peninsula,
Andrews and Robles (2004) recorded 25 new ballcourts, 23 dating to the Middle
Preclassic and almost all located at small sites with little evidence for politi-
cal centralization. In the Classic, ballcourts at peripheral sites include Chawak
But’o’ob in northern Belize (Walling et al. 2006), Los Achiotes in the Copán Val-
ley (Canuto and Fash 2004), Trinidad de Nosotros in Guatemala (Moriarty 2012),
and Abalá and Yaxkukul in Yucatan (Mazeau 2005; Smith 2001). Whereas each
of these Classic period ballcourts was built when nearby centers were powerful,
Santa Teresa stands apart because it was built when its nearby center, Ucí, was in
decline. People at Santa Teresa may have taken over rituals that were no longer
being performed successfully at the withering regional center (see also Joyce et
al. 2014; Robin et al. 2014).
Returning to a main theme of this book—reorganization after the decline of
regional centers—these data show that Ucí’s decline sparked a new development
not yet witnessed in the region: the rise of a political and ceremonial venue—the
ballcourt—in the center of a small farming community. The materialization of
community-level political and ritual action at Santa Teresa supports the historical
processual model in that a small village began to participate more vigorously in
power relations after the episode of centralization at Ucí. In a cyclical model, we
would expect the Early Classic polity to break back down into its constituent build-
ing blocks—small villages without public architecture—and we would expect no
change in these building blocks. Santa Teresa does not meet this expectation, nor
does 21 de Abril, at which most of the platforms were abandoned. At the same
time, some aspects of the archaeological record do seem to return to the pre-Ucí
status quo. For example, Ticopo-2 continued to be occupied as a small village
without public architecture.
Continuity and Change amidst the “Collapse”
At the end of the Late Classic, many large Maya cities lost most of
their population and witnessed the disappearance of centralized rulership in the
form of holy kings. In the tenth century, northern Maya cities, such as Uxmal and
Dzibilchaltun, exhibit this pattern (Andrews et al. 2003). Yet, while Uxmal and
Dzibilchaltun fell, Chichén Itzá surged, adopting an international outlook and an
authority structure quite different from the earlier institution of the holy ruler.
Thus, we find both failures and successes at the end of the Classic but also some-
thing in between, as we discuss shortly with our own data. Yet, no discussion of
this transition would be complete without identifying the elephant in the room:
vociferous claims that the collapse of Maya cities was due to prolonged droughts
(Gill et al. 2007). We first discuss the potential impact of drought on political
reorganization at the end of the Classic before returning to data from UCRIP.
Proxy data for declines in precipitation at the end of the Classic have come
from near and far: levels of titanium in sediment cores from the Cariaco basin
off the coast of Venezuela (Haug et al. 2003), calcium concentrations in ice cores
from Greenland (Mayewski et al. 1997), and stable isotopes in stalagmites from
Belize (Webster et al. 2007). Some of the best data, however, come directly from
the region that we are attempting to understand: the northern Maya lowlands. We
consider these local data to be most germane to our case study. Analysis of gypsum
precipitates and oxygen isotopes in a series of cores from Lake Chichancanab,
located approximately 90 km south of Chichén Itzá (see Figure 6-1), shows two
dry periods, one from about a.d. 770 to a.d. 870, the other from about a.d. 920 to
a.d. 1100 (Hodell, Brenner, and Curtis 2005). The second dry period corresponds
well with the tenth-century collapses of Uxmal and Dzibilchaltun, but the major
period of growth of these two cities was the ninth century, the time of the first
drought (Andrews and Andrews 1980; Dunning and Kowalski 1994; Yaeger and
Hodell 2008). Furthermore, the preeminence of Chichén Itzá occurs during the
second drought period. Put bluntly, the timing of the rise and fall of the great
Northern lowland cities does not match up well with the timing of the droughts.
Though Northern lowland cities fall during droughts, they also prosper during
droughts. Finally, sediment cores from the X’caamal aguada (reservoir), located
only 35 km north of Uxmal (see Figure 6-1), show no evidence of drought until the
fifteenth century (Hodell, Brenner, Curtis, Medina-Gonzalez, Can, Albornaz-Pat,
and Guilderson 2005). The safest conclusion to draw from these data is that there
are no simple cause-and-effect relations between climate data and sociopolitical
processes. The lack of a clear causal connection resides in the fact that politics is
not a climatological phenomenon. Politics is a human phenomenon, and in the face
of droughts or other challenges, humans have the ability to adjust (or not adjust)
political systems in a bewildering variety of ways, not all of which lead to collapse.
Thus far, our data on the Classic to Postclassic transition in the vicinity of Ucí
suggest neither the spectacular decline seen at Uxmal and Dzibilchaltun nor the
impressive growth seen at Chichén. To reiterate the fourth point in the background
section, Ucí is not an important part of the picture in the Terminal Classic and
Postclassic periods. Though we have less chronological data from Ucí than we do
from other sites along and near the causeway (a situation we plan to remedy in
future years), the data we have thus far suggest that Ucí was already in decline
during the Late Classic. Diagnostic features from Ucí’s largest buildings and ce-
ramics from stratigraphic excavations into structure E1N1-2 reveal that the vast
majority of construction dates to the Late Preclassic and Early Classic periods.
Though abundant pottery from the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods has
been found on the surface of several domestic contexts at sites, such as Ticopo-2,
21 de Abril, and Kancab, surface collections at Ucí lack strong Terminal Classic
and Postclassic components.
The most systematic data about the Classic to Postclassic transition come from
the site of Kancab. At Kancab, all 13 excavation contexts that have Late and/or
Terminal Classic ceramics also have Postclassic ceramics (Figure 6-6). Two of the
four contexts that lack Late and/or Terminal Classic ceramics do have Postclassic
ceramics. The Postclassic is very well represented at Kancab with as many sherds
dating to the Postclassic as to the Late Classic. Preservation conditions might ac-
count for this, because Postclassic sherds have had less time to decay, but then
again, Postclassic sherds generally do not preserve as well as the earlier and better-
made slatewares. In the spirit of parsimony, we can at least suggest that there is a
strong degree of continuity between the Classic and Postclassic periods at Kancab.
Finding stronger support for continuity between Classic and Postclassic has
been difficult for several reasons. To begin with, we found clear stratigraphy with
sealed contexts in only one architectural group (the central plaza, operation 4, see
Figure 6-6). Also, in the excavations without sealed contexts, pottery from differ-
ent time periods (e.g., Late Classic and Postclassic) was usually intermixed at all
depths. Finally, an important pottery ware—Puuc slate—was produced in more
than one time period: the Late Classic and the Terminal Classic. So, to get a better
handle on the chronology of contexts with a substantial amount of “late” pottery
(i.e., pottery from the Late Classic, Terminal Classic, and Postclassic periods), we
performed a frequency seriation. For a context to qualify as having a substantial
amount of late pottery and therefore be included in the seriation, it had to meet
two conditions. First, at least a third of the pottery had to be from these late pe-
riods. Second, each context needed at least 100 diagnostic sherds from these late
periods. Ten excavation contexts—eight from Kancab and two from Santa Teresa—
met these conditions and were therefore included in the frequency seriation. In
the seriation, we lumped pottery types into four chronological categories—Late
Classic, Late and Terminal Classic (Puuc slatewares), Terminal Classic (Chichén
slatewares), and Postclassic—and displayed the proportion of the total late pottery
accounted for by each of these four categories.
The seriation confirms a strong degree of continuity between Classic and
Postclassic (Figure 6-7). In other words, there is no clean break between contexts
dominated by Late Classic and Terminal Classic sherds and contexts dominated by
Postclassic sherds. Stated differently, most of the contexts have a good amount (at
least 30 percent) of both Late and Terminal Classic sherds and Postclassic sherds.
This is noteworthy because Postclassic residents often settled away from Classic
period platforms in other parts of the Maya world (Chase and Chase 2006).
Operation 4 at Kancab, at the top of the seriation, suggests both continuity
and disjunction. Operation 4 is in the central plaza at Kancab, and the presence
of deep and relatively clear stratigraphy as well as Postclassic architecture en-
ables detailed comments. Suboperation B, a 3 m by 2 m pit in the plaza in front of
Structure 1, a 7 m high pyramid, encountered a Postclassic altar near the surface, a
plaster floor at a depth of about 60 cm, and other floors farther below (Figure 6-8).
The altar resembles what Smith (1962:221) identified as “group altars” at Mayapan
(see below for more details on group altars). The floors were better preserved at
the northern edge of the pit, in the area of the pit closest to Structure 1. Presuming
that these floors continue northward to Structure 1, this building was most likely
completed by the time the top floor was constructed, if not earlier. Underneath the
top-most floor, 60 of 63 diagnostic sherds (95.2 percent) date to the Early Classic
or the Preclassic. We infer from these data that Structure 1 was built in the Early
Figure 6-6. Map of Kancab. Excavations have taken place in platforms with
ovals. All excavations with the exception of Op. 5 yielded Postclassic ceramics.
Shaded ovals have high proportions of Late Classic and Postclassic ceramics
and were included in the seriation in Figure 6-7.
Figure 6-7. Frequency seriation of ceramics from excavation operations with

large proportions of Late Classic, Terminal Classic, and Postclassic ceramics.
Classic or earlier. Above the Early Classic floor and below the Postclassic altar was
about 10 cm of dirt, suggesting either that the plaza was not fully maintained in
the Late Classic or that the builders of the Postclassic altar intentionally buried
the plaza before placing their altar. The former suggestion implies that the central
plaza at Kancab was not in use during the Late Classic, an example of disconti-
nuity strengthened by the fact that Postclassic sherds far outweigh Late Classic
sherds at Operation 4b. A second group altar was found but not fully exposed in
Suboperation A, a 3 m by 2 m pit in front of the other large pyramid on the plaza,
Structure 6. Before the stones of this altar were put in place, the builders deposited
a cache of two complete Postclassic spear points (see Figure 6-8) directly below
where the southernmost stone of the altar would be set.
Group altars are small, free-standing platforms in the middle or on the edge
of courtyards. The Carnegie project at the Postclassic center of Mayapan found
80 group altars (Smith 1962:221). At Mayapan, three quarters of them had no
walls above the platform, just like the two found in Kancab’s central plaza. At
Mayapan, group altars average 1 m to 2.5 m wide and 1 m to 4 m long. The fully
exposed Operation 4b altar at Kancab fits the low end of this size gradient, with
a surface area of .95 m2. Smith (1962) believes that group altars supported perish-
able shrines. Shrines and altars found in other contexts in Yucatan were used for
burning incense and holding idols (Andrews and Andrews 1975:62). Sixteen and
14 fragments of Chen Mul effigy censers were found in the vicinity of Operations
4a and 4b, respectively. Chen Mul censers depict deities and are unquestionably
the idols to which the sixteenth-century Spanish bishop Diego de Landa referred.
Chuchiak (2009) marshals ethnohistoric material to make the case that Contact-
period Maya people in Yucatan used effigies at altars to make offerings to gods in
return for rain, crops, good health, and other favors. Chase (1985) argues convinc-
ingly that some effigies were used in end-of-the-year rituals.
Figure 6-8. Postclassic altar and associated artifacts. Section 8a: plan view of
altar from Kancab Operation 4b. Section 8b: plan view of Kancab Operation 4a,
with exposed portion of altar at north (8a and 8b use the same 1 m scale bar).
Section 8c: plan of Kancab main plaza with locations of Operations 4a and 4b.
We see the altars, the caching of bifaces, and the incense-burning rituals in
Kancab’s central plaza as examples of continuity from Classic to Postclassic be-
cause the Postclassic occupants recognized the main plaza as the sacred core of
the site and reused it for their own ceremonies. At the same time, the reuse of the
central plaza is not an example of cycling back to the Early Classic, when the plaza
was in full swing. This is because Postclassic rituals were different from earlier
uses of the plaza. Furthermore, rather than building big temples, the Postclassic
people of Kancab were content to build tiny altars. This suggests that there was
a historical shift in the nature of authority from Classic to Postclassic (see also
Chase and Chase 2006; Masson et al. 2006).
Evidence from the smaller sites in the region also suggests that continuity
between the Classic and Postclassic was not absolute. For example, the ballcourt
at Santa Teresa has a rather minor amount of Postclassic ceramics, suggesting
that sitewide integration via ballgames and commensal ceremonies may have
diminished. In the other extensively excavated context from Santa Teresa, Post-
classic sherds comprise a more substantial portion of the assemblage. Additional
research at Santa Teresa might resolve the question of continuity in the Postclas-
sic. At Ticopo-2, neither of the two platforms (W180 and W203) with a strong Late
Classic occupation continued to be occupied into the Postclassic. At 21 de Abril,
most of the platforms, as noted above, lack a Late Classic occupation. Of the two
platforms that were occupied in the Late Classic (41s2 and 42s2), only one of them
continued to be occupied into the Postclassic.
Conclusions
In this paper, we have presented UCRIP data to discuss two instances

of continuity and change: the decline of a small regional center in the middle
of the Classic period and the transition from Classic to Postclassic. In both in-
stances, we find evidence of both continuity and change. Grounded in and in-
spired by structuration theory, a historical processual model helps understand
the co-occurrence of continuity and change, and for this reason we have inter-
preted our data using the historical processual model. In this model, change
consists not of predictable cycling or spiraling between abstract poles, such as
centralization and decentralization, but of original responses to persistent or
unforeseen conditions and opportunities. At the same time, because these re-
sponses represent new combinations of culturally and historically limited sets of
knowledge and physical and symbolic resources, they are not totally “original.”
Continuity in a historical processual model also comes from the notion that
future developments are constrained by traditional expectations of what kinds
of action are acceptable and therefore tolerated. For these reasons, continuity
accompanies change.
In the first instance of continuity and change, when Ucí declined, it became
possible for Santa Teresa to mobilize its own networks of power and give public
expression to them like never before. On the other hand, the community of 21 de
Abril simply stagnated. We admit that we do not know why Santa Teresa reacted
very differently than 21 de Abril, though we suspect that location may have played
a role. Situated right on the causeway to Ucí, 21 de Abril may have been more
closely networked with Ucí. Due to this close relation, 21 de Abril may not have
been able to escape the factors that brought Ucí down. Future research at Ucí’s
secondary centers will help refine these ideas.
The second instance of continuity and change discussed in this paper in-
cluded discussions of demographic continuity in the Classic to Postclassic tran-
sition and the Postclassic reuse of the Early Classic central plaza at Kancab. The
former process adds yet another case study to the growing understanding that
if there was such a thing as a Maya “collapse” at the end of the Classic, it was at
best partial and limited to only some areas of the Maya world. The latter process
provides a good example of the interplay between continuity and change. The
ceremonies practiced in Kancab’s Classic period plaza during the Postclassic—the
burning of incense in anthropomorphic ceramic idols placed on small altars—were
unique to the Postclassic. Thus, the reuse of the Classic period plaza was not an
unreflexive continuation of previous practices but, rather, a strategic attempt to
authorize and make understandable a new form of authority by locating it in a
deeply traditional landscape.
In both instances, we see successes, failures, and forms of demographic per-
sistence that fit best between these two poles. Seeing history in this way reduces
the drama that today’s doomsayers associate with the ancient Maya but provides
for a more nuanced and humane approach to past people.
Acknowledgments
Grants from the National Science Foundation (BCS 1063667), the Wenner
Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the National Geographic Society/
Waitt Grants Program (W10-08), and the University of Kentucky Vice President
for Research supported UCRIP fieldwork. We thank the Consejo de Arqueología
for granting permits for this research and landowners and ejido members in the
towns of Ucí, Motul, and Kancabal for allowing us to conduct research on their
land. Thanks to Marilyn Masson for providing me with some unpublished data
from Mayapan and thanks also to Ronald K. “Sonny” Faulseit for excellent orga-
nization and helpful comments.
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7. The Dangers of Diversity:
The Consolidation and Dissolution
of Cahokia, Native North America’s
First Urban Polity
Thomas E. Emerson and Kristin M. Hedman
Abstract: Explaining the enigmatic “rise and fall” of Cahokia, the first and
largest native urban center in the pre-Columbian United States, has challenged
archaeologists. Past explanations of its collapse have variously blamed famine,
disease, nutritional stress, climate change, environmental degradation, social
unrest, and warfare. Recent discussions have focused on environmental col-
lapse as a prime factor in Cahokia’s end. This chapter examines the various
factors that may have placed stress on the eleventh- to early fourteenth-century
inhabitants and found that the evidence for many, especially environmen-
tal collapse, are found wanting. We present new bioarchaeological evidence
that demonstrates that as many as one-third of the Cahokian residents were
immigrants and that these immigrants likely represented groups that were
culturally, ethnically, and perhaps linguistically distinct from local popula-
tions. Given the lack of a smoking gun implicating environmental-derived
factors, we posit that internal divisions among social, political, ethnic, and
religious factions provide a more reasonable description of events that led to
Cahokia’s dissolution.
Although Diamond’s (2011) catchphrase “failed societies” has raised

some academic hackles (e.g., McAnany and Yoffee 2010), it resonates with a public
who are increasingly concerned about the apparent all-pervasive deterioration of

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
147
148 T. E. Emerson and K. M. Hedman
the environments they inhabit. Diamond’s tales of past and modern societies that
heedlessly disregard their natural environs as they unwittingly move toward their
ultimate doom provides the ultimate modern morality play. And, because archae-
ologists live very much in the world, recently their attention has shifted once again
to exploring the intersections of societal and environmental stress (Middleton 2012).
It should not surprise us then that the story of the rise and fall of Cahokia,
the United States’ largest pre-Columbian polity, is increasingly being told in terms
of environmental opportunity, stress, degradation, and collapse, particularly in
the popular literature (e.g., Mann 2006:291–300) that depicts a dramatic narrative
of floods, deforestation, privation, earthquakes, and social unrest. Professional
assessments (Delcourt and Delcourt 2004; Lopinot and Woods 1993) follow a simi-
lar interpretive path in which Cahokians degrade their environment, leading to
instability and collapse. In fact, in an early application of panarchy theory (sensu
Gunderson and Holling 2001; Holling 2001), Delcourt and Delcourt (2004) interpret
the Cahokian breakdown as a classic example of panarchical collapse.
In such an atmosphere and in a volume where environmental and social adap-
tive interaction are bywords, it seems rash of us to conclude that in assessing the
available data from Cahokia, environmental factors, especially in the context of
resilience theory, may not have the explanative power that others have suggested
(Faulseit, chapter 1).1 This is not because we dismiss the classic land-man relation-
ships that play such an important role in resilience theory, but because, as we will
discuss, despite diligent research efforts, Cahokia does not have a clear history of
significant environmental degradation that can be tied to its dissolution. Cahokia
may be an interesting example of a political experiment in the unification of social
and ethnic diversity that failed. And as we will suggest this so-called failure was
likely the result of decisions made and actions taken by Cahokia’s inhabitants.2
We have come to the conclusion that for an explanation of the dynamics of
the Cahokian polity, we must look to the actual people themselves. Not only was
Cahokia the first proto-urban center in the continental United States, but it was also
the first truly pan-Indian city of culturally, ethnically, and probably linguistically
diverse groups, and we suspect that very diversity was at the root of its ultimate
demise (sensu Pauketat 2007 and Blanton and Fargher 2008).
We can only conclude that people and their histories represent a critical
dimension in understanding the trajectories of complex societies (sensu Butzer
2012; Middleton 2012), and given that view, it should not be a surprise that we
privilege a historical understanding of social actions through a focus on agency,
practice, and structuration (e.g., Emerson 1997; Pauketat 1994, 2000, 2001; Pauke-
tat and Emerson 1999; and most fully developed in Pauketat 2012). As Pauketat
has consistently noted, “history matters,” and past and current actions constrain
future possibilities. (For similar perspectives, see Hutson et al., chapter 6, and
Feinman and Nicholas, chapter 3, current volume). As we demonstrate here, his-
torical constraints and conditions inherent in the founding of Cahokia set it on a
path that ultimately limited its political and social integration and consolidation
and were integral to its dissolution. That dissolution must have been a traumatic
event because, remarkably, Cahokia’s very existence was scoured from native
memories and traditions.
The Dangers of Diversity 149
Figure 7-1. Location of the Cahokia, East St. Louis, and St. Louis ceremonial
mound precincts within Greater Cahokia (mounds depicted as black dots).
Areas shown in darker gray depict modern urbanized landscapes. (Courtesy
of Illinois State Archaeological Survey.)
Greater Cahokia
Cahokia was the earliest and greatest of the pre–European contact

native polities (Milner 1998; Pauketat 1994, 1998, 2004, 2007, 2012; Pauketat and
Emerson 1997). This early center and its allied sites were located on the fertile flood-
plains and uplands of the Mississippi River near modern St. Louis, a region marked
by the conjunction of several major rivers and physiographic zones (Figure 7-1).
We recognize at least three great ceremonial precincts within what is often
called Greater Cahokia (e.g., Pauketat 1998; Pauketat et al. 2015; Pauketat 2013).
Cahokia itself is the largest U.S. mound grouping. It is centered on an expansive
~20 ha plaza fronted on the north by Monks Mound and surrounded by at least
120 other recorded platform and burial mounds and lesser plazas (Dalan et al.
2003; Fowler 1997). Lying on Cahokia Creek, it is about 9.8 km from the Missis-
sippi River and 3.8 km from the bluff as the crow flies. Between Cahokia and the
river, on the south bank of Cahokia Creek, lies the East St. Louis precinct that,
with ~50 mounds, was once the second largest U.S. mound center. Immediately
across the river lay the St. Louis precinct, the fourth largest mound center with
26 mounds, now totally destroyed. We suspect that in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, these ceremonial precincts were the social and political homes of im-
portant factions that were part of a larger unified polity—one we broadly label
as Greater Cahokia.
By 800 c.e. numerous small farming villages dotted the landscape. In the mid-
1000s c.e., a religious, social, and political consolidation known as the Lohmann
phase (1050–1100 c.e.) “Big Bang” signified the birth of Cahokia (Pauketat 1998).
Within a century (Stirling phase 1100–1200 c.e.), a Greater Cahokia administra-
tive-political center had grown in size to cover 14.5 km2. It included at least 200
mounds, including the multi-terraced Monks Mound rising 100 feet in height and
the largest mound in what is now the United States, as well as ceremonial plazas,
post-in-circle monuments, marker posts, borrow pits, dense habitation zones of
elites and commoners, and a population of 15,000+ inhabitants (Pauketat 1998).
Population growth models (see below) demonstrate that, given the relatively low
pre-Mississippian population density of the American Bottom, these numbers
could only have been obtained by the immigration of a large number of likely
diverse groups from a wide region.
Identifying the Potential Culprits of Collapse
Cahokia was a powerful force in the central Mississippi River val-

ley for over two centuries, but by the mid-1200s c.e. its population was in steep
decline. By the mid-1300s c.e. Cahokia was largely depopulated. Explanations of
Cahokia’s collapse include all of the usual suspects—famine, disease, nutritional
stress, climate change, environmental degradation, social unrest, and warfare
(e.g., Emerson 1991; Kelly 2009; Milner 1990, 1998; Pauketat 2004).
Diet and Population Density

The maintenance of dense populations requires a stable subsistence
base, which in the New World was often provided by maize agriculture. Many
researchers have explored the importance of maize agriculture to population
growth and to the increase in social complexity in North America (e.g., Cook 2007;
Hedman and Emerson 2014; Larsen 1995; Schurr and Schoeninger 1995), but maize
dependence has fundamental risks as well as obvious advantages (e.g., see Cohen
and Armelagos 1984; Cohen and Crane-Kramer 2007; Rindos and Johannessen
1991). Although maize provided food and storable grain to a growing population,
heavy reliance on maize has been correlated with a decline in health for many
populations (Goodman et al. 1980, 1984; Larsen 1995). Maize dependence has been
associated with an increase in dental disease, iron-deficiency anemia, and other
nutritional deficiencies (Goodman et al. 1980, 1984; Larsen 1995; see also Ellwood et
al. 2013; Rothschild 2012). The increased population density that often accompanies
agricultural intensification also encouraged the spread of infectious diseases. The
relationship between maize agriculture and population health is complex. The
intensity of maize utilization and the impact of maize dependence can be highly
variable both between individuals and populations, and it can be influenced by
several factors, including the availability or access to other cultigens and wild
food resources, the overall health of an individual or community, and social or
political forces that might control access to resources and other aspects of life
(Buzon and Grauer 2002; Goodman et al. 1980, 1984; Hedman et al. 2002; Shuler
et al. 2012). Stable isotope analysis shows that maize was an important dietary
component throughout the Mississippian period in the American Bottom with

reliance on maize generally increasing through time. Individual diets, however,
varied in terms of both maize and protein consumption (Ambrose et al. 2003;
Bukowski et al. 2011; Hedman et al. 2002; Hedman and Emerson 2014; Hedman
et al. 2012). The role of maize at Cahokia is explored below.
Climatic Shifts
The Medieval Warm period (post-900 c.e.–ca. 1250 c.e.) and the fol-
lowing Little Ice Age saw dramatic global climatic shifts—shifts that have been
credited in the popular press with causing social disruptions, migrations, popu-
lation expansions, political declines and ascendency, and collapses on a global
scale (Fagan 2001, 2008; Lamb 1982). The specific localized effects of these chang-
ing climatic regimes in the midcontinent are poorly understood. These changes
could have resulted in increased rainfall, expanded agricultural lands, flooding,
droughts, summer cold snaps, or other significant environmental conditions that
would have affected the critical agricultural base.
Benson and his colleagues (2009) have recently modeled American Bottom
climate during the Mississippian period, using tree-ring environmental data from
bald cypress and red cedar trees. The authors reconstructed a number of local
climatic shifts that may have had a significant effect on local farming populations
(Figure 7-2). For example, the first half of the eleventh century was one of the
wettest periods in the past thousand years and would have resulted in improved
farming conditions and an increase in arable land in the American Bottom. This
period correlates with the Cahokia Big Bang that was marked by the large influx
of people into the ceremonial centers, the spread of dispersed farmsteads across
the floodplain, and the appearance of small farming communities in the nearby
uplands (Emerson 1997; Pauketat 1998, 2003). However, from 1100 c.e. until 1245
c.e., episodic but persistent drought became the norm. It was during these oscil-
lating dry periods that Cahokian farmers abandoned the previously productive
upland farms and may have left the area completely (Benson et al. 2009). The
population of Greater Cahokia itself declined during the Stirling phase (Milner
1986, 1990, 1998; Pauketat and Lopinot 1997), possibly because of the loss of maize
formerly provided by now abandoned upland farms. Conversely, the upland farms
may have been abandoned because the declining Stirling phase Cahokia popula-
tion no longer required the support of these outlying fields. While shifting levels
of maize production do not explain either the appearance or dissolution of the
Cahokian polity, they set broad parameters for the population levels that the
region could support.
Environmental Degradation
With a regional population estimated by some as high as 50,000 in the
twelfth century (e.g., Pauketat and Lopinot 1997; Milner 1998), tree cutting for
firewood, clearing agricultural fields, the construction of houses, manufacture of
implements, and building of fortifications make deforestation of the landscape
Figure 7-2. Tree-ring-based reconstructions of the Palmer Drought Severity

Index (PDSI) for the Cahokia area for three periods: a, 1000–2000 c.e.; b,
1000–1275 c.e.; and c, 1050–1200 c.e. (Benson et al. 2009). Positive values
represent wet years; negative values are drought conditions. E = Terminal Late
Woodland Edelhardt phase, L = Lohmann, S = Stirling, M = Moorehead, and
SP = Sand Prairie. (From Benson et al. 2009:Figure 3; used with permission.)
likely. Lopinot and Woods (1993) have hypothesized the effects of localized en-
vironmental degradation by deforestation. They provide two lines of supporting
evidence based primarily on the analysis of wood charcoal from the ICT-II Tract
excavations just east of the Grand Plaza in downtown Cahokia: charcoal analyses
suggest wood use changes through time from local floodplain species to more dis-
tant upland species; decreases in post size through time suggest the increased use
of architectural elements obtained from second-growth rather than primary forests.
The model’s underlying assumption presumes that the inhabitants of Cahokia
used local floodplain tree species first and expanded to more distant upland wood
resources only when they had deforested their immediate environs. There are rea-
sons to question the underlying assumptions of this model. Simon (2002:288–291)
demonstrated that the tree species employed in the upland vs. floodplain di-
chotomy might not be supported by environmental reconstructions. Forests were
much more diverse than Lopinot and Woods’s model assumes, and some “upland”
species were also dispersed across the floodplain. Simon’s analysis also noted that
cultural choices focused on functionality and ritual (e.g., preferential selection of
red cedar and bald cypress) often appear to outweigh local availability in Mis-
sissippian selection and use of woods. Simon concludes that the postulated shift
from local floodplain to distant upland tree species generated from the downtown
Cahokia ICT-II assemblage is not supported by an analysis of wood use from a
wider spectrum of nearby Mississippian floodplain sites.
Lopinot and Wood (1993) further speculate that deforestation of the uplands
would result in erosion during heavy summer rains filling the creeks with silt
and flooding the adjacent ripening maize fields as well as degrading floodplain
aquatic resources (see also Delcourt and Delcourt 2004:122–129). The extensive
loss of floodplain maize fields would have been calamitous, but such events are
difficult to demonstrate archaeologically (Newsom 1993). Cahokia was located on
one of the largest areas of agriculturally productive land in the American Bottom
and was surrounded by ridge and swale and colluvial landscapes that provided
extensive microenvironments for maize fields (Dalan et al. 2003:79–86). We also
know that Cahokians spread their fields across a number of topographic settings,
perhaps to protect them from such episodic losses to floodplain flooding. It would
have to have taken floods of truly monumental proportions to wipe out the widely
dispersed Cahokian agricultural system, although portions of it clearly could be
subject to localized episodic losses.
Early in Cahokia’s history, during its population peak, the upland agricultural
fields would have provided a safety valve against localized bottomland flood losses
(Pauketat 2003). Historically, Euroamerican farmers followed similar practices of
dispersing their fields between floodplain and upland locations (Chmurny 1973).
Mississippi River valley flood studies by Knox (1996) suggest to Delcourt and Del-
court (2004:127–129) that the period of Cahokia’s rise and prominence (1000 to 1300
c.e.) was marked by few valley-wide flood events, whereas the subsequent two and
one-half centuries (essentially post-Cahokia) were marked by catastrophic floods.
Although river floods may have been a factor in the failure of post-Cahokia native
settlement and widespread utilization of the American Bottom, they do not seem
to have been involved in Cahokia’s dissolution (although see Munoz et al. [2015]
who suggest these flood episodes may have begun as early as 1200 c.e.). As yet,
the archaeological and environmental documentation of frequent catastrophic
valley-wide levels of flooding, large-scale or persistent erosion, or widespread wood
deprivation during the twelfth or thirteenth centuries c.e. is still limited at best.
Diversity and Factionalism

Conceptually, diversity is derived from ecological theory and assess-
ments that rate the potential variation available in diverse environments as rich
in species and potential. In the transition from a scientific concept to a social
judgment, such richness is too often translated into an undisputed social good—
diverse societies are richer than nondiverse societies and have more potential
for growth and for ultimate survival. Like social Darwinism, social diversity can
suffer from a superficial and unthinking application of biological analogs to social
problems and organization.
While studies that question the good of diversity are neither encouraged
nor plentiful in the social sciences, some researchers have examined this often
unquestioned valuation (e.g., see Nelson et al. 2011; Torvinen et al., chapter 11; and
references therein). Putnam (2007:137), in his 2006 Johan Skytte Prize lecture, has
examined the relationship of diversity vis-à-vis social capital, i.e., “social networks
and the associated norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness.” In the short-term,
he found “immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and
social capital . . . and in ethnically diverse neighborhoods residents of all races tend
to ‘hunker down.’ Trust (even between those within the same ethnic group) . . . is
lower . . . (and) altruism and community cooperation is rarer” (Putnam 2007:137).
However, over a longer period of time, at least in some successful ethnically
diverse societies, new social networks form that dampen the divisive effects of
diversity. Where it does not happen, societies can fracture along these very lines
(modern analogs come to mind).
Putnam’s examination of diversity reminds us that all societies are actually
composed of individuals connected by an array of social, economic, religious,
political, ethnic, and linguistic networks that are crucial to the overall societal
enterprise and that the creation and maintenance of an overarching unity are
challenging and fraught endeavors (see Blanton and Fargher 2008). In this con-
text, understanding Cahokia becomes a matter of comprehending the “historical
processes of how cultural orthodoxies were created and resisted, or how a com-
munal ethos or a corporate organization was co-opted or perpetuated through
transformations of identity and scales of negotiation” (Pauketat 2001:87).
In social and political studies of the late prehistoric and historic Eastern
Woodlands, an area sometimes characterized as a chiefly heartland, discussions
of elite factions are prominent. They are considered to play a key role in the pro-
cess known as chiefly cycling (e.g., Anderson 1994a, 1994b). This phenomenon is
not limited to the Eastern Woodlands. Brumfiel and Fox (1994), in their edited
volume Factional Competition and Political Development in the New World, confirm the
universal importance of factions as sources of change in nonegalitarian societies.
Factions are vital in drawing our attention away from visions of societal unity and
homogeneity that pervade two other dominant models of social transformation:

cultural ecology or evolution and Marxist-derived paradigms (Brumfiel 1994). A
recentering on factions within society brings us back to heterogeneity, diversity,
internal tensions and stress, competition, and discord—social pressures that are
anticipated in paradigms of social interaction built on agency and practice (sensu
Giddens 1979; Gramsci 1971; Ortner 1984).
Recognizing elite factions can lead to their reification unless we understand
the vast potentiality for a multiplicity of factions within societies. Specialists who
work with chiefdom-level societies have a tendency to focus and privilege only a
very limited number of potential stress lines—those that develop between elite
corporate groups who potentially compete for dominance. Elite rivalries and com-
petition are theorized and modeled to the virtual exclusion of all other areas of
conflict. This is not just a shortcoming of Mississippian studies but in fact plagues
all studies of factions (Brumfiel 1994).
But in a heterogeneous, multiethnic, likely polyglot society, we know that the
potentialities for conflict are extensive. Possible linguistic differences, conflicting
ethnically based practices of daily life, varying marriage patterns, different reli-
gious beliefs, culinary practices, status, ranking, conflicts over differential access to
agricultural land, materials, and spiritual access between residents and newcomers
must have made the unification of Greater Cahokia a continual work-in-process
for the leadership. And, of course, the elite had their own internal disputes and
conflicts, both those associated with their personal political advancement and
with incorporating and satisfying ever-increasing numbers of clients. It is clear
that any discussion of the Greater Cahokia political and social situation that does
not include this dynamism—these shifting and transient power relations—is
misleading and incomplete (for an early exception, see Pauketat 1992).
These ever-shifting and potentially divisive relationships between elite fac-
tions, between elites and commoners, between commoner ethnic and corporate
groups, and possibly between those who “had” (be that status, land, wealth, spiritual
power, war honors, and so forth) and those who did not meant that Cahokia leaders
needed unifying concepts to damper these divisions. It has been proposed that those
unifying forces involved building a sense of communitas through shared labor,
religious, and cultural practices, uniformity or conformity in many aspects of life,
and recognition of ethnic or social distinctions in limited or particular ways (e.g.,
Emerson 1997; Pauketat and Emerson 1991). In Greater Cahokia the creation of these
community-building efforts engaged the population in the erection of great public
and sacred monuments, through the distribution of symbolically charged Ramey
Incised vessels, by an earth-mother cult with formal temples, priests and priestesses,
elaborate female earth-mother stone figures that promoted a series of life-renewal
and harvest ceremonies, and a uniform domestic architecture and ceramic industry
as well as a cosmically aligned built landscape, and the intermixing of ethnic or
corporate populations (e.g., Alt 2006, 2010; Emerson 1989, 1997; Emerson et al. 2008;
Emerson and Pauketat 2008; Pauketat 1998, 2004, 2012; Pauketat and Emerson 1991).
Cahokian political formations needed to move beyond their corporate, kin-
based ancestry to unify across multiethnic, potential class, and kin lines—Me-
soamerican studies recognizes this transitional phase from kin to civil society as
key in the metaphorical conflict between “kinship and kingship” (e.g., Foias 2013;
Fox 1994; Iannone 2002; McAnany 1995). This shift from kin-based to centralized
leadership is a critical transition because as Gailey (1985) observed, it posits an
essential structural shift in the allocation of labor and productive capacity that
diminish kin-based power. Such shifts are seldom complete, and the dominant
ideologies of centralized leadership extensively promote and manipulate the idi-
oms of kinship. Yet, McAnany (1995) was explicit in an archaeological context,
arguing that centralization of leadership and effective and powerful corporate
kinship organizations cannot coexist. Effective centralized leadership needs to
break down vertical corporate bonds and replace them with horizontal classes
or strata. This tension was being played out in Greater Cahokia throughout the
eleventh through thirteenth centuries.
It seems assured that social and political competition, especially between
centralization and corporate leadership, were likely dominant and potentially
disruptive forces in Cahokian cohesion. The ethnic and corporate diversity of its
population (see discussion below) lent itself to the perpetuation of kin-based and
ethnic factionalism that under stress may have reemerged to splinter the overarch-
ing patterns of nascent ideological and political solidarity. By 1150 to 1175 c.e., a
massive fortification wall surrounded the central precinct of Cahokia (about 80
ha). This was rebuilt four times within a century (ca. 20,000 logs per construction
episode), indicating ongoing military and security concerns (Iseminger 2010:138).
Illinois State Archaeological Survey (ISAS) archaeologists have also documented
that a massive burning event of the ceremonial and residential core at the recently
excavated East St. Louis precinct terminated its Stirling occupation, but whether
this was a natural catastrophe, ritual demolition, or a violent destruction is still not
clear (and, of course, ritual demolition and violent destruction are not mutually
exclusive) (Fortier 2007; Pauketat 2005; Pauketat, Fortier, Alt, and Emerson 2013).
Yet, despite evidence suggesting an apparent threat of violence, until recently
there has been strangely little direct archaeological evidence of endemic interne-
cine conflict. During this same period (i.e., the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
c.e.), an ongoing Cahokian diaspora saw many groups leaving the center. From
an initial high of greater than 15,000, the Greater Cahokia population dropped
to less than one-third that number during the next two centuries (Milner 1998;
Pauketat and Lopinot 1997). Whether this outpouring of people is due to increas-
ing local violence, food shortages, social or political discord, or the collapse of a
unifying ideological belief is not known. Shortly after the end of the Moorehead
phase (1200–1275 c.e.), Greater Cahokia was abandoned except for thinly scat-
tered families of fourteenth-century local residents (Pauketat 2013) and occasional
Oneota farmers moving in from the north and west (Jackson 1998).
Letting the Dead Speak
We have a number of suspects in the dissolution of Cahokia but no

real smoking gun. We suspect that we have not been asking the right questions
of the right people. The mortal remains of the inhabitants of Cahokia have a story
to tell in their very bones—in other words, we need to let the dead speak. Several
threads of evidence are available from the deceased: age and sex, population size,
temporal associations, information on lifestyle, diet, health, and place of origin.
All of these represent key aspects in assessing the factors involved in the final
demise of Greater Cahokia.
For the last 15 years, bioarchaeologists at ISAS have carried out a multifaceted
study of curated collections of human remains from Greater Cahokia. Evidence from
osteological, stable isotope and strontium analyses and AMS dating is used to es-
tablish temporal and cultural context for these remains and to assess the population
that once occupied the urban center and its surrounding settlements. Combined with
a reevaluation of available documentation, these newly acquired data offer insight
into the health, diet, and geographic origin for social groups and individuals, within
and between mortuary sites at Cahokia. The following discussion looks at each of
these lines of evidence in terms of what they tell us about the final days of Cahokia.
Population Growth
All regional researchers accept that Greater Cahokia’s ascent as a proto-
urban center was rapid. However, there is a significant difference in their estimates
of what the population of Cahokia was at any specific time in its history. As an
example, we can compare the difference in recent estimates by Milner (1998) and
Pauketat and Lopinot (1997), both using comparable approaches. Milner estimates
Cahokia precinct residents at 3,000 to 8,000 for the Lohmann phase, 2,800 to 7,500
in the Stirling phase, and 2,000 to 2,500 in the Moorehead phase. Pauketat and
Lopinot propose population estimates of 10,200 to 15,300 for the Lohmann phase,
5,300 to 7,200 in the Stirling phase, and 3,000 to 4,500 during the Moorehead phase.
The implication of each model for the political development of Greater Ca-
hokia is markedly different. The lower minimalist estimates by Milner (1998) are
considered to signify a moderately sized corporately organized chiefdom (e.g.,
Kelly 2006, 2009; Saitta 1994; Trubitt 2000). However, if as the authors believe,
the higher estimates of Pauketat and Lopinot (1997) were more reflective of Ca-
hokia’s population size, it would require large-scale population shifts to achieve
it. Archaeological evidence documenting the immigration of outsiders has been
gathered to support such population shifts (e.g., Alt 2001, 2006; Emerson and
Hargrave 2000). Such a rapid increase would require the integration of newcomers
from outside the immediate region, creating a diverse community whose politi-
cal and social patterns would have encouraged a break with past traditions and
require new levels of sociopolitical integration.
Population estimates seldom explicitly consider the larger implications that
rates of population growth have on the composition of the Cahokian community.
These implications should be considered, because population growth is the key
to the history of the polity. To understand this issue, we employ a simple model
using the mortality profile of a sedentary, subsistence-farming community to
simulate about three centuries of undisturbed population growth (Figure 7-3).
This is an exponential, or Malthusian growth model in which birth and death are
held constant and are never limited by food, disease, or violence. With exponential
Figure 7-3. Charts illustrating the projected population growth at .001 and
.005 rates for Cahokia. The solid lines indicate the projected growth based on
a Malthusian model (after McCallum 2000:139), the dot-dashed lines indicate
the population size based on number of structures per area; estimated by Milner
(upper left chart shows low population size; upper right shows high population
size) and Pauketat and Lopinot (lower left chart shows low population size;
lower right shows high). The archaeological population size estimates differ,
and none can be reached by natural population growth. Both require an influx
of immigrants. (Courtesy of Illinois State Archaeological Survey.)
growth, the birth rate alone controls how fast (or slow) the population grows. For
any exponentially growing population, the larger it gets, the faster it grows, i.e.,
the rate of growth is directly proportional its present size. The model is unrep-
resentative of actual life situations for many reasons and therefore can be said to
represent an idealized maximum internal growth rate of the Cahokian popula-
tion, one that never could have been reached in actuality. We have calculated it
at a moderate growth rate of .001 and an excessive growth rate of .005, neither of
which produces the population size required to match the archaeological estimates
of Cahokia growth.
Most recent archaeological population estimates for Greater Cahokia far ex-
ceed the idealized, exponential population growth–model numbers. This indicates
that it is impossible for the polity to have grown simply by internal population
increases. Cahokia’s population growth necessitated an influx of new people.
Minimalist models of Cahokian population, if they address this issue at all, simply
assume that surrounding local populations, who are presumed to be ethnically,
socially, religiously, and politically homogenous, are drawn into the center. The
low density of Terminal Late Woodland settlements around Cahokia prior to the
Big Bang indicate they are unlikely to have had sufficient inhabitants to supply the
requisite Lohmann-phase population influx. We also doubt that visions of native
homogeneity are accurate, especially in the American Bottom, where the Termi-
nal Late Woodland societies that preceded the rise of Cahokia were markedly
diverse in terms of community structure and material culture and bear evidence
for population dispersion and coalescence (Fortier and McElrath 2002; Kelly 2000).
Burying the Dead

Evaluating burial practices in a complex urbanized society involves
a careful consideration of scale and chronology. Since early twentieth-century
investigations, we have gained a fairly comprehensive understanding of the burial
practices of Cahokia’s inhabitants (e.g., Emerson 2003; Emerson et al. 2003; Fowler
et al. 1999; Milner 1984). As might be expected, there are distinct differences be-
tween burial treatments in the ceremonial centers compared to mortuary sites in
the countryside. The first century and a half of Cahokia’s formation saw an em-
phasis on public, theatrical burial ceremonies at the major mound centers (Fowler
et al. 1999). These early mortuaries often involved massed mound burials and
occasional communal votive offerings as well as structured landscapes involv-
ing cosmological alignments, monumental marker posts, charnel houses, and
sequential mound constructions (e.g., Fowler et al. 1999; Milner 1984; Pauketat
2010, 2012). Some of the earliest burial events were the most spectacular and the
most horrifying, involving the public sacrifice of large numbers of individuals to
celebrate or commemorate the death of elite persons or community events (e.g.,
Alt and Pauketat 2006; Emerson and Pauketat 2002; Porubcan 2000). This pattern
of public mortuary events seems to have continued in the major centers into the
late twelfth century (Pauketat 2010, 2012).
Outside the large mound centers, burial practices were more constrained
(Emerson 2003; Emerson et al. 2003; Milner 1984). Rural inhabitants buried their
dead near their home or close to small, rural shrines or residential areas, unac-
companied by elaborate artifacts or sacrificial offerings. It is in rural areas that we
find the final resting places of the last inhabitants of a functioning Cahokian pol-
ity. These cemeteries usually contain several dozen clustered burials, sometimes
in limestone crypts and charnel houses, often accompanied by elaborate effigy
pots of animals (Emerson 2003; Milner 1984). The effigies usually depict liminal
animals capable of crossing spiritual boundaries between the under and upper
worlds, suggesting that the crossing over of souls was no longer mediated by
the central elites but by the rural inhabitants themselves (Emerson 2003). At one
time, archeologists dated these cemeteries to the fourteenth century or even later.
But an extensive redating, using high-accuracy accelerator mass spectrometry
(AMS) radiocarbon techniques on purified collagen samples from the individu-
als themselves, revealed that they tightly cluster in the last quarter of the 1200s
c.e. (Emerson and Hargrave 2000). They are the last organized and structured
cemeteries of the Cahokian polity we know to have existed.
The AMS dating of bone collagen allows us to place in time specific individu-
als who were buried during Cahokia’s occupation. Because temporally diagnostic
artifacts are relative rare in Mississippian burials and because many sites were
used for burials throughout the Mississippian period, correlating individuals or
burial events with phases is critical to our understanding of the historical devel-
opment of the Cahokia polity. That is why the redating of the rural cemeteries is
so important (contra Kelly 2009). Because they are the latest known structured
Cahokian cemeteries, rural cemeteries give us a convincing date for the termina-
tion of the polity as a whole at about 1300 c.e. This means they hold the remains
of some of the last inhabitants of Greater Cahokia—these people lived during the
final days of the Cahokian polity, and their bodies should bear witness to some
of those events. In the following discussions, we investigate the evidence these
last Cahokians provided.
Diet
Stable isotope analysis shows that the diet of Cahokia’s Mississippian
population was largely plant based and that maize was an important dietary
component throughout the Mississippian period (Hedman et al. 2002; Hedman
et al. 2012). The environment of the American Bottom was rich in resources that
provided a nutritionally diverse and generally adequate diet for a majority of the
region’s inhabitants. Individual diets, however, varied both in terms of maize
and in protein consumption (Ambrose et al. 2003; Bukowski et al. 2011; Emerson
et al. 2005; Hedman 2006; Hedman et al. 2013; Hedman et al. 2002; Hedman et al.
2012). Several factors may account for the observed variation in diet, including
differences in sex (Hedman et al. 2002), social status (Ambrose et al. 2003), the
site size or location (Hedman et al. 2002), temporal association (Bukowski et al.
2011; Hedman et al. 2012), and place of origin (Slater et al. 2014). Stable isotope
analysis has also identified Mississippian individuals who consumed little to
no maize who we suggest are immigrants to Cahokia from contemporaneous
hunting and gathering societies outside of the American Bottom (Hedman et al.
2012; Slater et al. 2014).
Stable isotope values and recent AMS dates suggest that reliance on maize
increased throughout the Mississippian period (Figure 7-4). Individual variation
in both maize and protein consumption appears to be greatest early in the oc-
cupancy of Cahokia and may reflect status or ethnic distinctions between indi-
viduals that characterized this period (Ambrose et al. 2003; Hedman et al. 2013,
2012). New preliminary isotope data suggest the highest reliance on maize and
comparatively low protein consumption for the few Sand Prairie (1300–1375 c.e.)
burials identified who appear to occupy Cahokia after the collapse of the polity
Figure 7-4. Mean and range of δ13C and δ15N isotope ratios derived from
bone collagen. This plot shows the mean and range of δ13C and δ15N values for
American Bottom sites by time period. Although the values during the Missis-
sippian period overlap a great deal, there is also a trend toward increased reli-
ance on maize through time. (Courtesy of Illinois State Archaeological Survey.)
(Bukowski et al. 2011; Hedman et al. 2012). As yet, there is no clear skeletal evidence
that nutritional deficiencies or dietary stress increased for these later occupants
of Cahokia (Bukowski et al. 2011; Hedman 2006; Hedman et al. 2012).
Health
What do the bones of the dead tell us about community health? Early
work by Milner (1991, 1992) revealed that like many premodern populations,
Cahokians suffered from high infant mortality and high mortality for young
adults, particularly young women, likely due to complications of childbirth,
and that overall life expectancy was relatively short. There is no skeletal evi-
dence to suggest a dramatic decline in health during the occupation of Cahokia.
Throughout its history, the health of inhabitants appears to have been relatively
stable and similar to that of smaller contemporary Mississippian populations
inhabiting other mound centers, such as Moundville and Etowah (Milner 1991,
1992; Shuler et al. 2012).
While skeletal evidence for specific diseases is limited, observed lesions sug-
gest that Cahokians suffered from tuberculosis and treponemal disease, as well
as generalized infection and metabolic conditions, such as iron-deficiency anemia

(Bukowski et al. 2011; Emerson et al. 2005; Milner 1991, 1992). Dental evidence
suggests Cahokians experienced periodic disease or nutritional stress sufficient
to interrupt enamel formation, and most show a high caries rate consistent with a
maize diet. These conditions are common to many densely populated agricultural
groups. Differences in health between individuals appear to correlate more with
differences in sex and status than with site location or temporal association (Bu-
kowski et al. 2011; Emerson et al. 2005; Fowler et al. 1999). Although high popula-
tion density and maize dependence have been implicated with declining health
in many areas, there is no skeletal evidence to suggest that increasing disease or
nutritional stress contributed to the collapse of Cahokia.
Lifestyle: Trauma and Violence

The bones also can carry evidence that relates to an individual’s life-
style. Excessive stress, especially at a young age, leaves marks on bone, as do
traumatic events, such as accidental or deliberate injury. Degenerative arthritic
conditions vary by site and tend to be mild to moderate in expression (Bukowski et
al. 2011). While Milner (1991, 1992) found little evidence for trauma, either from acci-
dental injuries or warfare in his analysis of late Mississippians, recent osteological
analysis of burials from various locations within Greater Cahokia suggests inter-
personal violence was not as uncommon at Cahokia as once thought (Bukowski
et al. 2011; Aimee Carbaugh and Lenna Nash, personal communication 2013).
Although we have evidence for the construction of multiple fortifications
and figural depictions of warriors and violence, the bodies of the late Cahokian
inhabitants themselves bear little evidence of external aggression. Skeletal evi-
dence of scalping, dismemberment, defensive fractures, blows to the head, and
embedded arrow points have been documented at Cahokia and related sites;
however, evidence for external violence is still rare at Cahokia compared to other
Midwestern sites (Emerson 2007). This is not to dismiss the persuasive evidence
for internal violence practiced by the community against its members. The mass
burials of young (predominately) females within Cahokia’s Mound 72 (Fowler et
al. 1999; Thompson 2013a) provide striking evidence that a significant risk of “un-
timely” death existed for some segments of the population; however, the bodies
themselves show little if any evidence of a traumatic death. In marked contrast
to these is another mass burial within Mound 72 that includes men, women,
and some children. These individuals show clear evidence of violent death and
haphazard interment as part of a burial ceremony for elite Cahokians (Fowler et
al. 1999). Recent reassessment of dental morphology suggests these individuals
are phenotypically distinct from both the female sacrificial and elite Mound 72
burials and suggests they may represent war captives or tribute from outlying
communities (Thompson et al. 2015).
The sacrifice by the community of individuals as a component of political
or mortuary rituals indicates that the psychological stress of future violent death
was inherent in Cahokian society, but the danger came largely from within rather
than from without.
Recognizing Local and Immigrant Populations

Strontium isotope analysis of human teeth can be used to address
questions of human mobility and migration in prehistoric populations. Geo-
logical formations have distinctive strontium isotope ratios, depending on their
age and composition. The strontium isotope ratios of plants and animals reflect
that of the local bedrock, soils, and water where they grew and are reflected in
the tissues of humans that consumed these flora and fauna. Strontium isotope
analysis of modern and archaeological fauna was used to establish a baseline
“local” range of strontium isotope ratios of 87Sr/86Sr for the American Bottom
(i.e., Cahokia). This is estimated at between ~.70889–.70973 (Hedman et al. 2009;
Price et al. 2007; Slater et al. 2014). Assuming that Mississippian occupants of
Cahokia consumed primarily local resources, their isotope ratios should fall
within this range. Differences at the fourth decimal place are usually significant
in identifying human movement.
Strontium analysis has been completed for 87 individuals representing nine
mortuary locations within the Cahokia precinct, as well as the nearby East St.
Louis Mound precinct and Pittsburg Lake site, a small outlying Mississippian
site 15 km southwest of Cahokia (Slater et al. 2014:Figure 1). The burials sampled
represent both mound and cemetery locations and a variety of mortuary treat-
ments. Strontium ratios for the majority of individuals fall within the local range
for Cahokia. However, one-third of the individuals analyzed have strontium ratios
that are clearly outside the Cahokia range. These individuals were not local to the
American Bottom; furthermore, the range in strontium ratios indicates Cahokia
immigrants came from multiple places (Figure 7-5). Most of the nonlocal strontium
ratios are associated with early developing teeth, in other words, teeth that min-
eralize between 6 months and 8 years of age and that reflect the isotopic charac-
teristics of the mother and the food sources of early childhood. These individuals
were either born and spent their early childhood outside of the American Bottom
or were born to mothers who came from outside this region. When multiple teeth
were available from a single individual, the strontium ratio for later-developing
teeth often fell within the local Cahokia range, suggesting the move to Cahokia
occurred by late childhood or adolescence. For some of these individuals, stable
isotope values derived from tooth enamel suggest that they adopted a maize diet
when they moved to Cahokia (Hedman et al. 2012).
Where we have been able to correlate strontium ratios with burial treatment
or location and AMS dates, our initial impressions suggest that early in Greater
Cahokia’s occupation, individuals of nonlocal origin are buried together with
local individuals in a variety of mortuary contexts. Several nonlocal individuals
were associated with mound contexts or received unique mortuary treatment,
although not treatment exclusive to nonlocals. The majority of these individuals
came to the region before adulthood as evidenced by local Cahokia strontium
ratios for their later-developing teeth. A small number of later burials available
from the Cahokia precinct have nonlocal strontium ratios for both early and late
teeth, suggesting these individuals were immigrants who came to the area as
adolescents or adults—and, further, the clustering of these individuals suggests
Figure 7-5. Cahokia 87Sr/86Sr ratios by location. The gray-shaded area rep-
resents the “local Sr range” for the American Bottom (i.e., Cahokia). Cahokia
individuals with strontium isotope ratios within this range are either local or
from a region with similar ratios. One-third of Cahokia individuals analyzed
have strontium isotope ratios that fall either above or below this “local range,”
indicating they were immigrants to the region and that they came from multiple
places. Twenty-five percent of all teeth analyzed have nonlocal strontium ratios.
The majority of these are early-developing teeth (deciduous teeth, permanent
first molars), suggesting these individuals were born elsewhere or to mothers
from elsewhere. (Courtesy of Illinois State Archaeological Survey.)
immigrant groups may have been buried within particular mounds or cemeteries
(Bukowski et al. 2011; Slater et al. 2014). This is a very limited sample to be sure,
but it may suggest that while early Cahokia attempted to “integrate” newcomers,
including them in high-status burial groups or as sacrificial tribute, later immi-
grants may have been more segregated, at least in death. This pattern is in line
with our hypotheses suggesting early Cahokians were focused on community
building and integration while toward its end these efforts were overshadowed
by the increasing emergence of factions and divisions.
Peopling Cahokia with immigrants is not a new idea—early advocates as-
sumed the origins of the site might be tied to the southeast and Lower Missis-
sippi River valley—and that strain of interpretation has continued into recent
times (e.g., Kehoe and Bruhns 2002; Porter 1969). This tendency to identify ex-
ternal stimuli for Cahokian development is paralleled in economic models that
infer the movement of goods from distant locations, but they are often silent on
the parallel movement of people that must presumably co-occur (e.g., Kelly 1991).
It has only been recently that active discussion of immigrant populations as a
factor in Cahokian development has been grounded in extensive excavation data,

primarily coming from an area of uplands to the east of Cahokia along Silver
Creek. Investigations of several upland village sites of the Richland Complex
by Alt (2001, 2002, 2006, 2010) and Pauketat (2003, 2004) yielded strong evidence
for the movement of village-sized segments of foreigners with connections to
the Missouri Bootheel and the western Indiana Wabash drainage into the Ca-
hokia sphere of influence in the late 1000s to early 1100s. There are also limited
artifact and mortuary data suggesting the later presence of northern Illinois
River valley groups along the Cahokia bluff tops in the 1200s c.e. (Emerson
and Hargrave 2000).
Now, combined with this artifactual and architectural evidence for Cahokia
immigration, we have strontium data from the individuals themselves, providing
hard evidence that a considerable number of Greater Cahokian inhabitants were
born outside of Cahokia and, in some cases, well outside the region. This is sup-
ported by stable isotope evidence of dietary change, namely, the consumption of
maize, correlating with their move to Cahokia (Hedman et al. 2012).
Rethinking the End of Cahokia
It is the final abruptness of Cahokia’s collapse and the remains of its last
inhabitants that hold the clues to its demise. Our research and that of colleagues
have shown that Moorehead populations prior to the collapse were healthy, and
maize production and diet were stable. We can document that although we see a
clear shift to increased maize consumption and stable meat-protein intake during
the span of Greater Cahokia, this appears to be a historical trend that is wide-
spread across the midcontinent and does not signal localized dietary stresses
or constraints.
Throughout the history of Greater Cahokia, we see a steady decrease of popu-
lation from a late eleventh-century high to the area’s final abandonment at the
beginning of the fourteenth century. Equally important, there is no evidence for
concomitant large-scale environmental degradation or destruction. It is interesting
to speculate whether the systematic outflow of populations from Greater Cahokia
may not have acted to regulate the polity’s impact on the local environment and
its available resources. In other words, Cahokia’s potential negative impact on
the local environmental resources may have been moderated by the polity’s fluid
population structure throughout its history.
Using Pauketat and Lopinot’s (1997) estimates, there is a tremendous popu-
lation agglomeration in Cahokia at about 1050 c.e. that numbered from 10,200 to
15,300. But this phenomenon is very short-lived, lasting only about two genera-
tions. During the twelfth century, there is a dramatic population decrease—the
populace is reduced to 5,300 to 7,200 residents. Such a population decrease by
nearly 50 percent must have relieved the tremendous pressure on the exploitation
of the local resources. The Stirling phase lasted about four generations until again,
perhaps as the result of a significant political or social disturbance in the polity
(see Pauketat et al. 2013), the population was further reduced, this time by about
40 percent, down to 3,000 to 4,500 residents. Within three generations, near the
end of the thirteenth or early fourteenth century, the majority of the population
moves out of the region. These persistent population diasporas may explain the
absence of significant evidence of environmental impacts and degradation in the
American Bottom during the Mississippian era. Whether the post-1100 c.e. dias-
poras were responses to perceived local resource shortages or served to forestall
such shortages is not known.
Ongoing research confirms that Pauketat’s (2004, 2007) Pax Cahokiana is
likely confined to the Lohmann and early Stirling phases. The burning of the
Stirling phase residential and compound complex in the East St Louis precinct
and the increased emphasis on fortifications at Cahokia suggest potentially wide-
spread and tumultuous political disorder (e.g., Pauketat et al. 2013). In addition,
recent identification of cut marks and trauma on a number of human remains
(likely associated with the Stirling phase) from ISAS’s excavation of nearly 14 ha
of the East St. Louis Mound precinct suggests levels of internecine violence may
have been higher than once thought.
We believe the traditional models that see Cahokia as comprising a mod-
estly sized populace of kin-related, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically
homogenous inhabitants cannot be supported given the new data. Rather, it
more likely was a diverse and heterogeneous, possibly even polyglot, popula-
tion with fully one-third of its participants drawn from outside the immedi-
ate locality, perhaps primarily from the central Mississippi River valley and
adjoining regions. Cahokia’s leaders needed to create a sense of community
among people who were not linked by traditional bonds of kinship, shared
culture, or language. They accomplished this by drawing on preexisting, widely
shared religious and ceremonial beliefs and practices and likely the rhetoric of
fictive kinship (e.g., Emerson and Pauketat 2002; Hall 1991, 1997; Pauketat and
Emerson 1999). They promoted a life-renewal cult including such ritual objects
as red-stone goddesses and Ramey vessels and through communal mound
construction, elaborate mortuary rites including retainer sacrifices, and great
community feasts (e.g., Emerson 1997; Emerson and Pauketat 2002; Pauketat
2012; Pauketat and Emerson 1991, 1999; Pauketat et al. 2002). The Lohmann Big
Bang represents the success of this effort—the final Moorehead collapse its
ultimate failure.
We conclude that Cahokia’s final dissolution was the result of the fraying
of the tenuous networks of social, political, and religious bonds that had been
so carefully created by its eleventh- to twelfth-century leaders. Under stress, the
diversity of Cahokia proved to be its primary weakness. Strong fortifications
and burned villages were outward signs of increasing factionalism. Ultimately,
it was the breaking of the social bonds uniting these diverse people that was
the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” And so strong was the disillusionment
of Cahokia’s citizens that neither through myth nor tradition was the story of
this first native civilization transmitted down through the hundreds of years
that separate it from its modern descendants. This is the real fascination of
Cahokia’s rise and fall.
Acknowledgments
This research is part of a long-term endeavor by the Illinois State Ar-

chaeological Survey (ISAS) to investigate the bioarchaeology of late precontact
populations in Illinois and the surrounding states. In the course of that work, we
have relied on support, assistance, and access to collections from many midwestern
institutions, especially at the Illinois State Museum, the University of Illinois, Indi-
ana University, the Milwaukee Public Museum, and the University of Wisconsin–
Milwaukee. The positions presented in this chapter build on the insightful work
of various colleagues, including Timothy Pauketat, Susan Alt, George R. Milner,
Larry V. Benson, Della Cook, Eve Hargrave, Dawn Cobb, and John E. Kelly. We
appreciate Eve Hargrave’s assistance and advice in creating the various population
models and Michael Lewis and Sarah Boyer’s efforts in producing the figures for
publication. Stable isotope and strontium analysis was conducted by Philip Slater
and Matthew Fort. This research has been supported financially and logistically
by the ISAS, the University of Illinois, the Prairie Research Institute, the Depart-
ments of Anthropology and Geology at the University of Illinois, the Illinois State
Museum, and the Illinois Department of Transportation. Figure 7-2 is used with
permission of Larry V. Benson; the remaining figures are used courtesy of the ISAS.
Notes
1. We are concerned with both the typological nature and mechanistic frame-
work invoked in resilience theory—both aspects appear to us to reflect a descriptive
tool rather than an interpretive model (contra Gunderson and Holling 2001; Holling
2001). Furthermore, we would agree with Pillatt’s (2012:63; also Middleton 2012)
summary of a number of critiques that resilience theory creates overall uniformity
in diverse cultural histories, mainly focuses on population dynamics and economics,
often produces functionalist explanations, and is subject to many of the same sub-
stantive criticisms leveled in the past at systems theory and processual archaeology.
2. Many scholars have decried the use of the term failed as denigrating to
descendant populations (e.g., papers in McAnany and Yoffee 2010) while others
note the ongoing ambiguity and confusion in “collapse” studies terminology
(Middleton 2012). We use the term here to deliberately emphasize that the Cahokia
polity was unsuccessful in sustaining or perpetuating itself as a sociopolitical unit
or as a resident population. However, we suggest that it is reasonable to question
whether the perpetuation of the polity was even a “goal” of its inhabitants.
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III. Resilience Theory and Societal
Transformation
8. Release and Reorganization in the
Tropics: A Comparative Perspective
from Southeast Asia
Gyles Iannone
Abstract: Recent calls for archaeologists to focus more of their efforts on craft-
ing “integrated histories” for coupled socioecological systems have been in-
tended to ground future-looking modeling exercises in the long term (e.g.,
Costanza et al. 2007; Costanza et al., ed. 2007). This has stimulated the for-
mation of transdisciplinary research teams aimed at examining issues of
resilience and vulnerability, using case studies from a variety of different
ecosystems, and representing a range of core adaptive strategies. It has also
necessitated the adoption of a common vernacular to facilitate communica-
tion between team members from diverse academic disciplines. Resilience
theory and the associated concepts of adaptive cycles and panarchy theory
have emerged as potentially unifying heuristic devices in these transdisci-
plinary research endeavors. Recent discussions of entanglement theory also
suggest that it provides a means through which resilience can be effectively
explored using the archaeological record. This paper explores the efficacy of
these concepts, with particular emphasis on their use in the cross-cultural
comparison of the rise, fall, and rise of tropical civilizations in Southeast
Asia. Of particular interest are: how best to differentiate between periods of
release (collapse) and reorganization in the archaeological record, given the
defining characteristics outlined in adaptive cycle theory, and how significant
are the revolt and remember components of the panarchy model in specific
examples of release and reorganization.

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
179
180 G. Iannone
In the search for a common vernacular and integrating concepts to

facilitate the transdisciplinary exploration of socioecological systems (van der
Leeuw and Redman 2002), scholars from multiple disciplines have begun to em-
ploy adaptive cycles and the related concept of panarchy theory to organize, assimi-
late, and model the dynamic processes inherent within their diverse data sets
(Gunderson and Holling 2002; Holling 2001; Holling and Gunderson 2002:32–33;
Walker and Salt 2006, 2012). Initial application of these concepts to archaeological
case studies suggests that they may have great efficacy for building integrated
histories for coupled socioecological systems (Adams 2001; Aimers and Iannone
2014; Alexander 2010; Blanton 2010; Dearing 2008; Delcourt and Delcourt 2004;
Dunning et al. 2012; Gabler 2009; Hegmon et al. 2008; Nelson et al. 2006; Nelson
et al. 2011; Peeples et al. 2006; Redman 2005; Redman and Kinzig 2003; Rosen and
Rivera-Collazo 2012). Nevertheless, we still need to critically assess not only the
basic principles of adaptive cycles and panarchy theory—especially with respect
to how these relate to social systems—but also how the different components of
these socioecological models mesh with both the ideas and processes already in
use within archaeology and the actual developmental sequences we have gener-
ated through archaeological practice (Nelson et al. 2006; Nelson et al. 2011).
This chapter contributes to this endeavor by assessing how adaptive cycles,
panarchy, and other heuristic devices falling under the umbrella of resilience theory
can be used to examine issues relating to the comparative analysis of the rise,
demise, and regeneration of two tropical civilizations from Southeast Asia: the
Khmer Empire of Cambodia and the Burmese Empire of Myanmar. This exami-
nation is structured using principles from entanglement theory, which, given its
focus on human-thing codependence, aids in recognizing issues of resilience and
vulnerability from an archaeological perspective.
Resilience Theory
Resilience theory encompasses a broad range of concepts aimed at help-

ing researchers organize and interpret the vast range of data associated with the
study of coupled socioecological systems. It also provides a common vernacular
that fosters transdisciplinary communication. Two concepts that have emerged as
central to the study of socioecological resilience are adaptive cycles and panarchy
(discussed in detail in Faulseit, chapter 1, this volume) (Gunderson and Holling
2002; Holling and Gunderson 2002; Nelson et al. 2006:409–411; Walker and Salt
2006:76–79). The aspects of these heuristic devices that are most relevant to the
current argument are briefly summarized in Table 8-1.
As one might expect of any heuristic device, the general properties of the
adaptive cycle are overtly theoretical and thus inherently idealized. For this rea-
son, they need to be critically assessed using detailed archaeological case stud-
ies. This is especially true if, in practice, our ultimate aim is to learn something
about what made specific, coupled socioecological systems in the past more or
less resilient over time. The divergences from the ideal expectations of the adap-
tive cycle model, both within and across case studies, are best explored using a
Release and Reorganization in the Tropics 181
bundled continua of variation approach (Easton 1959:239), based on criteria that

facilitate “middle range” analysis of shifting levels of resilience. Table 8-2 sum-
marizes some of the key continua of variation that may be bundled together and
assessed archaeologically in efforts to capture the historically contingent aspects
of resilience and vulnerability for particular cases studies. Further discussion
of these continua can be found in some of the classic works on resilience theory
(Holling and Gunderson 2002; Walker and Salt 2006, 2012).
One important observation about adaptive cycles that can be foregrounded
is the idea that not all systems pass through the various phases of the adaptive
cycle in the anticipated order (Walker et al. 2006). For example, a system in the
r-phase (exploitation) may jump directly into an α-phase reorganization (if the
socioecological system cannot sustain the level of development or some form
of perturbance impacts growth and innovation). In other instances, an α-phase
reorganization may stimulate additional reorganization (e.g., because of further
perturbances during the reorganization, such as increased droughts). Systems
already in a K-phase may shift into an α-phase reorganization to avoid entering
an Ω-phase release (as in the shift to a democratic government from a totalitarian
regime). Finally, a system may simply take an incredibly long time transitioning
from an r-phase (exploitation) to a K-phase (conservation) because of limited in-
novation and growth potential.
Some archaeological studies have already demonstrated considerable vari-
ability in how the process of reorganization plays itself out (e.g., Nelson et al. 2006;
Nelson et al. 2011). In some cases, reorganization appears to have ushered in a
period of greater homogeneity, as opposed to the expected heterogeneity (Nelson
et al. 2006; Torvinen et al., chapter 11, this volume). We must therefore keep in
mind that adaptive cycle theory is a heuristic device, not a rigid model or final
answer; it simply provides us with an effective means to organize large amounts
of diverse data associated with coupled socioecological systems.
Finally, panarchy theory and the allied concept of spatial resilience are based
on the notion of a hierarchy of nested adaptive cycles of varying size and differ-
ent rates of change that are interlinked and thus have the potential to affect one
another (Cumming 2011:21; Cumming et al. 2006; Gunderson and Holling 2002;
see also Berkes et al. 2003:18–21; Walker and Salt 2006:90–93). For the purposes of
the current argument, it is sufficient to briefly discuss two key processes that play
roles in the interaction between different adaptive cycles within a panarchy—re-
member and revolt—because these concepts are critical to the examination of the
integrated socioecological histories of the two Southeast Asian case studies that
are the focus of this chapter.
Remember refers to renewal facilitated “by drawing on the potential that has
been accumulated and stored in the larger, slower cycle” (Holling et al. 2002:75),
especially in terms of how similar problems were dealt with in the past. As a
result, there is a “template” for regeneration that explains why polities may “reap-
pear periodically after periods of disintegration with essentially the same politi-
cal structure” (Kolata 2006:216–217; see also Bronson 2006). Also active in such
contexts is the process of “stimulus regeneration” (Bronson 2006), which refers to
“the mobilization of social memory, real or imagined, to legitimate structures of
182 G. Iannone
Table 8-1. Characteristics of the Four Phases of the Adaptive Cycle and
Other Key Concepts Relevant to the Application of Adaptive Cycles and
Panarchy Theory
Phase Characteristics Associated Concepts

r-phase, Rapid movement Niche construction is the process whereby “human
growth and into uninhabited or beings initially adapt themselves to the dynamics
expansion sparsely populated of their environment, but over the long term
landscapes, societies’ needs are best served by modifications
rapid population to the environmental dynamics” (Dearing et
growth, new al. 2007:266; see also van der Leeuw 2007:215);
technologies and colonized ecosystems, also known as artificial or
food acquisition cultural landscapes, result from “the deliberate
strategies and sustained alteration of natural processes that
aim at ‘improving’ them according to society’s
needs” (Weisz et al. 2001:123; see also Dearing et al.
2007:266; Fischer-Kowalski 2003; Haberl et al. 2011;
Ponting 2007:67–69; Sieferle 2003; van der Leeuw
2007:214–215).
K-Phase Slow growth; A risk spiral “is a dynamizing principle in the

accumulation conservation, development of complex societies [wherein] the
and accumulation, reduction of a particular risk leads to new types of
consolidation consolidation, uncertainty, which in turn require further (risky)
and sequestration; innovations . . . [and a] permanent innovation
intensification pressure [that is] responsible for the restless
of production; transformations in complex societies” (Müller-
increased Herold and Sieferle 1997:201–202); path dependency
management over, is a state in which people “cannot stop investing
and investment in, knowledge and effort into the system that they
a smaller number have modified, because any reduction in effort will
of key productive allow natural dynamics to take over and transform
strategies; and, the environment into one to which society is no
hypercoherence, longer adapted” (van der Leeuw 2007:215); sunk
which means there costs or Concorde effects refers to a situation where
is a high level of agents “put more . . . effort into continuing with
integration existing investments rather than exploring new
ones,” which results in a tendency to undermine
innovation (Cumming 2011:94; Janssen and
Scheffer 2004; Walker and Salt 2006:87).
Ω-phase, Rapid, “creative Tipping points (Gladwell 2000), critical transitions

release destruction,” (Scheffer 2009), or collapses (Diamond 2005; Tainter
declining 1988); revolt is a situation where “a critical change
construction, in one cycle cascade‍[s] up to a vulnerable stage in a
abandonments, larger, slower one” (Holling et al. 2002:75).
and the chaotic
unraveling and
release of resources
Table 8-1. (continued)

Phase Characteristics Associated Concepts
α-phase, Increased diversity, Reorganization can lead to a phase change, which
reorganization migrations might involve reorganization and return to a
(mobility), similar form of system, a system more akin to an
innovation, and earlier form of organization (i.e., as is inherent in
rapid restructuring the concept of remember [Nelson et al. 2006:426]), a
reorganization into a “degraded state,” which is a
process known as a poverty trap, or a more dramatic
regime shift (also referred to as a system or state
flip) into an entirely new form of system, with an
entirely different identity (Holling and Gunderson
2002; Scheffer 2009:357; Walker and Salt 2006). Exit
is a possible “leaking” away of potential and/or
options as part of the shift from the Ω- to α-phases
(Gunderson and Holling 2002; Holling and
Gunderson 2002; Walker and Salt 2006).
Note: See Gunderson and Holling 2002; Holling and Gunderson 2002; Nelson et al. 2006:409–411;
Walker and Salt 2006:76–79.
hierarchy” (Kolata 2006:218). Ultimately, the process of remembering is important

because supposed collapses more often than not involve a “restructuring of social
institutions,” rather than a total “institutional breakdown” (Yoffee 1988:9, 2005:134).
The second concept, revolt, refers to a situation where “a critical change in one cycle
cascade‍[s] up to a vulnerable stage in a larger, slower one” (Holling et al. 2002:75).
Ultimately, each adaptive cycle is inherently unique, which means that research
programs must focus on multiple spatial and temporal scales to effectively address
the system dynamics within their specific case studies. The question remains:
how can we most effectively incorporate resilience theory, adaptive cycles, and
panarchy theory within our archaeological analyses?
Entanglement Theory
Entanglement theory, as discussed by Hodder (2011a, 2011b, 2012), ap-

pears to provide us with one potential approach that not only integrates many of
the concepts discussed above but also builds on archaeology’s true strength, which
is the study of the material remains of past societies. At its base, entanglement is
based on the idea that the human-thing relationship is grounded in a “dialectic”
between dependence (which is productive and enabling) and dependency (which
is constraining and limiting) (Hodder 2011a:175, 2012:17–18, 88). In other words,
although the material things we engage with and create as part of being human
empower us, these same things “need maintenance and care, they run out and
fall apart. Their physical materiality and chemical processes engage people in
complex systems of relationships with other people and other things—that is,
184
Table 8-2. Continua of Variation for Assessing Socioecological Resilience

in Coupled Socioecological Systems
Continua of Variation Resilience Implications

Flexibility to rigidity Over time, there is diminished ability to change direction, to carry
out controlled transformations.
Diversity to uniformity Functional diversity refers to the different functional groups that
comprise a system, with these groups exhibiting response diversity
(different capability to respond to perturbances). Declining func-
tional and response diversity over time lead to diminished resil-
ience (cf., Nelson et al. 2011).
Innovation to conformity Systems move from having a significant capacity to learn, adapt,
experiment, and embrace change to being exemplified by strong
calls for subsidies and “business as usual” on the part of dominant
individuals and institutions.
Openness This is the ease with which ideas and people are able to move into
and out of a system, with systems that are too open or too closed
being less resilient because they are always in a state of transforma-
tion or have a diminished capacity to receive innovations.
Significant reserves to Over time as a result of strategies of intensification, there tend to be
diminishing reserves fewer resources in play, and most resources tend to get “locked up,”
meaning they are more tightly controlled and more expensive.
Tight feedbacks to loose Over time systems start to see an increase in response times as a
feedbacks result of growing complexity, which makes the system as a whole
less resilient.
Redundancy to top-down Redundancy and overlap in governance and institutional structures
control and management make a system less specialized, with the various components be-
ing less reliant on each other and hence more resilient during times
of stress. Over time this flexibility gives way to a greater degree of
conservatism, with incentives being provided to inhibit change, and
ever-increasing command and control and a growing emphasis on
process manifest in more rules, regulations, and greater adherence to
procedure.
Intermediate levels of Intermediate levels of connectivity, as in modular systems with
modularity to too much or various subcomponents that exhibit tight interactions but are more
limited modularity loosely connected to each other, have higher levels of resilience “be-
cause the system is neither isolated from changes or perturbations
nor overwhelmed by them” (Cumming 2011:138).
Significant to diminished Over time there is a diminished capacity for systems to exhibit collec-
social capital tive action in the face of perturbances. In contrast, resilient systems
are exemplified by effective leadership, well-developed social net-
works, and overall trust, which promotes collective action.
Resilience-positive to resil- Some efficiency is useful, particularly if it conserves human or natu-
ience-negative efficiency ral resources, but over time systems tend to stop taking into account
the secondary effects of efficiency, and because of the elimination
of redundancies and emphasis on a specific range of values and
interests (i.e., an “optimal” condition for a particular ecosystem or
organization), there is a diminished capacity for response diversity,
resulting in a dramatic decline in flexibility and hence resilience.
Sources: Holling and Gunderson 2002; Walker and Salt 2006, 2012.
people and things get trapped in entanglements that themselves direct the way
further change can occur,” principally because “the entrapment of entanglement
limits and channels innovation” (Hodder 2011a:178). The principles of thing-en-
tanglement mesh well with many of the concepts that inform resilience theory, a
fact which is both implicit and explicit within discussions of the theory (Hodder
2012:51, 105, 166, 170). There are, for example, obvious connections to the concepts
of niche construction, colonized ecosystems, risk spirals, path dependency, and
sunk costs (see Table 8-1), as well as panarchy and spatial resilience (e.g., peripheral
areas often disconnect from entanglements first) (Hodder 2012:166).
Resilience and Entanglement on the Ground
What kind of archaeological data provide the best fit with resilience
theory, adaptive cycles, panarchy theory, and entanglement theory? To begin, it is
useful to follow the lead of Walker and Salt (2012:23), who stress that researchers
should practice requisite simplicity when applying resilience theory to a specific case
study. In other words, one should “identify the minimum but sufficient informa-
tion” required to explore the levels of resilience and vulnerability exhibited by a
particular case study. Walker and Salt posit that, in general, between three and
five key variables will play the most significant roles in determining resilience
in most situations. In terms of examining entanglement and resilience within
early state formations, the most fruitful variables to examine appear to be: water
management features, features associated with intensive agricultural produc-
tion (e.g., field systems, irrigation networks, granaries), urban epicentral plans
and composition, settlement patterns, and integrative mechanisms (e.g., roads,
bridges, temples, markets, ports, administrative nodes, polity-controlled fields
and water-holding facilities, hospitals, and rest houses).
In the remainder of this chapter, I explore the ideas presented thus far by
considering how they articulate with what we know about the integrated socioeco-
logical histories of two tropical civilizations. The complex societies that emerged
in tropical zones were both constrained and enabled by the unique characteristics
of the ecosystems within which they were embedded (e.g., Kricher 2011; Marcus
2009), including high biodiversity, seasonal rainfall, warm temperatures, soils that
are often heavily leached and quickly lose their nutrients when tree cover is cleared
(principally because vegetation, both living and dead organic matter, contains 75
percent of the nutrients in a tropical ecosystem), the proliferation of vector-borne
diseases that results from warm, stable temperatures (Miksic 1999:172–173), and the
food-storage disease issues due to high humidity and temperatures (Scarborough
and Burnside 2010:178–179). The two tropical state formations that form the basis of
this review are the Burmese Empire of Myanmar/Burma and the Khmer Empire
of Cambodia (Figure 8-1). The questions addressed through this exercise are, What
is the best way to differentiate between periods of release (collapse) and reorgani-
zation in the archaeological record, given the defining characteristics outlined in
adaptive cycle theory? How significant are the revolt and remember components
of the panarchy model in specific examples of release and reorganization?
186 G. Iannone
Figure 8-1. Map of mainland Southeast Asia showing the centers mentioned
in the text.
r-Phase Rapid Growth and Expansion

For the sake of brevity and to provide some conceptual focus, I begin
the analysis of the Burmese and Khmer adaptive cycles in the latter part of the
r-phase, at a time when each of these “monsoonal” regions (Fletcher 2012:296) wit-
nessed the development of the first “proto-states” (e.g., Stark 2006a). I use the term
protostates purposely, given the ongoing debate as to whether these early complex
societies were organized as chiefdoms or states (O’Reilly 2007:97–98, 115). The first
Southeast Asian protostates developed out of the small communities of swidden
agriculturalists that had long been settled along the coasts, on river floodplains,
or adjacent to large inland lakes or wetlands (Stark 2006a:413). These emerging
polities were influenced by established state formations in both China and India,
with whom they traded, and, in the case of China, periodically sent tribute (Coedès
1968; Higham 2002:231–235; O’Reilly 2007:25, 49). Given these influences, it is not
surprising that we see evidence for a diverse range of ritual beliefs and symbols in
both the protostates and the polities that succeeded them—derived mainly from
Buddhism and Hinduism—although one religious tradition was often dominate
at a given point in time or sometimes across an entire developmental sequence
(O’Reilly 2007).
We know very little about these early complex societies besides what Chinese
records tell us and what has been gleaned from limited archaeological research.
Although the evidence remains sparse, it does seem to show that these societies
all exhibited early forms of what has been referred to as low-density, agrarian-
based urbanism, wherein monumental architecture, infrastructure, and elite
symbols of authority are interspersed throughout a broader settlement matrix
comprising a mosaic of productive lands (e.g., wet- and dry-field systems, orchards)
and significant green spaces (Fletcher 2009, 2012). Although the Chinese refer to
these protostates as powerful kingdoms, this is likely an exaggeration (Higham
2002:240). Indications are that these polities were comparatively decentralized
(O’Reilly 2007:12, 35). Confirmation of this is provided by the fact that the much-
larger and more powerful polities that followed them (i.e., Angkor and Bagan)
continued to exhibit significant levels of political and economic decentralization.
It is also implied by the frequent shifts in power discussed in the Chinese records
(e.g., O’Reilly 2007:98).
Turning attention to the first case study, by 200 b.c.e. a handful of small,
decentralized, and likely independent protostates began to emerge in the western
mainland of Southeast Asia, most notably Pyu (aka Tircul), a primarily Buddhist
polity located in the dry zone of Upper Myanmar (Coedès 1968:62–64; Fletcher
2012:296; Hudson and Lustig 2008:271, 277; Lieberman 2003:92, 2011:941; Moore
2004:19; O’Reilly 2007:12). This polity and others like it situated in Lower Myanmar
(Moore 2003:25, 2004:2) are represented by walled settlements dating to the early
urban, or Pyu period (200 b.c.e.–900 c.e.) (Hudson and Lustig 2008:270; Moore
2003:25–27, 2004:2; O’Reilly 2007). These enclosures, which range from 9 to 19 km2
in area, served as the epicenters for small, moated “cities” and contained residen-
tial, ritual, and agricultural precincts, as well as sophisticated water-management
features (Fletcher 2012:296; Moore 2003:31, 2004:17; Stark 2006a:417–418). A good
example is the walled and moated enclosure at Sriksetra (Figure 8-2), dating to
between the fifth and ninth centuries c.e., which covers an area of 14.3 km2 and
contains numerous wells, reservoirs, and drainage channels, as well as consider-
able ritual architecture constructed of bricks (see Figures 8-1, 8-2) (Hudson and
Lustig 2008:271–273; O’Reilly 2007:18, 24).
Sriksetra and the other Pyu settlements demonstrate that water channels
were already being utilized to irrigate bunded rice paddies (Hudson and Lustig
2008:277, 288–292). The Pyu water-management system relied on natural floods
and the subsequent diversion and collection of floodwaters, using canals and
reservoirs, to provide water to increase the productivity of low-lying lands that
were particularly easy to irrigate (Fletcher 2012:298; O’Connor 1995:972–976, 983;
O’Reilly 2007:30; cf. Lieberman 2003:100). Significantly, this system seems to have
been viable without major inputs of labor (Stargardt 1990, 1998; see also Stark
2006a:415), even though agricultural production in the dry zone was naturally
limited by annual precipitation (Lieberman 2011:941–942).
The Pyu settlement pattern is poorly known, but it is likely to have been low
density in form. The dispersed support population seems to have been integrated
through a series of brick shrines that were strategically positioned across the
landscape, often with their own moats and reservoirs (Stark 2006a:422). Unfortu-
nately, for reasons that still remain to be determined, Sriksetra and the rest of the
Pyu centers declined in the early ninth century c.e. (Hudson and Lustig 2008:275;
O’Reilly 2007:25).
Elsewhere, in Southeast Asia’s central mainland, similar developments were
taking place (Stark 2006a:413). One of the earliest polities to emerge was the pre-
dominantly Hindu protostate of Funan, which was strategically situated to take
188 G. Iannone
Figure 8-2. Examples of protostate walled enclosures from Sriksetra, Myan-

mar; Angkor Borei, Cambodia; and Sambor Prei Kuk, Cambodia. Maps are at
different scales. (Adapted from Hudson and Lustig 2008:Figure 4; Stark et al.
1999:Figure 4; Kubo et al. 2012:Figure 4.)
advantage of east-west trade between India and China (Coedès 1968:41; Higham
2002:235; O’Reilly 2007:96–98). During the Early Historic period (500 b.c.e.–500
c.e.), this protostate developed on the alluvial plain of the Mekong Delta, at a time
marked by intense maritime trade and a heightened exchange of ideas (Fletcher
2012:296; O’Reilly 2007; Stark 2006b:148, 2006a:413). As with the early protostates
of Myanmar, Funan was likely a highly decentralized polity (Stark 2006b:152) or
possibly a series of competing polities (Higham 2002:243; O’Reilly 2007:97). Still,
the material record does attest to a growing level of centralization and political
control that had not been achieved until this point in time (O’Reilly 2007:99).
Funan’s largest centers range from 2 to 3 km2 in area (Stark 2006a:417). As in
Myanmar, these centers consist of walled and moated enclosures with multiple
precincts containing residences, shrines, stelae, statuary, and reservoirs (Coedès
1968:59–62; Higham 2002:236–239; Stark 2006a:418). It has been posited that the capital
of Funan—or at least one of its capitals—was Angkor Borei, a large inland center
with a 3 km2 walled and moated enclosure (see Figures 8-1, 8-2) (Higham 2002:237–
238; O’Reilly 2007:93, 100–108). The moats at Angkor Borei were 22 m wide and 2 to 4
m deep (O’Reilly 2007:102). The adjacent enclosure walls were 2.4 m wide and 4.5 m
high and were likely not defensive in purpose but, rather, aimed at diverting flood
waters away from the center (O’Reilly 2007:107). The largest reservoir at Angkor
Borei was 100 by 200 m in size (O’Reilly 2007:103). Smaller reservoirs, or pools, were
situated both inside and outside the Angkor Borei walled enclosure and adjacent
to other residential groups in the surrounding settlement zone (O’Reilly 2007:103).
Much of Funan’s support population lived in small agricultural villages lo-
cated on elevated areas adjacent to or within seasonally inundated floodplains,
where dry-rice agriculture was highly productive (Fox and Ledgerwood 1999;
Higham 2002:238; O’Reilly 2007:93, 95; Stark 2006b:149, 2006a:414), or along the
coast, where trade formed the basis of the economy (Stark 2006b:151, 2006a:413).
Brick shrines, many of which were associated with moats and reservoirs (ponds),
were constructed in various places to help integrate settlement with the centers
(O’Reilly 2007:103; Stark 2006a:418, 422). Once again, it is likely that a low-density,
dispersed settlement pattern was the norm at this time.
Agricultural production was diversified within the Funan polity. Chinese
records indicate that farmers planted rain fed, flood recession, and floating-rice
fields, which in combination normally guaranteed three crops per year (O’Reilly
2007:95). Reservoirs were used to store water to irrigate the rice fields in the dry sea-
son (Higham 2002:239). Some researchers have concluded, however, that it was only
toward the end of Funan’s dominance, in the fifth and sixth centuries, that more-
productive irrigation systems were developed (Hall 2011:60). Drainage, aquaculture,
desalinization, transport, and possibly irrigation were facilitated by an extensive
canal system that is thought to have linked the interior capital (Angkor Borei) with
several intermediary communities—often interpreted as trading entrepȏts—and
ultimately coastal ports (Higham 2002:236; O’Reilly 2007:100–101, 106–107). This
hydraulic system appears to have extended over 200 km2 (Hall 2011:55).
Toward the latter part of its existence (seventh century c.e.), Funan began
erecting statuary and stelae monuments with Sanskrit texts (Higham 2002:242;
O’Reilly 2007:93, 106). These are, unfortunately, quite rare, and as a result we
190 G. Iannone
continue to know very little about this early complex society. This is especially
true when it comes to the topic of its demise (see Higham 2002:243 and O’Reilly
2007:108–111). It has been suggested that this delta polity suffered considerably
when trade networks shifted southwards toward Malaysia and the islands. Other
scholars posit that the decline was due to the mismanagement of resources, the
failure to maintain the extensive water-management system, or possibly changes
in agricultural strategies. Some also suggest that Funan was conquered by an ad-
jacent polity referred to as Chenla (Coedès 1968:68; Higham 2002:249). Still others
see evidence in the inscriptions for a peaceful transition from the delta polity to
this new inland protostate (Higham 2002:249–250; O’Reilly 2007:110).
Chenla, a more agrarian-based, Hindu-Buddhist polity, emerged in the mid-
dle Mekong subregion during the Pre-Angkorian period (500–800 c.e.) (see Figures
8-1, 8-2) (Higham 2002:252–253; O’Reilly 2007:111–122). We know considerably more
about Chenla because this protostate produced many more texts in Sanskrit or
ancient Khmer (O’Reilly 2007:111). Even though these records imply a growing
emphasis on powerful capitals and strong kings (Higham 2002:245–250)—and
regardless of the Chinese references that suggest that the polity had some level
of control over a territory encompassing most of what is now Cambodia (Stark
2006b:152–153)—the broader evidential record supports the conclusion that Chenla
was still a comparatively decentralized political formation (Higham 2002:249–251;
O’Reilly 2007:112, 115–116). It is also likely that there was not a single Chenla
polity but, rather, multiple, competing polities within a broader heterarchical
landscape (O’Reilly 2007:111, 115), with both overlords and their vassals com-
missioning inscriptions (O’Reilly 2007:117). By at least 635–680 c.e., however, we
are likely looking at an actual state-level society, albeit one that is still “ephem-
eral” (Higham 2002:249–251), although increasingly more centralized over time
(Higham 2002:245–250; O’Reilly 2007:117, 125).
Chinese records indicate that the settlement continuum consisted of centers
of varying size, and that in the seventh century c.e., there were minimally 30
towns with at least 1,000 inhabitants, each town centered on one of a number of
competing capitals that controlled small, comparatively autonomous territories
(O’Reilly 2007:120). Samber Prei Kuk (Ishanapura) was likely the capital of one of
the most important Chenla polities (Higham 2002:245–251). This center contains
a series of walled precincts with associated sanctuaries, all surrounded by a 4
km2 enclosure (Higham 2002:248). A number of moats, ramparts, and reservoirs
are associated with the various walled precincts (Higham 2002:248, 250–251).
Large-scale walled and moated settlements were built throughout the middle
Mekong at this time (Fletcher 2012:296; Higham 2002:244–245; Stark 2006b:152–153,
2006a:418). Unfortunately, not enough research has been focused on the settlement
patterns to allow for a detailed discussion of these (Stark 2006a:409). It does ap-
pear, however, to have been low density in character (Lieberman 2011:943). Some
settlements were located along trade routes (Higham 2002:248), and brick shrines
with moats and reservoirs continued to be used to integrate the support popula-
tion (Fletcher 2012:296; Stark 2006a:418, 422).
Texts produced by the Chenla polity make reference to the rice fields, or-
chards, and reservoirs that must have been scattered throughout the landscape
(Higham 2002:250–251). Agriculture continued to be based on flood recession

and dry-rice production, but there are also indications that small-scale irrigation
networks for bunded rice paddies, which did not require significant labor inputs,
were also constructed in this period (Fletcher 2012:298; Fox and Ledgerwood 1999;
Lieberman 2011:943; see also Stark 2006a:415; cf., Higham 2002:250–251).
By the ninth century c.e., one of the key foci for Chenla political development
was the area that would eventually become the heartland of the Khmer Empire dur-
ing the Angkorian period, with two capitals being established at what would later
be the settings for Angkor’s West Baray and the Roluos Group (Fletcher 2012:297).
Summary
The protostates in Southeast Asia exhibit many of the qualities of so-
cioecological systems in the r-phase of the adaptive cycle. They are characterized
by rapid movement into uninhabited or sparsely populated landscapes, rapid
population growth, and significant innovation, especially in regard to water man-
agement and agricultural production.
In terms of entanglement, many innovations—in particular, the various res-
ervoirs, drainage channels and canals, and bunded rice fields—fostered human-
thing dependence that was enabling and productive. The use of water-management
systems, brick shrines, stelae, and statuary also promoted ties between previously
isolated communities. Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that these entangle-
ments were limited in nature, in that they did not always require substantial labor
investment, and thus local agents seem to have maintained significant autonomy
within the increasingly more interconnected, yet still comparatively decentral-
ized, agrarian-based, low-density settlement system. Most housing continued to
be made of wood, ponds provided sufficient water for extended family living,
and the agricultural systems included a diversity of productive practices, such
as irrigated fields, flood-recession agriculture, dry-rice farming, and the plant-
ing of floating rice. These characteristics suggest that if it was desirable, primary
producers could have easily disentangled from centers and relocated elsewhere.
Some entanglements, however, did create human-thing dependencies that
were both constraining and limiting. In particular, even though the level of niche
construction was limited in extent—suggesting that more-traditional rain-fed
water collection and farming practices continued to be extensively employed—the
improved water-management and agricultural systems that were constructed
did require constant maintenance, even though they were, to a great extent, still
reliant on annual flooding. Funan, in particular, may have been both enabled and
constrained by its extensive canal system, which promoted trade, movement, and
communication, at the same time that it entangled some communities within a
specific agricultural system that was not only reliant on the canals to help move
water and desalinize parts of the delta but also focused the overall economy
toward the coast and maritime trade. That this entanglement was still limited in
scope is implied by the relative ease with which the system seems to have been
reorganized into a more inland, dry-zone agrarian political system during the
shift from Funan to Chenla.
192 G. Iannone
Ultimately, in assessing the resilience of the protostates using the bundled

continua of variation outlined in Table 8-2, it would appear that these socioecologi-
cal systems were highly flexible, exhibited considerable diversity, high levels of
innovation, and were fairly open, with significant reserves and tight information
feedbacks. There is significant redundancy, with little top-down control manage-
ment, high to intermediate levels of modularity, moderate levels of social capital,
and resilience-positive efficiency.
K-Phase Accumulation and Consolidation
The transition from the r-phase to K-phase in the two case studies
occurred during what Lieberman (2003:23, 78, 2009:16) calls the “charter era”
in Southeast Asia (800/850–1250/1300 c.e.) (see also Lieberman and Buckley
2012:1058–1059). This time period witnessed the emergence of the “charter states,”
which constitute the first large-scale, indigenous polities that “provided a political
and cultural charter” for later generations (Lieberman 2003:23, 2009:16, 2011:937).
These polities ushered in a period characterized by population growth, massive
investments in epicenter enhancements, the expansion of agricultural and water-
management systems, new religious institutions, greater levels of pacification and
ability to harness labor, and higher levels of maritime trade (Lieberman 2003:23,
78, 2009:16). They also all exhibited what Lieberman (2003:35) calls “charter ad-
ministration,” which is typical of loosely integrated and thus decentralized “so-
lar polities” with semi-autonomous tributaries and comparatively autonomous
religious institutions and local elites, especially in terms of those located farther
away from capitals (Lieberman 2009:22–23; Stark 2006b:156–159, 162–163).
These charter states were also exemplified by low levels of literacy, regular
emigration (Lieberman 2003:114; 2009:16–17), and low-density urbanism (Fletcher
2012:288). According to Lieberman (2009:23), the charter polities were compara-
tively long-lived and thus resilient because their modular, “decentralized, gelati-
nous, multicellular structure . . . allowed each polity to survive the malfunction
of any of its individual parts”; there were few outside threats until the mid-1100s;
most improved landholdings were controlled by temples and/or elites (i.e., they
were only loosely connected to the capital); and elite knowledge and cultural
practices insulated them from their illiterate and animistic support populations
(see also Lieberman 2003:119).
The Burmese Empire, with its capital at Bagan (Pagan), and the Khmer Empire,
centered on Angkor, were two of four polities that dominated mainland Southeast
Asia during the charter era (Lieberman 2003:23, 2009:15). Angkor and Bagan were
the end results of both indigenous growth and cultural borrowing and of the amal-
gamation of a series of less powerful, preexisting polities (Lieberman 2009:15–16).
Both polities developed in “dry zones,” and they clearly benefitted from the more
favorable monsoons that resulted from what has been called the Medieval Climate
Anomaly (800/850–1250/1300 c.e.). This climate shift was crucial because it not
only brought a 30 percent increase in annual precipitation and stronger stream
flows but also because this rainfall fell more evenly throughout the year, resulting
in a shorter dry season, which in turn allowed for the expansion of bunded field
systems and the natural flooding of a larger number of dry fields, culminating in
higher rice production and promoting colonization of previously unproductive
lands (Lieberman 2009:33, 2011:944–947; Lieberman and Buckley 2012).
The Burmese Empire was a Buddhist charter state that dominated much of
the western mainland between 950 c.e. and 1300 c.e. (Fletcher 2012; Grave and
Barbetti 2002:77; Hudson 2004; Hudson et al. 2001:48; Lieberman 2003, 2009, 2011;
Lieberman and Buckley 2012). It had political (peaceful and aggressive), economic,
and religious ties with other polities in South and Southeast Asia (Lieberman
2003:91–99). Located on the east bank of the Ayeyarwady River, the Burmese
capital, Bagan—the “city that tramples on enemies”—was a walled and moated
epicenter containing Buddhist temples, monasteries, and palaces surrounded
by a site core covering 90 km 2 containing additional temples and monasteries
(Figures 8-3; see Figure 8-1) (Fletcher 2012:296). Growth of the city has been docu-
mented by a recent United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organiza-
tion (UNESCO) survey, which suggests that there were about 44 major religious
buildings at Bagan in the eleventh century, 215 in the twelfth, and 2,076 in the
thirteenth, although this is probably an underestimation (Hudson and Lustig
2008:279), with some assessments reaching as high as 10,000 (Fletcher 2012:296;
Grave and Barbetti 2002:77; Lieberman 2003:92, 2011:940). At its peak, Bagan may
have controlled a territory of roughly 18,000 km2 (Fletcher 2012:300), and it would
have had an extremely high population, although the exact size remains unde-
termined (Fletcher 2012:302).
Some suggest that when the Burmese entered the dry zone in the 830s c.e.,
they brought with them a more sophisticated water-management system—in-
cluding canals, weirs, and reservoirs (Lieberman 2011:942)—which allowed them
to bring virgin lands under wet-rice production (especially the fertile uplands
that had previously been ignored) (O’Connor 1995:972–976, 983). Others argue
that, as discussed above, the Pyus already had a sophisticated system of water-
management features that were only expanded on by the Burmese (Stargardt
1990:54–55; see Lieberman 2003:100–101, 2011:945). Irrigation was apparently first
carried out, to a limited extent, in the Bagan core area, but during the tenth and
eleventh centuries, the polity already had to look farther afield for more-suitable
areas for wet-rice production, given the limited precipitation that fell in the dry
zone (Lieberman 2011:942–943). The most important of these field systems were
located 50 to 200 km away, in the Kyaukse and Minbu rice-growing districts, with
the Ayeyarwady River being used to facilitate transportation of agricultural sur-
plus to the heartland (Fletcher 2012:292, 309–310; Lieberman 2003:90–91; Lieberman
and Buckley 2012:1061; Moore 2003:25). Records suggest that the Kyaukse irrigation
network was improved by King Anawratha (1044–1077) in the late eleventh century
as part of a broader program of economic consolidation (Hudson et al. 2001:51).
At its peak in the thirteenth century, it is estimated that Bagan may have drawn
from bunded rice fields covering over 16,000 km2 (Fletcher 2012:300). Religious
institutions and lay elites, especially the former, were used to colonize unproduc-
tive lands and to improve them and were given tax benefits to do so (Lieberman
2003:119–120, 228, 2011:940).
194 G. Iannone
Figure 8-3. Bagan, Myanmar/Burma. (Adapted from Aung-Thwin and Aung-

Thwin 2012:93.)
In terms of Bagan’s low-density settlement pattern, much of the support

population was integrated by the agricultural and water-management systems
and, thus, concentrated some distance from the epicenter, in places like the Ky-
aukse Valley (Lieberman 2003:92; Moore 2003:25). Overall, Bagan’s settlement was
likely quite modular in organization, whether based on ethnicity or occupation,
with clusters of tightly connected villages commonly servicing hinterland zones
(Hudson et al. 2001:62).
The Khmer Empire, which had its formative roots in the Chenla polities
(Higham 2002:249), was a Hindu-Buddhist charter state that dominated the central
mainland between 802 and 1431 c.e. (Lieberman 2003, 2009, 2011). Like the Bur-
mese Empire, it is known to have had extensive political, economic, and religious
ties throughout South and Southeast Asia (Lieberman 2003). The Khmer capital,
Angkor, situated on the Cambodian Plain, is considered the largest known pre-
industrial, low-density urban settlement in the world (Figure 8-4) (see Figure 8-1)
(Evans et al. 2007:14280, 2013; Fletcher 2012:288; Penny et al. 2007). The Angkor
epicenter was substantially larger than Bagan (Lieberman 2011:940) and consisted
of numerous large walled and moated compounds housing a myriad of temples,
palaces, and monasteries, many of which served as the polity capital at different
points in the history of the empire (Coedès 1968:173). Greater Angkor’s low-density
urban settlement appears to be self-similar for over 300 km2 (Fletcher 2012:302)
and ultimately covers 1,000 km 2 (Evans et al. 2007, 2013:12598; Fletcher 2009:9,
2012:296; Fletcher et al. 2002, 2008; Fletcher and Pottier 2002:24).
Recent research using airborne LiDAR (light detection and ranging laser
scanning) has documented how the Angkor settlement pattern developed over
time (Evans et al. 2013). According to Evans et al. (2013:12597–12598), in the ninth
to tenth centuries c.e., Angkorian cities were “open” and focused on well-planned,
central temple precincts housing the principal polity temple. Other components
of the settlement system were comparatively unstructured, with the low-density
urban matrix consisting of local shrines, ponds, and domestic features surrounded
by fields, orchards, and gardens. No moats or walls were present at this time.
By the eleventh to twelfth centuries c.e., there is a significant shift in the
settlement pattern (Evans et al. 2013:12597–12598), as exemplified by the develop-
ment of road and canal systems, both of which served to bring more structure to
the distribution of other settlement features. Moated enclosures were now home
to more high-density settlement configurations consisting of temple precincts
surrounded by rather homogenous domestic structures with associated ponds, all
arranged in an orthogonal plan that created actual city blocks. These high-density
nodes were interspersed within a broader, polynucleated settlement matrix that
continued to be low density in character. It is not until the twelfth century c.e. that
more highly structured spaces begin to appear outside of the moated precincts.
During the twelfth to thirteenth centuries c.e., the various high-density nodes
began to coalesce, resulting in a 35 km2 orthogonal urban footprint (Evans et al.
2013:12597–12598). There was then a more seamless transition between the epi-
central, high-density moated precincts and the surrounding low-density urban
matrix. The latter was home to significantly higher populations than ever before
but still retained substantial productive land and green space. The smooth transi-
tion between the high-density nodes and more-rural settlements was disrupted in
some instances by the construction of actual city walls that are distinct from those
used to enclose specific temple precincts. As one moves away from the temple
precincts, one also begins to see greater heterogeneity in terms of the sizes and
spatial arrangement of domestic architecture and ponds.
At its peak, the Angkorian empire is projected to have had a population of
about 750,000 (Fletcher 2012:302; Lieberman and Buckley 2012:1060). Military cam-
paigns were used to secure tax and tribute for polity use (Stark 2006b:161). In total,
196 G. Iannone
Figure 8-4. Angkor, Cambodia. (Adapted from Evans et al. 2007:Figure 2.)
the polity may have controlled a territory of 70,000 to 100,000 km2, and it likely
influenced an area substantially larger, including the Mekong and Chaophraya
basins and portions of what is now northern and peninsular Thailand (Fletcher
2012:300; Lieberman 2003:23). It appears that expansion of Angkor influence con-
tinued until the early thirteenth century c.e., when inscriptions tell us that rulers
began to focus more on “restoration of irrigation networks and the rebuilding of
ruins” (Coedès 1968:182).
The center of the Angkor empire was located to the north of the maximum
reach of Tonle Sap Lake, which has the unique ability to expand its size fourfold
annually as a result of the downstream rivers being unable to contain all of the
runoff from the rainy season, which causes the Tonle Sap River to reverse its flow
back into the lake (Higham 2002:9–10). Not only does this massive lake contain
significant fish stocks but to this day its annual expansion still brings water and
nutrients to a vast system of highly productive, bunded rice fields that emerge
from beneath the lake when it begins to contract.
Angkor’s water-management system was constructed between the ninth and
the thirteenth centuries c.e. (Evans et al. 2013; Fletcher et al. 2008:658; cf. Kumma
2009:1420) and was extensive, consisting of canals, embankments, weirs, reservoirs
(barays), and bunded rice fields (Evans et al. 2013; Fletcher 2012:296–298; Fletcher et
al. 2008; Lieberman 2003:228–229, 2011:943). The system, which extends over 1,000
km2 (Evans et al. 2007, 2013; Fletcher 2012:302; Fletcher et al. 2008:658–659; Kumma
2009), had ritual, water storage, flood control, and irrigation functions, in addition
to providing potable water for the population and helping maintain the water
table (Fletcher et al. 2008:662, 669; Lieberman 2011:943). The various components
exhibit a long history of modifications and expansions, with the final additions
serving to drain excess water into Tonle Sap Lake (Fletcher et al. 2008). The largest
component of the system is the West Baray, which is 8 km long and 2 km wide,
with embankments that were 120 m wide and 10 m high and containing about 50
million m3 of water (Fletcher 2012:300; Fletcher et al. 2008:662). The embankments
themselves required 20 million m³ of fill (Fletcher 2012:303).
The Angkor polity was reliant on tax from the agricultural economy that,
for the most part, was based on locally managed, flood-recession irrigation strat-
egies (Stark 2006b:160). As in Myanmar, rice was the staple crop of the Khmer
Empire, and it is known to have been grown in the heart of the epicenter, adjacent
to the Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom capitals (Fletcher 2012:298). There is also
evidence that large-scale forest clearance for agricultural production (including
rice paddies), fuel, and building projects was already underway by the eleventh
and twelfth centuries c.e., ultimately reaching far to the north of the Angkor
epicenter into the vicinity of the Kulen Hills (Lieberman 2011:943). As at Bagan,
religious institutions and lay elites, especially the former, were used to colonize
unproductive lands and to improve them and were given tax benefits to do so,
which contributed to their autonomy (Lieberman 2003:119–120, 228–229, 2011:940).
The remains of relic field systems, water-management features, roadways,
local temples (some made of brick construction), hospitals, and timber houses have
been found by remote sensing across the settlement zone (Evans et al. 2007:14278–
14279, 2013; Fletcher and Pottier 2002:27). The embankments of the water-manage-
ment system were commonly used as the foundations for residential enclosures,
the most important of which had associated temples (Fletcher 2012:298). Recent
research indicates that small-scale settlements also existed in the epicenter, even
within the central Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat enclosures (Evans et al. 2013;
Fletcher and Pottier 2002:25). As was the tradition in Southeast Asia, other than
religious architecture, most buildings were constructed of wood and roofed with
thatch (Evans et al. 2013:12595).
Various temple complexes, “elaborate masonry structures,” statuary, and
stelae are associated with the water-management system, and these served to
integrate the support population (Coedès 1968:176; Fletcher 2012:298; Fletcher et
198 G. Iannone
al. 2008:659). Such integrative mechanisms gained their importance from the fact
that, as in other tropical polities, human labor was a limiting factor at Angkor (see
Lieberman 2003, 2009:764–765; Scarborough and Burnside 2010:180), and patron-
client relationships were the basis of the political and economic systems (Stark
2006b:162–163). The Angkor road system served to facilitate expeditions, trade, and
pilgrimage, and it grew organically between the ninth and mid-to-late thirteenth
centuries (Hendrickson 2010:484, 493). In total, there were over 1000 km2 of raised
roads, many built over preexisting routes of travel, and others constructed on the
embankments of the water-management system (Hendrickson 2010). The segments
of the road network were associated with additional integrative features, such as
temples, statuary, stelae, rest houses, hospitals, masonry bridges, and reservoirs
(Coedès 1968:173–176; Fletcher 2012:296–298; Hendrickson 2010:481). The Khmer
also developed large administrative units to manage the far-flung polity interests
(Stark 2006b:163). Temples were also key economic nodes within local communi-
ties, and they acquired control over vast estates and supported numerous attached
specialists (Stark 2006b:160). These estates were supported by most Khmer because
they provided merit (Stark 2006b:160).
Summary
Even though the charter-era polities continue to exhibit significant
levels of expansion and innovation over time, they do, eventually, begin to dem-
onstrate many of the characteristics of K-phase socioecological systems, such as
slowing growth, greater emphasis on conservation, accumulation, consolidation,
and sequestration, intensification of production, and increased management over
and investment in a smaller number of key productive strategies. There was also
higher levels of integration and centralization over time, as is exemplified in the
shift to a more nucleated and orthogonal, yet still low-density settlement pattern
at Angkor. This may signify the ability to support greater numbers of nonagrar-
ian specialists who did not require access to productive land. These political sys-
tems did, however, continue to be comparatively decentralized, with significant
autonomy being exhibited by subordinates, religious institutions, local leaders,
and, presumably, domestic units.
In terms of entanglement, charter-state growth was enabled by increasing
investments in colonized ecosystems, especially through expansion of the wa-
ter-management and wet-rice agricultural systems. Although rain-fed fields and
ponds continued to be important—which allowed for a level of local autonomy—
large-scale irrigation clearly enhanced the productive capacity of the dry zone. The
more-regular monsoons of the Medieval Climate Anomaly also brought greater
certainty to the agricultural and water-management schemes. Other innovations,
such as roads, bridges, and rest houses, facilitated movement, trade, commerce,
and polity integration. Brick shrines, monasteries, and hospitals helped to further
entangle hinterland communities within the overarching economic and ideologi-
cal system promoted by the heartlands. Integration was also fostered because of
the propensity for settlements to be more firmly tethered to particular infrastruc-
ture, such as the embankments of reservoirs or irrigated field systems. The fact
that primary producers were increasingly entangled with polity infrastructure

is significant, given that human labor was a limiting factor in tropical societies
(i.e., labor was more readily available and, presumably, more easily controlled).
With respect to some of the constraints that emerged from these same
human-thing entanglements, it is clear that greater reliance on colonized ecosys-
tems and large-scale infrastructure projects led to diminished biodiversity and
higher overall maintenance costs. A challenge specific to Bagan was the fact that
its principal productive lands, and hence largest population clusters and labor
pools, were situated 50 to 200 km away from the polity heartland, in the Minbu
and Kyaukse valleys. In terms of both Bagan and Angkor, efforts to bring unpro-
ductive land under the yoke of the polity, which invariably involved coercing elites
and religious institutions to do so by providing promises of merit and tax breaks,
also contributed to a scenario wherein agricultural expansion held diminishing
returns for the polity itself. Equally problematic is that this strategy fostered
greater economic and political independence for those who initially brought the
unproductive lands under cultivation and ultimately ended up managing them.
With respect to broader polity integration, the growing costs associated with the
construction of larger and greater numbers of reservoirs, fields, road networks,
rest houses, and shrines drew even more funds away from the coffers of the pol-
ity at the same time that they improved the conditions of the hinterlands, which
likely cultivated their autonomy. Finally, it is possibly that the focus on invest-
ment in the dry-zone agrarian strategy diminished the broader maritime-trade
capacity of these inland polities.
In the end, it seems that the charter polities ultimately entered a risk spiral,
and because of their path dependency and tendency to “carry on carrying on”
(sunk costs), they became highly vulnerable to unanticipated perturbances. Con-
sidering the resilience of the charter states using the bundled continua of varia-
tion outlined in Table 8-2, it would appear that over time these socioecological
systems were increasingly rigid and uniform and characterized by growing levels
of conformity. They were also more closed and had declining reserves, looser
feedbacks, diminishing levels of social capital, and a higher degree of resilience-
negative efficiency. Interestingly, the unique character of decentralized tropical
polities also means that they diverged in some important ways from the ideal
model for K-phase systems, in that these systems did not reach significant levels
of hypercoherence and integration, and they continued to be quite redundant,
lacked sophisticated top-down control management, and seem to have moved
from intermediate levels of modularity to high levels over time, rather than from
intermediate to low levels.
Ω-Phase Release
The collapse sequences of the two case studies occurred over the course
of two or three generations (Fletcher 2012:310). According to Fletcher (2012:302–303),
some of the shared characteristics that made these tropical civilizations vulner-
able include their homogenous, self-similar character, which meant that they
200 G. Iannone
had limited response diversity (although Lieberman [2009:23] suggests that this
modularity would have actually enhanced resilience); huge commitment to in-
frastructure; and massive landscape modifications. Also significant is the fact
that swidden agriculture never seems to have fallen out of use in any of the case
studies discussed here. According to Fletcher (2012:307–308), this may have been
problematic because although continued use of swidden may have provided inde-
pendent farmers with a degree of resilience to changing circumstances—because
it was part of a diversified agricultural system—the effects of increasing swidden
cultivation during times of stress may have caused significant erosion, which in
turn could have had deleterious effects on the larger-scale water-management
infrastructure because the erosion promoted sedimentation and thus increased
maintenance costs, which would have impacted a larger percentage of the popula-
tion and drained resources from the polity itself (see also Lieberman and Buckley
2012:1067–1068).
Prior to 1470 c.e., all of the Southeast Asian charter states witnessed a single
administrative cycle, culminating in a “generalized collapse” (Lieberman 2009:56).
Specifically, between 1200 and 1450 c.e., the various charter states in Southeast
Asia all entered the Ω-phase of the adaptive cycle, as indicated by declining
productivity, shortages, the demise of centralized authority structures, increased
interpolity factionalism, widespread political balkanization, the sacking of the
capitals, varying levels of emigration, and in some cases, famine (Lieberman
2009:17, 2011:937, 952; Stark 2006b:161–162). These were not simply “reorganiza-
tions.” As underscored by Lieberman (2009:56), the initial charter-state collapses
“lasted two or three times longer than the next period of fragmentation,” and
they “inflicted unequaled physical and in some cases demographic damage” and
stimulated significant economic, social, political, ideological, and religious changes
(see also Lieberman 2011:937).
The synchronization of the post-1250 collapses across Southeast Asia was,
at least partially, a result of climate shifts after the Medieval Climate Anomaly,
which ushered in an era of less regular and weaker monsoons and an overall
drying trend (Fletcher 2012:303, 306; Lieberman 2003, 2009, 2011:939, 944, 947;
Lieberman and Buckley 2012). Nevertheless, it is clear that these collapses were
multifaceted, and they also reflected institutional weaknesses, especially the
decentralized nature of the political and economic systems and, in particular,
the centrifugal pull of local elites that was endemic in the loosely integrated
polities, and the social and economic autonomy of the religious institutions
that amassed significant tax-free donations (Aung-Thwin 1985; cf. Lieberman
2011:940–941). Additional contributing factors included unsustainable investment
in massive infrastructure projects, population growth, agricultural expansion
and overexploitation of resources, climate change (especially the shift to a drier
climate regime following the end of the Medieval Climate Anomaly), the draw
of the coast as the nature of trade networks changed, with greater emphasis on
maritime trade (both Bagan and Angkor were inland capitals and thus somewhat
marginalized), and intrusions by new ethnic groups, such as the Mongols and Tai
speakers (Coedès 1968:183, 193–194, 236–239; Fletcher 2012:303, 306; Lieberman
2003:119, 2009:17, 33, 56, 2011:940–943, 954–961; Lieberman and Buckley 2012; Stark
2006b:159). Regardless of these shared issues, each case study provides its own
unique recipe for the shift into the “release” phase.
In terms of Bagan, it is significant that “by 1280 . . . between one- and two-
thirds of Upper Burma’s cultivable land had been alienated to the religion” (Lieber-
man 2003:120), which drew resources away from the capital. In other words, the
polity’s secular interests had a hard time challenging the “merit-making” intent
of the donations that were increasingly made to these institutions (Aung-Thwin
1985; cf. Lieberman 2011:941–942). Additional indications that power and resources
were beginning to bleed into the hinterlands at this time is suggested by the fact
that Lower Myanmar also began to exert its political and economic independence
as a maritime-based polity (Lieberman 2003:85). There was also an increase in
local monument building at the level of villages in the thirteenth century c.e.
(Hudson et al. 2001:62). Both of these trends underscore how hinterland interests
began to undermine heartland control. By the end of the thirteenth century c.e.,
there was a significant decline in merit-making temple construction at Bagan,
although evidence for palace construction continues into the thirteenth and pos-
sibly fourteenth centuries (Grave and Barbetti 2002:85). However, as Bagan’s pow-
ers continued to wane, we begin to see a decrease in infrastructure investment,
and by 1350 c.e. temple construction in the capital ceased altogether (Lieberman
2011:943). There was also a concomitant decline in population in the vicinity of
the epicenter (Fletcher 2012:310).
With respect to Angkor, the capital appears to have been slowly abandoned
between 1350 and 1450 c.e. (Lieberman 2003:220, 2009:18). The date for the em-
pire’s actual “collapse” has traditionally been 1431 c.e., which refers to the date
of the apparent sacking of the city by the Thai (Fletcher 2012:314; Penny et al.
2007:391; Stark 2006b:159). More recent research suggests that a variety of factors
directly contributed to the weakened state of the empire prior to this time (Evans
et al. 2013; Fletcher 2012:296–298; Lieberman 2003:119–123). For one, the massive
building projects and maintenance costs associated with these were likely begin-
ning to outstrip the polity’s resources (Briggs 1951:258–259; Evans et al. 2013; cf.
Lieberman 2011:940–941). Like Bagan, Angkor also seems to have had issues with
alienating tax-free lands to elite supporters, which hurt polity revenue streams
over time (Lieberman 2003:238). Angkor’s role in international trade also seems
to have diminished significantly after the eleventh century c.e. (Stark 2006b:159).
Remote sensing also indicates that Angkor’s expansive size would have likely
brought with it some serious ecological problems because of overpopulation,
erosion, loss of top soil, and forest clearing (Evans et al. 2007:14281, 2013; Fletcher
2012:303, 306). Specifically, the large-scale agricultural expansion to the north to-
ward the Kulen Hills and a growing emphasis on swidden agriculture increased
erosion, which caused sediments to build up in the extensive canal and reservoir
system, which led to declining productivity and increasing economic stress in
all levels of society (Evans et al. 2013; Fletcher 2012:307–308; Kumma 2009:1413;
Lieberman 2003:239, 2009:17, 2011:943). The remedy to this issue was increased
maintenance, but this was expensive, and those repairs that were carried out
were not always successful, so the system itself became less efficient (Evans et al.
2007:14281; Fletcher 2012:314; Lieberman 2011:943, 947). This issue seems to have
202 G. Iannone
emerged even before any documented climate change (Evans et al. 2007:14281;
Penny et al. 2006; Lieberman 2011:947). A combination of droughts and heavy
floods between 1290 and 1340 c.e. would have caused additional damage to the
system, exacerbating already extant maintenance issues (Evans et al. 2013; Lieber-
man 2011:947–948; Lieberman and Buckley 2012:1052, 1071–1072). Finally, Angkor,
like Bagan, may have suffered as an essentially inland, agrarian-based polity as
maritime trade became more important (Evans et al. 2013:12597).
Summary
The end of the charter era in Southeast Asia appears to fit the classic
definition of an Ω-phase release, in that the “collapses” were associated with
comparatively rapid (two or three generations), creative destruction, declining
construction, and abandonments. This was clearly a time of “disentanglement,”
although not all of the entanglements are fully untied during the chaotic release
of resources.
With respect to human-thing entanglements, there were many that may have
not only contributed to the decline but also constrained the ability to effectively
respond to changing circumstances. Massive investments in infrastructure, such
as roads, bridges, shrines, agro-ecosystems, and water-management features, not
only cost the polity dearly but they also brought major maintenance costs. The
return to drier conditions and less-predictable monsoons may have also wreaked
havoc on the extensive water-management systems, which began to fall into dis-
repair. As the hydraulic and agricultural systems contracted, local producers
who had previously been tethered to infrastructure would have been forced to
disentangle from the polity these features represented and supported, resulting
in labor shortages. To make matters worse—at least from the perspective of the
collapsing polity—these primary producers probably moved back to a broader-
spectrum agricultural strategy that involved significant swidden agriculture,
which in turn may have created an erosion issue that could have negatively im-
pacted the water-management system even further.
In broader terms, heavy reliance on colonized ecosystems also meant dimin-
ished biodiversity and the potential degradation of resources, promoting further
outmigration. As entanglement with the polity-centered economic and political
system diminished, factionalism and competition would have ensued. Religious
institutions and autonomous local leaders, who based their legitimacy on the same
ideological principles of merit making as their overlords, likely continued to be
positively enabled by their smaller-scale but more easily sustained economic and
political entanglements. This meant that they could effectively attract producers
(and their labor) who were bleeding from the heartland. Such actions would have
initiated the process of “revolt” and fostered further disentanglement from the
now crumbling polity. These internal issues may have been exacerbated by the
fact that the web of entanglements that had initially enabled the large, impres-
sive, agrarian-based, dry-zone polities of the charter era would have severely
constrained the ability to reorganize the economic and political systems to take
advantage of the new maritime trade networks that were now emerging.
α-Phase Reorganization
Following the Ω-phase release, the expected period of α-phase reor-

ganization took hold in the two study areas. In terms of regional developments,
Ava, situated in Upper Myanmar, and Pegu, located in Lower Myanmar, emerged
roughly 50 years after Bagan’s demise (Aung-Thwin 2011:1; Fletcher 2012:310;
Hudson et al. 2001:53; Lieberman 2003:125–126, 2011:961; Lieberman and Buckley
2012:1069). Ava was an agrarian, dry-zone polity and for the most part a “reformu-
lation of something old . . . Pagan [Bagan] writ small”—and it therefore suffered
from many of the same economic problems as its predecessor, in particular, land
alienation to the religious institutions—whereas Pegu was something new, being
located in a region that had not been a seat of power before, focused on a different
ethnic group—the Mon—and constituting the first true maritime polity in Lower
Myanmar (Aung-Thwin 2011:3). Interestingly, there was little use of what would
eventually—in the twentieth century—become the rich rice fields around Pegu,
and, thus, the maritime polity needed Ava, its agrarian counterpart, to provide
agricultural produce (Aung-Thwin 2011:4).
Following Angkor’s demise, new polities also emerged in the upper and
middle Mekong and central and northern Thailand (Lieberman 2003:237; Stark
2006b:159). As in Myanmar, there was now greater attraction to communities that
were more firmly ensconced within the maritime trade economy, such as Phnom
Penh and Ayutthaya (Lieberman 2011:961). Because it was not strategically located
with respect to the coast, Angkor’s trade economy ostensibly broke down during
and after the collapse (Stark 2006b:161). Nevertheless, evidence does suggest that
some moats in the Angkor epicenter continued to be maintained and modified
by an organized workforce after the collapse, and historic records tell us that
Angkor once again became the seat of power in the sixteenth century c.e. (Penny
et al. 2007:391). Apparently, monks and villagers continued to live in the Angkor
epicenter following the demise of the kings (Fletcher 2012:313; Stark 2006b:159).
Locally managed, irrigated-field agriculture, based on flood-recession strategies,
also continued in the vicinity of Angkor (Stark 2006b:160). Local leadership and
administrative structures were therefore highly resilient in the face of the shifting
fortunes of the capital (Stark 2006b:165–166). However, these small-scale popula-
tions would have been limited by the degraded landscape they had inherited
(Evans et al. 2013:12598). Finally, it seems that the ideological foundations of the
Khmer Empire persisted well after the demise of its capital (Stark 2006b:159).
In general terms, the fragmentation of the original charter states in Southeast
Asia eventually gave way to a new era of “recentralization” (Lieberman 2003:78),
focused on new capitals that benefitted from territorial expansion, increasing
trade relationships with both the West and China, the introduction of firearms,
new crops, effective agricultural reclamation projects, religious reforms, more-
centralized administrative practices, the introduction of bullion, and greater cul-
tural unity (Lieberman 2003:78–79, 131–139, 211, 2009:19, 31, 67). Postcharter polities
were characterized by “decentralized indic administration,” which means that
they were loosely integrated solar polities with semi-autonomous local leaders, less
powerful and less autonomous religious institutions, and modest administrative
204 G. Iannone
control (Lieberman 2003:35). The curtailment of the autonomy of the religious

institutions put the postcharter polities on a more advantageous economic footing
in terms of tax revenues than their charter-state predecessors (Lieberman 2009:61).
With respect to the overall developmental sequence, the postcharter time
frame consisted of three main periods: 1350–1570, 1600–1752, and 1760–1830/40
c.e., each starting with an era of collapse (or possibly reorganization) and “des-
perate improvisation” (Lieberman 2003:28). The trends associated with these time
frames amply demonstrate how the processes of remember plays a role in long-
term socioecological dynamics. Overall, the period between 1350 and 1840 c.e.
saw increasing centralization punctuated by shorter and less intense periods
of fragmentation (Lieberman 2009:38). Generally, the periods of reorganization
following the collapses were periods of greater political control and “territorial
consolidation,” punctuated by less dramatic interregnums, in terms of both the
effects and duration of the fragmentations (Lieberman 2009:57).
Summary
Following the demise of the charter states, these tropical socioecologi-
cal systems appear to have moved into an α-phase reorganization characterized
by increased diversity, migrations (mobility), innovation, and rapid restructur-
ing. It also appears that there was, at least in some instances, a “leaking” away of
potential and/or options as part of the shift from the Ω- to α-phases, as implied
by the concept of exit within the adaptive cycle model. The degraded landscapes
obviously contributed to this. The persistence of some entanglements and thus
the process of remembering seem to have played a fairly significant role in the
various reorganization phases.
Conclusions
Through this preliminary comparative exercise, I hope to have dem-

onstrated that the application of resilience theory and, particularly, heuristic de-
vices, such as adaptive cycles, panarchy theory, and thing-entanglement, can be
incredibly useful to any efforts aimed at elucidating the complexities of a collapse
or reorganization episode in the past. This is especially true because “collapses
in human-environment systems are often triggered by events or trends that have
occurred long before, and thus the underlying processes can involve long time
lags” (Young et al. 2007:449–450). The heuristic devices discussed herein clearly
allow us to illuminate these long-term processes in a manner that is mutually
intelligible to a wide range of scholars across the disciplines.
With respect to the two questions posed at the outset of the comparative
assessment, some brief comments are warranted. In regard to how best to differ-
entiate between periods of release (collapse) and reorganization (a bypassing of
the release phase) in the archaeological record, given the defining characteristics
outlined in adaptive cycle theory, I argue that this will always be a matter of
taste—not unlike the lumper vs. splitter approaches to artifact classification—if
only because the models themselves are akin to “ideal” types. As the case studies
demonstrate, not all of the ideal characteristics of a particular phase will be exhib-
ited by a specific archaeological example. For instance, the two tropical civiliza-
tions in question do appear to exhibit some unique decentralized characteristics
that relate to shared ecological constraints, which resulted in similarities in terms
of their agricultural and water-management systems, nature of their epicenters,
low-density settlement patterns, integrative infrastructure and administrative
schemes, and overall “solar”-style political structures. As a result, neither of the
case studies demonstrates the level of hypercoherence, connectivity, and lack of
modularity expected of the ideal late K-phase. Nevertheless, it does appear that
in each instance, the charter states are best deemed to have moved from the early
K-phase directly into an Ω-phase release. In other words, they did “collapse,”
rather than simply shifting into a period of α-phase reorganization. This is implied
by the dramatic nature of and level of transformation exemplified by the tipping
points in question. However, that the first period of reorganization following the
collapse of Bagan resulted in the emergence of both Ava, which has been referred
to as Bagan writ small, and Pegu, an entirely new form of maritime polity. This
complicates matters because it implies that the phase change following Bagan’s
demise can be classified as being both a subtle reorganization into a similar kind
of system—as at Ava, where the process of remember led to the maintenance of
system identity (template regeneration)—and a more dramatic regime shift into
an entirely new type of system, as is demonstrated at Pegu (stimulus regenera-
tion). Such deviations remind us that we should not confuse our analytical tools
for systemic realities.
In terms of how significant the revolt and remember components of the pan-
archy model are in specific examples of release and reorganization, I argue that
they played an integral role in the case studies outlined here. In terms of the role of
revolt, due to their overall decentralized character, both of the charter-era polities
were subject to the centrifugal pull of their hinterlands, especially local leaders
and religious institutions, who constantly clamored for a larger share of polity
resources. Not only did these special interests slowly eat away at the powers and
tax base of the overarching polity, they seem to have done so at an increasing
rate as time went on—a direct reflection of the fact that the role that kings held
as the guarantors of prosperity was progressively undermined due to the vari-
ous socioecological issues they were unable to manage (Lieberman and Buckley
2012:1074)—thus contributing to and even hastening the collapse of the broader
system, causing the release of resources that the local leaders were strategically
positioned to take advantage of as part of the reorganization phase.
Similarly, remembering and the persistence of some entanglements appear
to have played key roles in the various reorganizations that occurred in Southeast
Asia following the demise of the charter states. Specifically, remembering and
tenacious entanglements seem to have dampened the effects of collapse, thereby
making these critical transitions both shorter and less dramatic as time went on.
I encourage researchers to pay more attention to the revolt and remember pro-
cesses and the resolute nature of some entanglements as we examine collapse and
regeneration sequences over the long term.
206 G. Iannone
In closing, it is important to stress that I have, by necessity, approached my

examination of the efficacy of adaptive cycles and panarchy theory from a systems-
wide scale, which obviously highlights broad structural processes and masks the
role of agency in socioecological change. However, this particular application of
resilience theory should not be taken to suggest that agency is irrelevant to adap-
tive cycle theory. The roll that revolt played in the collapse of the charter states of
Southeast Asia underscores the need to explore adaptive cycles of multiple sizes as
part of a panarchy-based approach to socioecological dynamics. This, by necessity,
forces us to tack back and forth between structures and agents on multiple spatial
scales as we strive to explore issues of resilience and vulnerability in past societies.
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9. Reestablishment of Complex
Societies following Collapse and
Abandonment in Nasca, Peru
Christina A. Conlee
Abstract: The Nasca region of Peru saw the rise, fall, and regeneration of complex
societies over a period of 1,500 years. The Nasca Culture was the first civilization
that developed in the region around a.d. 1, and it was ultimately incorporated
in the Wari state around a.d. 650. However, a true collapse did not occur be-
cause there was not a breakdown in the political system leading it to become
less complex. Instead, Nasca was integrated into a larger state, and new types
of alliances, entanglements, and resistances were created. It was at the time of
the Wari collapse around a.d. 900 that the disintegration of society occurred
and resulted in the abandonment of the region. This collapse was facilitated
by Nasca’s interconnectedness with the intrusive state and by continued envi-
ronmental changes. After 200 years, the region was once again inhabited, and
despite this severe disruption, there was a reemergence of society that was in
some ways profoundly different and in other ways reflected earlier traditions.
Local small-scale sociopolitical institutions were resilient and were key in re-
vitalizing society. These included the irrigation and agricultural regimes that
played an important role in the organization of social and economic relation-
ships and in the creation of hierarchy. Pan Andean ideology and organization
of family and community, specifically the ayllu, were also maintained and aided
in the establishment of new settlements and restoration of society.
The Nasca region, located in the south coastal desert of Peru, saw the
rise, fall, and reestablishment of complex societies over 1,500 years. During this
ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
213
214 C. A. Conlee
period, the region experienced the development of the first civilization (the Nasca
Culture), conquest of that civilization by the highland Wari Empire, collapse and
abandonment, resettlement and growth of local society, and conquest by the Inca
(Table 9-1). The collapse of the Wari Empire brought about a particularly dramatic
era in the prehistory of the region as it led to the abandonment of Nasca for at least
200 years. This was followed by the establishment of a transformed local society.
The dynamics of this particular era in Nasca highlight the changing strategies
people in the region used and give insight into how imperial collapse affects local
societies and how they may reform after regional abandonment.
Table 9-1. Chronology of Settlement in the Nasca Drainage
Horizon or Period Culture Name Approximate Date

Late Horizon Inca a.d. 1476–1532
Late Intermediate Tiza a.d. 1000–1476
Middle Horizon Wari, Loro a.d. 650–1000
Early Intermediate Nasca Culture a.d. 1–650
Early Horizon Paracas, Proto-Nasca 800 b.c.–a.d. 1
Initial 1800–800 b.c.
Archaic ?–1800 b.c.

Cycling of complex societies is a phenomenon found in most areas of the
world. The rise, collapse, reorganization, and expansion of civilizations can be
seen as a common process (e.g., Marcus 1998; Schwartz and Nichols 2006; Yof-
fee and Cowgill 1988). Collapse has often been thought of as the destruction of
a society, but really it is more specifically the dissolution of the political system
(Yoffee 1988:18). Following the breakdown of a political system, it is unusual
for a society to completely disintegrate; instead, societies usually splinter and
become organized on a less complex scale. The collapse of empires is particu-
larly complex as it involves an end to the political domination and integration of
vast regions. In studying the collapse and regeneration of complex societies, it is
important to identify the causes of collapse as well as the relationships between
a particular region and the center of political power (Conlee 2006). Resilience
theory, developed by ecologists (Holling and Gunderson 2002), is an approach
that archaeologists have begun to use to help study the rise, fall, and regeneration
of complex societies. This theory, similar in some aspects to previous ideas about
cycling, proposes that stability and transformation are both norms and are part
of a system’s adaptive cycle (Holling and Gunderson 2002). It was developed to
understand the origin and role of change in systems and includes processes on
different temporal and geographic scales (Holling et al. 2002a:5). The framework
for this theory, the panarchy, is seen as different from traditional hierarchy in that
panarchy consists of a set of nested adaptive cycles that have potentially multiple
connections (Holling et al. 2002b:74–75). In the adaptive cycle, change is episodic
with slow periods that are punctuated by sudden changes and reorganization
Reestablishment of Complex Societies 215
(Holling and Gunderson 2002; Holling et al. 2002a; Redman 2005:72). Translated
to human societies, some kinds of changes can be fast, such as political change,
and others, such as kinship and belief systems, can be slow (McAnany and Yof-
fee 2010:10). The goal of resilience theory was to establish a theory that could
encompass and be applied to economic, ecological, and institutional systems.
As other scholars have noted (e.g. Nelson et al. 2006; Torvinen et al., chapter 11,
current volume), there are many challenges in directly testing resilience theory
with archaeological data, and a wholesale application of resilience theory to hu-
man societies may not be productive. However, certain ideas developed as part
of the theory have the potential to aid in developing a deeper understanding of
the dynamics of complex societies.
Certain aspects of resilience theory are considered in this analysis of ancient
Nasca society. The first concept is that of rigidity. In what Holling and Gunderson
(2002:35) describe as the K-phase, prior to collapse, a system can be overconnected
and increasingly rigid in its control. This may cause a “rigidity trap” that could
lead to severe transformations, especially if triggered by some type of disturbance
(Hegmon et al. 2008; Holling and Gunderson 2002; Holling et al. 2002a). A related
concept is framed in terms of robustness-vulnerability tradeoffs, which refer to
situations when certain things (such as irrigation systems) may create robustness
in terms of short-term fluctuations but cause vulnerability in long-term fluctua-
tions (Hegmon et al. 2008; Nelson et al. 2011). Lastly, there is an investigation into
what type of resilient institutions, or “building blocks,” may have been used in
the reestablishment of society after collapse and abandonment (Schwartz 2006).
This chapter considers these various aspects of resilience theory in a heuristic
manner to examine whether they are useful in interpreting the data collected
from the region or in forming new hypotheses about cultural change.
The Nasca Culture and the Wari State
The Nasca drainage sits in a basin between the Andes Mountains and
the Cordillera de la Costa, a small coastal range, and includes several river val-
leys that drain into the Pacific Ocean (Figure 9-1). Nasca is part of the hyperarid
northern Atacama Desert with a mean annual precipitation not exceeding 10 mm
(Mächtle et al. 2009:39). Because there is negligible annual rainfall, people here
were and still are dependent on rainfall in the highlands to bring water into the
coastal river valleys. Seasonal changes in the availability of water are in part due
to the shifts in the summer monsoon (Eitel and Mächtle 2009:20). These summer
rains fall from November through May, when monsoonal thunderstorms in the
Amazon region cross the Andes and travel into the upper catchments of the rivers
that eventually flow through Nasca. At this time of year, water is in the rivers, but
during the rest of the year, the flow is greatly decreased in the northern rivers of
the drainage, and in the south, it stops altogether. Besides the seasonal changes in
water availability, longer periods of fluctuations also lead to sustained periods of
drought and times of increased humidity. Overall, this desert margin area is very
sensitive to climatic changes and in particular to shifts in water availability (Eitel
216 C. A. Conlee
Figure 9-1. Map of Nasca drainage, with sites discussed in the text.
and Mächtle 2009). Despite the challenges of this environment, complex societies
developed and were maintained here for many years.
The first large, regionally integrated civilization based in the region, known
as the Nasca Culture, arose around a.d. 1. Population was concentrated in the
inland river valleys, where arable land and good access to water were located.
The heartland was the Nasca drainage and the Ica Valley to the north, although
Figure 9-2. Large regional and ceremonial center of Cahuachi.
the Nasca Culture’s influence (particularly the presence of Nasca fine polychrome
pottery) was found farther to the north and south. Debate has continued about
the type of sociopolitical organization of the Nasca Culture, particularly if it was
a chiefdom or other type of middle-range society (Carmichael 1995; Schreiber and
Lancho 2003; Silverman 1993; Vaughn 2009) or whether it was a more centralized
state (Bachir 2007; Isla and Reindel 2006; Orefici 2011; Reindel 2009). Regardless of
how the society is categorized, the Nasca Culture was a large, complex regional
polity that spanned several river valleys. Cahuachi, an important center, has
size estimates from 150 ha (Silverman 1993:57) to 24 km2 (Bachir 2007:71; Orefici
2011:143) that contained about 40 pyramid mounds and associated plazas in its
core area (Silverman 1993:87) (Figure 9-2). There is ample evidence that extensive
public and ritual activities took place here, and it has been proposed that it was a
pilgrimage center that drew people from all over the south coast of Peru (Silver-
man 1993). Leaders of the Nasca civilization lived at Cahuachi, and it is thought
that much of their power was based on religion.
The soil of the Nasca river valleys is fertile, and the variety of crops in-
cluded corn (Zea mays), potato (Solanum sp.), beans (Phaseolus lunatus, Phaseolus
vulgaris), peppers (Capsicum annuum), sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas), manioc
(Manihot esculenta), squash (Curcurbita maxima, Curcurbita moshata), cotton (Gos-
sypium barbadense), and various fruits (e.g., lucuma, Lucuma bifrea, and guava,
Psidium guajaba) (Conlee 2000; Silverman 1993; Valdez 1994). Irrigation was es-
sential, particularly in the south, where the rivers are dry half of the year.
Fortunately, subterranean water is available year round, but it requires more
effort to obtain. In response to this situation, an elaborate system of horizon-
tal aqueducts called puquios was constructed that allowed people to efficiently
218 C. A. Conlee
Figure 9-3. Ojo of the Orcona puquio and the 2005 field crew near the
La Tiza site.
access the more constant underground water (Schreiber and Lancho 2003). The
aqueducts consist of tunnels with open holes (ojos) that feed into pools (kochas)
from which water is directed into irrigations canals. Many of these aqueducts
are still in use today (Figure 9-3). Puquios construction and maintenance would
have required substantial planning, labor, and management, and over time as
the irrigation system grew, it is likely that certain groups or individuals were
able to control the system. This was probably an important aspect in the growth
of centralization and inequality in this period.
In the Andes, land and water rights were traditionally centered on kin-based
social groups called ayllus (singular, ayllu). At their core, they have been described
as a connection between people and the land that is maintained by collective
labor on communal agricultural land and irrigation canals (Allen 1988:33). These
groups also shared ceremonial obligations (Urton 1990:175) and were based on a
common ancestor. Ayllus are often viewed as the basic political and productive
unit in Andean society and are described as “enduring groups” (Spalding 1984:28).
However, the concept of ayllu varied in place and time throughout the Andes
(Allen 1988:102). Today, they are still important social groups in traditional com-
munities and are well documented in the colonial and Inca period. During Inca
times, the concept of ayllu had different usages but at a basic level was an ancestor-
focused descent group and present at many different size scales (Rostworowski
and Morris 1999:780). The existence of ayllus in earlier periods is an issue of debate.
Some suggest there is a great antiquity in ayllus going back to the Initial period
(1800–800 b.c.) (Moseley 2002); others advocate that ayllus developed along with
mortuary monuments containing ancestor mummies in the highlands during the
Early Intermediate period (ca. a.d. 1–650) (Isbell 1997). Archaeologists working
on the Nasca Culture have proposed that ayllus existed during this time period
(Carmichael 1995; Silverman 1993). Many scholars think that although we cannot
assume the ayllus of the distant past were the same as those documented histori-
cally, they can be used as a model (Urton 1990:175).
The Nasca Culture had highly skilled craftspeople who made fine poly-
chrome ceramics and textiles. The art contained complex imagery of natural
and supernatural beings and reflected the religious ideology. An unusually
high quantity of fine ceramics was used at all sites, even at small villages on
the periphery (Vaughn 2009). Evidence also suggests that the production of the
fine polychrome pottery was centered at Cahuachi and under control of the
elite (Vaughn et al. 2006). During this period, hundreds of geoglyphs (ground
drawings) known as the Nasca Lines were constructed that were also central to
religious practices. These geoglyphs were open-air temples that were locations
for rituals that likely involved walking, dancing, music, and making offerings
to the gods to bring water and fertility to the region (Aveni 1990; Lambers 2006,
Reinhard 1988; Silverman 1993; Urton 1990). Another aspect of Nasca religion was
trophy-head taking, a practice that involved decapitation and careful preparation
of the head. Trophy heads have been found in a variety of contexts and much
like the geoglyphs were probably part of rituals involving human sacrifice and
making offerings to the gods for agricultural fertility and the continuation of
society (e.g., Conlee 2007; Proulx 2001).
The site of La Tiza, located in the Nasca Valley where two river valleys
come together, has occupation that dates from the time of the initial growth
of Nasca civilization until the Inca conquest in a.d. 1476 and serves as focus
of this investigation into the dynamics of society in the region (see Figure 9-1).
The Nasca Culture occupation dates between a.d. 80 and a.d. 550 and covered 8
ha including habitation and burial areas. Also here is a ceremonial area where
at least one and possibly two decapitated individuals were buried and whose
heads were likely taken and made into trophy heads (Conlee 2007). The com-
mon burial type of the time consisted of interring people alone in pits with at
least one whole ceramic pot, with the body placed in a seated, flexed position
(Carmichael 1995). This type of burial was found at La Tiza; elsewhere in the
region, elites were buried alone in larger shaft tombs with multiple grave goods
(Isla and Reindel 2006).
The Nasca Culture was impacted and transformed around a.d. 650 with the
intrusion of the highland Wari state and the onset of more arid conditions. In the
Andean region, this period is known as the Middle Horizon, a time of state expan-
sion with both the Wari from the central highlands and the Tiwanaku based farther
south near Lake Titicaca spreading out of their heartlands. It has been proposed
that this was the end of Nasca cultural identity (Silverman 2008:91). However, a
true collapse did not occur at this time because there was not a breakdown in
220 C. A. Conlee
the political system leading it to become less complex (Tainter 1988; Yoffee 1988).
Instead, Nasca was incorporated into a larger state, and new types of alliances,
entanglements, and resistances were created with important aspects of local soci-
ety remaining intact (Conlee and Schrieber 2006; Conlee 2010). I argue that at this
time Nasca cultural identity was not lost but instead was integrated with the Wari
state and altered in some aspects. A close relationship between the two regions
went back to the period before Wari expansion when the prestate Huarpa people
adopted much of the Nasca ceramic tradition (Cook 1984–1985; Knobloch 1976;
Menzel 1964). The Wari imperial styles also incorporated aspects of the widespread
and prestigious Nasca style and suggest the Wari adopted parts of the Nasca re-
ligious tradition as well (Conlee 2006; Menzel 1964). Religion is thought to have
played an important role in Wari expansion, and there was likely a shared belief
system with Nasca.
During the Middle Horizon, there was continuity in certain aspects of life,
such as the ceramic art, where expressions of the Nasca Culture religious ideology
were still found. In addition, trophy heads were still taken, and this practice was
also common in the Wari heartland. Although the large pyramids and plazas of
Cahuachi were no longer in use, small ritual areas were located at the site, and
there was continued use of the place as a burial ground. There is some debate
about the continued use of the geoglyphs during this period with some research-
ers documenting limited use (Clarkson 1990; Lambers 2006) and others none at
all (Reindel 2009). Evidence suggests that agricultural and irrigation practices
remained stable with the health and diet of people relatively steady between the
Nasca Culture and Middle Horizon, although there is some evidence to suggest
that the dietary breadth of the population increased (Buzon et al. 2012; Kellner and
Schoeninger 2008). The puquios constructed during the Nasca Culture continued
to be in use in the southern drainage.
In Nasca, as in other areas during the Middle Horizon, responses to and
interactions with the Wari state were diverse. Notable differences exist between
the northern and southern valleys in the number and type of settlements both
in terms of local sites and intrusive Wari sites. In the Nasca Valley, in the south,
there is evidence of a fairly direct relationship between Wari and local people.
In the upper elevations, new Wari sites, such as Pataraya, were established that
functioned as important outposts along a major road controlling trade between
the highlands and the coast (Edwards 2010; Schreiber 2001). In the lower valley,
not far from the Nasca Culture center of Cahuachi, the site of Pacheco was es-
tablished that was a ritual center but also likely an administrative site (Menzel
1964; Schreiber 2001).
At La Tiza was a small Middle Horizon habitation area of 2.5 ha. New mortu-
ary practices were established here of family mausoleums that were plastered and
painted; 70 have been identified in an area of at least 4 ha. In these tombs, multiple
individuals were interred with elite grave goods including bronze and copper
artifacts, shawl pins, ornaments, and figurines that were found for the first time
in the region (Conlee 2010). Tombs with multiple internments, which became a
common new burial type, are reported in other areas of Nasca (Carmichael 1995;
Isla 2001). Elaborate tombs with multiple burials and evidence of reentry to inter
additional bodies and grave goods were also found in the Wari heartland associ-
ated with elites (Isbell 2001, 2004; Isbell and Cook 2002). These new practices are
thought to be indicators of ancestor veneration or worship, which was focused
on the deceased elites (Isbell and Cook 2002:287–288). An elite identity may have
developed in the Middle Horizon that was shared across a vast area that included
Nasca and Wari and was reflected in the new burial practices. Strontium and oxy-
gen isotopic analyses indicate actual foreigners living at La Tiza were buried in
the mausoleums (Buzon et al. 2012; Conlee et al. 2009). Two women in their early
twenties were identified as nonlocal and of possible highland origin. They may
have married into the community as a way of establishing alliances between the
highland Wari state and local elites. In addition to these new mortuary practices,
there were still burials at La Tiza and elsewhere that were in the previous local
style of single individuals buried in pits, usually accompanied by a single whole
pot. The two distinct mortuary traditions reflect the segmentation of society dur-
ing this period with one group associated with elites and the Wari state and the
other with nonelites and local tradition.
Other areas of Nasca had dramatically different responses to Wari. In the
north, there was a severe decrease in settlements and population with the ma-
jority of sites identified as cemeteries with little evidence for habitation (Browne
1992; Reindel 2009; Silverman 2002). Reindel (2009:457) proposes that the general
absence of sites was the result of climate change and that the area was too arid
after a.d. 600 for agriculture. In this area of the drainage, puquios were never
constructed. Despite the low density of Middle Horizon settlements in the north,
new mortuary practices similar to those documented at La Tiza consisted of large
tombs with multiple burials (Isla 2001, 2009).
In the very far south, new settlements were established, indicating that a
faction of the population moved away from Wari sites, perhaps resisted the state,
and never came under direct control of the Wari (Conlee and Schreiber 2006; Sch-
reiber 2001). Similar strategies have been documented in other areas in response
to intrusive groups. In the contact period in New Mexico, Wilcox (2010:136–137)
found that Pueblo people, as well as neighboring groups, often abandoned settle-
ments in order to remove themselves from the coercion of the Spaniards. This is
a similar dynamic to what may have been happening in far southern Nasca in
response to the Wari incursion. The use of abandonment and resettlement that
was employed in this period would also prove to be a strategy that was used to
an even-greater degree when the Wari state collapsed.
Economic incentives probably played an important role in Wari’s interest in
Nasca, where crops desired by the state, such as cotton, were grown and whose
cultivation involved local people. Much of this agriculture is thought to have been
locally managed since the highland state would have had little experience with
coastal farming practices. Wari invested in some areas, in particular, the Nasca
Valley of the southern drainage, and not in others. Here the state ruled through
local elites, and it was during this period that new types of intermediate elites
were established who obtained power through their association with the Wari
state. The people of Nasca became part of a state-level society for the first time
and were exposed to power and political organization on a large scale.
222 C. A. Conlee
Collapse and Abandonment
It was at the time of the disintegration of Wari around a.d. 900 that a
true political collapse occurred in Nasca and resulted in the abandonment of the
region. The reasons for the breakdown of the Wari state remain unclear although
certainly it involved multiple factors since the empire encompassed such a broad
area and incorporated various ethnic groups. One possible factor is that Wari in-
vested so heavily in maintaining control over people and land that eventually the
economic costs of expansion and rule outweighed the benefits (Tainter 1988:205).
There is evidence that climatic change, particularly drought, caused instabil-
ity (Thompson et al. 1985). The long-term disruption in water availability in the
Wari heartland due to drought led to decreasing yields from the large systems
of irrigation agriculture, which would have weakened the power of the rulers
(McEwan 2006). It has also been proposed that conflict with other groups, such
as the Chanka, in the heartland of the Wari was a factor and caused instability
(Rostworowski 1999). If Wari was the first true empire in the Andes, as many
scholars believe, and encompassed a vast area and incorporated people of differ-
ent cultural traditions and languages, the challenges of ruling and consolidating
may have eventually been too great. When the Wari political system weakened,
the state could no longer support administrative centers or economic activities
in areas such as Nasca.
Locally, there is evidence for drought conditions in Nasca at the time of the
Wari collapse. Geoarchaeological data from desert loess in Nasca indicate the
desert margin had shifted east (limiting agricultural land) and that there was in-
creased aridification beginning around a.d. 600 that extended until the fourteenth
century in some areas (Eitel et al. 2005). Lake cores from Laguna Pumacocha indi-
cate a period of “marked aridity” from a.d. 900 to 1100 (Bird et al. 2011:8587). This
would have impacted the Nasca region since it is dependent on runoff from the
central highlands where the lake is located. All over Nasca, sites were abandoned.
The last currently known date for the Middle Horizon in the northern drainage is
a.d. 820 (Reindel and Wagner 2009:Figure 1.2), and in the southern drainage, it is
around a.d. 900 (Conlee 2011; Edwards 2010). It is unknown how long the process
of abandonment took place, and it appears to be variable in different areas. At the
Wari site of Pataraya, in the upper elevations of the Nasca Valley, the settlement
was ceremonially closed in a single event around a.d. 922 in which corridors were
sealed, ceramics were placed in caches, fires were lit in the corners, and a fine
layer of sand was placed over the surface (Edwards 2010:445–446). This suggests
a purposeful but quick abandonment. There is no evidence at local settlements,
such as La Tiza, for this type of planned and ritual abandonment. At present,
radiocarbon dates and ceramic styles are the best evidence that there was a fairly
sudden event in which the majority of people left their settlements and did not
return for approximately 200 years. It is unclear where people moved to at this time
although it is suspected that many migrated to areas in the higher elevations or
farther north up the coast where the rivers are larger and have more regular water.
Abandonment does not always mean a total disappearance of a people or
the complete giving up of ownership, and it is often part of ongoing strategies
of shifting residence and migration (Nelson and Schacher 2002:169). Villages and
towns were depopulated at this time in Nasca and no longer used as permanent
settlements; however, there may have been continued short-term or sporadic use
of various places that did not leave behind much of an archaeological signature.
In most cases, there seems to be a combination of both push and pull factors that
led to decisions to leave a region for somewhere else (Hegmon et al. 1998). There
may have been some pull factors, such as attractive environmental conditions,
better defensive locations, less social stress, or religious developments (Nelson
and Schacher 2002:176) that encouraged people in Nasca to move into new areas.
Options for moving and resettling will vary by community, household, and in-
dividual (Nelson 2000:59), and it was not necessarily a homogeneous process.
In exploring possible push factors, drought has often been used as an explana-
tion for change, especially in desert environments. However, Nasca people faced
drought conditions many times throughout the long prehistory of the region, and
it did not lead to the type of abandonment seen at this time. The puquio irrigation
system in southern Nasca was a large investment that helped to stabilize water
supply, and it would have taken more than just increased aridity for people to
completely abandon this system. Examining robustness-vulnerability tradeoffs
helps in understanding possible factors that led to the abandonment of the irriga-
tion system. Large-scale irrigation systems can contribute to resilience to envi-
ronmental variation, but they can also anchor people to locations and generate
vulnerabilities (e.g., Hegmon et al. 2008; Nelson et al. 2010). The use of irrigation
systems to reduce annual variability in water supply can create vulnerabilities to
events and changes that occur over larger temporal and spatial scales (Nelson et
al. 2010:4). The puquios may not have been effective during a drought that lasted
over many years that may have severely limited the subterranean water supply.
There is not yet fine enough environmental data to assess this idea, but it is cer-
tainly something to consider in future research.
In the social domain, irrigation systems can create increased water availability
or stability for one group or individual and create shortages or more variability
for others (Nelson et al. 2010:4). It is possible that Wari fundamentally changed
local communities’ control over irrigation and agricultural systems. It may be that
the Wari-associated local elites had greater control over the puquios and that cre-
ated greater discrepancies in water supply and generated more social inequality.
There is evidence that Wari impacted traditional kinship organization that had
previously been the core of agricultural and water management. This is seen in
the presence of the new mortuary tradition of mausoleums that reflects a change
in elite kin groups with a focus on ancestor worship. In contrast, the continued
practice of single burials in pits with minimal grave goods suggests that com-
moner kin groups stuck to traditional ways. Disparities among these groups may
have led to conflict and vulnerabilities.
The reasons for abandonment in Nasca were undoubtedly complex. The rela-
tively sudden and severe change that occurred as the result of a breakdown in
the Wari political system was likely coupled with more-local issues, including
increased aridity that affected farming and irrigation, disparities in access to
water, a rejection of the religious system that caused social instability, and distrust
224 C. A. Conlee
of some local leaders (especially those more closely associated with Wari). This
could have led to a situation where certain leaders and families lost power and
prestige and led to fragmentation of the local political hierarchy, a process that
has been noted in other areas after collapse (Faulseit 2012:421).
Resettlement and Revitalization in Postcollapse Nasca
After 200 years, the Nasca region was once again inhabited, and despite
the severe disruption in occupation, there was a rapid growth of local society.
This was the situation in many areas of the central Andes after the collapse of the
Middle Horizon states when there was a reemergence of large regional groups in
this period called the Late Intermediate period. Settlements were established by
a.d. 1155 in northern Nasca (Reindel and Wagner 2009:Figure 1.2) and in the south
between a.d. 1200 and 1300. The population was at its highest during this time
with large agglutinated villages and towns containing several internal divisions
dominating the settlement hierarchy with many of these ranging from 8 to 25 ha
(Browne 1992; Conlee 2003; Reindel 2009; Schreiber and Lancho 2003). The site of
La Tiza was at its largest in this period and was at least 15 ha. Settlements were
more diverse in location and were built on hillsides, hilltops, and valley bottoms.
Site type varied from large towns with several internal divisions to smaller, rela-
tively homogenous villages. The town of La Tiza had various sizes and layouts of
houses with different masonry styles and many types of architectural features,
such as stairways, niches, and exterior and interior storage bins. In contrast, at
the valley bottom village (3 ha) of Pajonal Alto, the layout was more uniform and
consisted of agglutinated, rectangular compounds of adobe and cobbles. Overall,
the size and location of sites, type of architectural layout, structure size, features,
construction material, and construction quality varied greatly, more so than in
previous times, highlighting the increased segmentation of society.
The increase in population around a.d. 1200 coincides with improved climatic
conditions, and it is a period classified as semi-arid with reliable rainfall in the
highlands as the summer monsoonal rains increased (Eitel and Mächtle 2009; Eitel
et al. 2005:153; Ortloff and Kolata 1993). The favorable climatic conditions led to
a narrowing of the desert, and this would have played a role in the repopulation
of the region as agriculture became more viable. Fields and irrigation systems
used previously were revived. There is some evidence that the number of puquios
increased and reached their maximum number (Schreiber and Lancho 2003:150).
Subsistence practices were similar to those during the Nasca Culture and the Wari
period, but there are indications of intensification. An increase in the number,
type, and size of storage areas at La Tiza indicates greater surplus was produced.
The village of Pajonal Alto saw an increase in the consumption of domesticated
camelids (llamas and alpacas) and shellfish (Conlee 2003). This suggests a greater
focus on herding and an increase in trade with coastal populations, who by this
time had established more-permanent settlements (Carmichael 1991).
The Late Intermediate period throughout the Andes has been described as
a period of both intensified warfare and economic interaction and trade. Nielsen
Figure 9-4. Large wall in the western section at the La Tiza site.
(2005) argues that these are not exclusive and that intense interregional contact of-
ten occurs during times of war. During periods of conflict, alliances are important,
and exchange and intermarriage often increase. Many sites during this period in
Nasca are in defensive locations, and large walls and piles of sling stones (com-
monly used in warfare in the Andes) are found at many settlements. In the north,
some sites were placed in areas away from water but in more-defensible positions
(Reindel 2009). In the south, La Tiza has a large wall that sections off the upper area
of the western sector (Figure 9-4), architecture spans the highest elevations, and
piles of sling stones are associated with architecture of this period. This suggests
an increase in conflict or threat of conflict in comparison with earlier periods.
New economic activities and relationships developed during this period.
There was a focus on the production of utilitarian goods, such as plainware pot-
tery, cotton yarn, and plain textiles. This contrasts with earlier periods when a
focus was on fine pottery and textiles. Evidence shows that many different com-
munities produced goods and exchanged them more frequently than in previous
times. Elites appear to have been involved in the production of utilitarian items,
including large plainware pots possibly used in feasting (Conlee 2003). There was
less self-sufficiency among communities and households and more involvement in
trade. Chemical compositional studies (instrumental neutron activation analysis
[INAA]) of pottery indicate more clay sources were being used than previously,
and more communities were producing pottery (Vaughn et al. 2006). No sherds
at La Tiza were identified from the mica-tempered clay group that was used ex-
clusively in the Middle Horizon, signifying a change in production and disuse of
226 C. A. Conlee
that resource. There was a return to the clay source represented by Group 1 that
predominated during the Nasca Culture. In addition to an increase in regional
trade, there is also evidence for long-distance exchange in terms of such items as
obsidian and Spondylus shell. These goods were probably obtained through dif-
ferent means than previously with less-centralized control.
Many of the religious practices associated with the Nasca Culture and the
Middle Horizon Wari culture were absent. These include the multiple colors and
elaborate iconography (including depiction of supernatural beings) on pottery and
textiles. In the Late Intermediate, art is simple, nonrepresentational, and geometric,
and a three-color scheme of black, white, and red predominates. There is little
evidence that the practice of trophy-head taking continued into this period. In
terms of the geoglyphs, there is more Late Intermediate pottery associated with
them than during the Middle Horizon (Lambers 2006). However, buildings were
constructed on top of geoglyphs in some places, indicating they were no longer
important. Many documented long paths are across the plateaus, where large
concentrations of geoglyphs are located that are associated with an abundance of
Late Intermediate pottery (Lambers 2006:83). In general, the greater populations
living and traveling through this area probably contributed to the greater quanti-
ties of ceramics from this period. Much of this religious system centered on the
geoglyphs was abandoned, or at least the expression of it was changed enough
that people no longer participated in rituals in the same manner.
No large ceremonial centers with monumental architecture existed in this
period. Instead, small ritual areas were located at many sites. Ritual activities at La
Tiza were confined to small ridge and hilltop structures that overlook the valley
and the sacred white-sand mountain Cerro Blanco (Figure 9-5). These structures
had a variety of features, including fireboxes and large grinding stones. Some
open ridgetop areas had an abundance of broken decorated ceramics, especially
of bowls and jars, which may suggest that the drinking of chicha, maize beer, was
central to the ceremonies. At Pajonal Alto are a small mound and plaza where
community-based ritual and social activities took place. Rituals were no longer
conducted on a regional scale and instead were community or family based.
Pan Andean religious ideas were maintained and included mountain and water
worship, animal and plant sacrifices or offerings, and the use of chicha, Spondylus
shell, and panpipes in rituals. These are all types of rituals that were practiced in
earlier times probably in domestic and community contexts and not necessarily
controlled by elites or practiced on a large scale at ceremonial centers. These are
also ritual practices that continue into modern times. Burial practices returned to
the local style of flexed individuals buried in pits with minimal grave goods that
was used by the Nasca Culture and by certain people in the Middle Horizon. The
multiple burials and mausoleums associated with Wari were no longer a part of
the mortuary tradition.
In this period religious resources were no longer the primary means to build
power as they were during the Nasca Culture, possibly because such resources
were seen as unstable and too intertwined with the breakdown of the Wari po-
litical system. It is likely that the syncretism between Wari and Nasca resulted in
a severe disruption to the Nasca ideological system when Wari collapsed. This
Figure 9-5. Small, ridgetop ritual area at La Tiza, with large grinding stone
in the center.
situation may have led future populations to restructure the relationship between
religious beliefs and the political system (Conlee 2006). Specifically, there may have
been a concerted effort to disentangle religious power from political power. The
fall of the Wari Empire would have weakened the powerful religious system that
had coalesced around the state and the prestigious, older religious tradition of the
Nasca Culture. This religion is known to have expanded over much of the central
Andes during the Middle Horizon. With the breakdown of the Wari political and
economic structures, the influence of the religion would have waned as well.
The political and social hierarchies were also substantially different than in
previous periods. The nature of villages changed with less self-sufficiency, and
there is evidence for a larger degree of social differentiation within sites than previ-
ously (Conlee 2003). On a regional level, there were major centers and secondary
centers in both the northern and the southern drainage and two levels of hierarchy
above the village level (Conlee 2006). Urton (1990:195–196) has documented that
people living in the Nasca region at the time of Spanish Contact were grouped into
ayllus, parcialidades (subgroups), and moieties. He suggests that in late Prehispanic
and early colonial times, there were at least four parcialidades that consisted of
many ayllus. The parcialidades were then grouped into two moieties, one in the
north and one in the south, each with a cacique principal (hereditary leader). Ur-
ton also proposes that two additional moieties existed that divided upriver and
228 C. A. Conlee
downriver ayllus and crosscut the north-south moieties. The implications for
Prehispanic sociopolitical organization are that there were at least three levels
of integrated organization during the late Prehispanic and early colonial period
(Urton 1990:196).
Given the complexity of regional settlement patterns and greater levels of
social differentiation at all sites, it appears as if the number and kinds of statuses
increase during this period. An expanded and diffused political hierarchy and
elites of different types participated in a broad range of activities, such as the
production of utilitarian items, exchange, feasting, community or exclusive ritual,
and probably warfare and defense (Conlee 2003). During this period, the resources
of power were more variable, resulting in a more segmented and heterarchical
society with diverse ways of ranking and classifying people (Conlee 2005). In
the absence of religion playing such an important centralizing role, expanded
economic relationships and regional trade, along with new political structures,
worked to integrate the region. Generally, the political structure was fundamen-
tally different than it was during the Nasca Culture and the Middle Horizon.
One of the key questions in the resettlement of Nasca in the Late Intermedi-
ate period is, were these people related to the people that lived here before? Re-
cent mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal DNA research from the region suggests
that some major changes occurred early in the Late Intermediate period. Genetic
distinction between coast and highland populations was very marked during
the previous Nasca Culture and Middle Horizon, and there were no significant
genetic changes between these two periods as measured by coastal populations
in the northern Nasca drainage (Fehren-Schmitz et al. 2010, 2011). Comparisons
of Middle Horizon and Late Intermediate period highland populations (in ar-
eas adjacent to the northern Nasca drainage) to modern Peruvian populations
show low genetic distances, and there is no distinction between modern Peruvian
coastal and highland populations, which suggests there was some population
process that led to the homogenization of the region starting in the Late Interme-
diate period (Fehren-Schmitz et al. 2011:279). No coastal populations of the Late
Intermediate period have yet been analyzed for comparison, so it is unknown
how these populations compare to the adjacent highland areas and what these
homogenization processes were. The genetic evidence does suggest change in the
Nasca coastal population during this period, and given the overall differences in
society documented archaeologically during the Late Intermediate period, it is
proposed that the people who resettled may not have been direct descendants of
the previous occupants. Or if they were, that society had fundamentally changed
in the intervening 200 years and led to new types of sociopolitical organization.
Discussion and Conclusions
Returning to the question of whether aspects of resilience theory can

be useful in helping to better understand collapse, abandonment, and the reestab-
lishment of society in Nasca, the answer would be “yes.” In terms of investigating
the factors that may have led to destabilization in Nasca when Wari collapsed, the
concepts of overconnectedness and the rigidity trap have some utility. Resilience
theory proposes that overconnectedness among different scales of a system can
cause increased rigidity and lead to collapse in response to disturbances, such as
drought (Holling and Gunderson 2002:35). Connectedness can also be described
as integration in which various aspects of society are interdependent (Hegmon
et al. 2008:318). In addition to integration, hierarchy (the degree to which some
people have more power than others) and conformity (lack of diversity) are also
parameters that may contribute to rigidity (Hegmon et al. 2008:319). There is evi-
dence that integration between Nasca and Wari society was high in some aspects
and that there was a new and more intensive hierarchy, both of which may have
led to rigidity and contributed to collapse and abandonment. Local religion had
been co-opted by Wari and incorporated into the state religion; large-scale state
politics had changed local Nasca political organization, including kinship rela-
tionships; and larger-scale economic structures had impacted smaller-scale local
production and trade, as well as possibly the agricultural regime. In this case, in
resilience terminology, the smaller and faster adaptive cycles that are associated
with quickly evolving political institutions that occurred with the intrusion of the
Wari state impacted the larger adaptive cycles associated with slowly evolving
social institutions, such as kin groups. These are ideas that can be tested further
as more information is gathered on the period of collapse and abandonment.
The concept of robustness-vulnerability tradeoffs is a related factor that can be
considered particularly in regards to the irrigation system. The puquios had been
established by the Nasca Culture in response to short-term (annual) variations in
water availability because they were created to access year-round subterranean
water during the dry season when surface water was not available. They were
not constructed to deal with long-term fluctuations or drought periods that may
have lasted over a century. If the Wari-associated local elites had control over the
puquios, at least in the Nasca Valley near La Tiza, this may have created greater
disparities in the water supply that increased as conditions became drier and the
subterranean water less reliable. This could have led to greater conflict and to
vulnerabilities in the agricultural regime. The puquios were also not constructed
to deal with broader regional water issues. Puquios were never constructed in
northern Nasca because this area did not have the dramatic annual change in sur-
face water that the rivers had in the south. A period of prolonged drought would
have affected surface water in the north and created instability in the region as
people moved out of this area. Social relationships would have been impacted
by these movements with regional trade relationships and alliances disrupted.
In terms of examining how the region was resettled after collapse, ideas gen-
erated from resilience theory can also help to better understand the dynamics of
the period. Resettlement would have depended on established organizations and
institutions of the immigrating population. In the Andes, ayllus were resilient,
local, small-scale social institutions that could be used as building blocks in the
creation of a new society. Regardless if the people who resettled this region were
direct descendants of those who left 200 years previously, family and community
organization would have been essential to establishing new settlements and rein-
vigorating the irrigation and field systems. Ayllu organization is thought to have
230 C. A. Conlee
been well established by this period and part of both coastal and highland societies.
Ayllus were both social and political units, which likely made them more resilient
than institutions that were purely political (Faulseit, chapter 1, this volume). This
is not to say that ayllus were unchanging institutions. Evidence suggests that at
least those associated with elite families may have changed during the Middle
Horizon to more of ancestor-focused descent group, such as those documented in
later Inca times. Increased distinctions between ayllus were likely in the period of
resettlement that led to the greater segmentation of society in this period.
Irrigation and agricultural regimes played an important role in the organi-
zation of social and economic relationships and in the creation of hierarchy dur-
ing the Nasca Culture and Middle Horizon, and this would have been the case
during the Late Intermediate period as well. These would have been based on
the puquios and on the same crops that had been successful farmed previously.
The irrigation system was central in reestablishing successful agricultural yields
and in the growth of population. A type of ayllu-based community organization
and leadership that built and maintained them previously was likely in place,
although the overarching power structure had changed. The irrigation system
was at the heart of what made subsistence feasible in this at-times-extreme arid
environment and provided a foundation for complex societies to persist in the
area. This is similar to patterns seen in other desert-based societies, such as the
Hohokam (Redman et al. 2009).
Evidence of pan-Andean domestic- and community-based ritual activity
among the people who resettled Nasca shows the resilience of these activities
and beliefs. What are no longer in evidence are the practices and beliefs specifi-
cally associated with the Nasca and Wari religions. There may be parallels with
other areas where transformations in religion have occurred after collapse and
abandonment. For example, in early Postclassic Oaxaca when political fragmen-
tation occurred, the temple-palace complexes were abandoned, but one of the
social institutions that remained intact was family-based ritual behavior that was
resilient and had weak integration (Faulseit 2012). Wilcox (2010) proposes that in
the American Southwest, after the breakdown of the Chaco system, there was no
longer ritual centralization but instead a switch to secrecy and compartmentaliza-
tion of ritual knowledge. The people who resettled Nasca at this time, much like
the Pueblo people, may have seen a weakness and danger in the centralization
of religious ritual and power. And similar to the Oaxaca people, family-based
religious practices were resilient and became a focus of ceremonial life in the
postcollapse period.
Over the long history in Nasca, people would have used different types of
flexible and opportune means in the establishment of the first civilization in the
desert (the Nasca Culture) and then through the variable relationships and strate-
gies they employed with the intrusive Wari state. The collapse of Wari and aban-
donment of the Nasca region were two of the more dramatic periods in Nasca’s
development. Following 200 years of abandonment, the region was resettled, a
new growth phase occurred, and revitalization was possible through resilient
institutions and the flexible and opportunistic approaches that were once again
used to establish civilization in the desert.
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Tucson.
10. The Decline and Reorganization
of Southwestern Complexity:
Using Resilience Theory to Examine
the Collapse of Chaco Canyon
Jakob W. Sedig
Abstract: Recently, archaeologists working in the U.S. Southwest have used resil-
ience theory to examine prehistoric cultural transitions. Much of this work has
focused on the Mimbres and Hohokam archaeological cultures, yet resilience
theory has only been sparingly applied to one of the most complex prehistoric
cultures in North America: Chaco Canyon. In this chapter, I use the concepts
of resilience theory to examine the decline and reorganization of Chaco Can-
yon. Southwest scholars have long debated the political, social, and economic
structures of Chaco Canyon, the amount of influence it had on surrounding
areas, and reasons for its decline/collapse in the mid-twelfth century a.d. I
hope to elucidate some of these issues using the tenets of resilience theory.
Chaco appears to be an excellent candidate for a resilience study. The concepts
of memory, release, and reorganization—central to the adaptive cycle—were
involved with the decline of Chaco and establishment of Aztec Ruins, a new
political and social center to the north. Once Chacoan decline/collapse has
been examined through the lens of resilience, it can be used to help elucidate
post-Chaco developments in the northern San Juan and Cibola regions.
In this paper, I use resilience theory to examine the “collapse” and

reorganization of Chaco Canyon, one of the most thoroughly studied ancient
societies in the American Southwest. Collapse has been one of the most intensely
ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
237
238 J. W. Sedig
studied and debated concepts in archaeology. Since at least the late 1980s, scholars
have noted that rarely is collapse total, even in complex states and civilizations,
and have argued that archaeologists need a better method for examining collapse
(McAnany and Yoffee 2010; Yoffee 1988). Yet, as Wilcox (2010) demonstrates, argu-
ments for the complete and total failure of Native American societies, especially
those centered in Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde, have been forwarded by archae-
ologists for close to a century. Wilcox (2010) strongly argues that the descendants
of the people who inhabited Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and the prehistoric U.S.
Southwest in general did not disappear but in fact still inhabit the region. Thus,
although archaeologists have generally moved away from considering collapse
to be “total” or “complete,” they need a better method for examining “collapse”
in the Southwest.
Instead of experiencing collapse in the traditional archaeological sense, I
argue that Chaco Canyon experienced what resilience theorists have defined as
release and reorganization during the middle part of the twelfth century a.d. I
also argue that other concepts developed from resilience theory, such as rigidity,
diversity, and panarchy, can help scholars understand post-Chacoan developments
in the nearby northern San Juan and Cibola regions (Figure 10-1). I begin with a
brief summary of the Chaco system and then move to a discussion of resilience
theory and its previous use in the study of prehistoric Southwest societies. Follow-
ing this, I examine how resilience concepts can be used in the study of post-Chaco
developments in the U.S. Southwest.
Chaco Canyon Research
Chaco Canyon is famous for the dozen monumental buildings called

great houses, built between a.d. 900 and 1130 (all dates hereafter are a.d.). Much
has been written about the history and development of Chaco Canyon, located
in the San Juan Basin of north central New Mexico (Crown and Judge 1991; Judge
2004; Kintigh 2003; Lekson 2006; Mills 2002; Wilshusen and Van Dyke 2006). The
space allotted for this chapter could easily be filled with a history of research and
analysis of different theories and hypotheses on Chaco Canyon. Being parsimo-
nious is therefore a necessity, thus, only the research pertaining directly to this
paper is briefly summarized.
A great deal of research has been dedicated to the elucidation of Chaco’s
beginnings (McKenna and Truell 1986; Sebastian 1991; Wills and Windes 1989;
Wilshusen and Van Dyke 2006). It is clear that Chaco Canyon was an important
place for hundreds of years before the great houses were constructed. Two large
villages, Shabik’eschee and 29SJ243, located on the east and west ends of the can-
yon, were occupied during the Basketmaker III era (500–750). Researchers have
identified strong ties between inhabitants of the northern San Juan during the
Pueblo I period (PI, 750–900) and the inhabitants of Chaco Canyon during the
Pueblo II period (PII, 900–1150) (Lekson and Cameron 1995; Ware and Blinman
2000; Wilshusen and Ortman 1999; Wilshusen and Van Dyke 2006; Windes 2007).
At the end of the PI period, the bulk of the northern Southwest population was
The Decline and Reorganization of Southwestern Complexity 239
Figure 10-1. Map of the northern Southwest, with the northern San Juan
and Cibola regions outlined. Location of Chaco Canyon and Aztec Ruins are
also noted.
found in the northern San Juan region at sites such as Grass Mesa and McPhee
villages (Wilshusen and Ortman 1999; Wilshusen and Van Dyke 2006). Contem-
poraneously, construction of three of the earliest, largest, and most famous great
houses—Pueblo Bonito, Una Vida, and Peñasco Blanco—began in Chaco Canyon.
Over the next two centuries, these great houses were expanded and became some
240 J. W. Sedig
of the largest architectural structures built in prehistoric North America, and the
population shifted from the northern San Juan to the San Juan Basin.
Around 1030, Chaco began its “Golden Century” (Judge 2004) and dominated
the U.S. Southwest. At its maximum, the sphere of Chacoan influence extended
almost 450 km north to south, from the Rockies to the Mogollon Rim, and 300
km east to west, from the Rio Grande to the Hopi Mesas (Lekson and Cameron
1995:185). Most often, Chacoan influence is defined by the presence of Chacoan
features, particularly great houses (discussed below), at a given site or commu-
nity. However, Chaco’s impact and influence on the northern Southwest can also
be defined by what was entering Chaco Canyon. Chaco Canyon was an importer
during its apogee, yet there is little evidence that it exported much. Chipped stone,
pottery, jewelry, beams, and more arrived in the canyon from all directions but
particularly from the Chuska Mountains, approximately 50 km to the west. Evi-
dence of Mesoamerican items, such as cacao, macaw feathers, and copper bells,
have also been found in Chaco Canyon (Crown and Hurst 2009; Nelson 2006).
By the mid-twelfth century, at least 12 massive great houses had been con-
structed in and immediately around Chaco Canyon. Great houses were, undoubt-
edly, monumental structures that held ritual or ceremonial value; some scholars
have even speculated that great houses were palaces for a few select individuals
(Lekson 2007, 2009; Lekson et al 2006; for differing opinions, see Mahoney and Kant-
ner 2000; Van Dyke 2007). Numerous great houses (some estimates are over 150)
were also constructed and occupied outside of Chaco Canyon during its maximum
extent. The relation of these great houses to Chaco Canyon (hypotheses include
local emulations of those found in the canyon and/or Chacoan outposts, to name a
few) is a matter of some dispute (Kantner and Kintigh 2006; Mahoney and Kantner
2000). However, an outlying Chacoan community is defined as a community that
has as its central component a Chacoan great house—an imposing structure usually
characterized by core-veneer masonry, multistory height, oversized rooms, and
blocked-in or elevated kivas (Kantner and Kintigh 2006:155). These communities
also have one or more great kivas, road segments, and earthen berms (Kantner and
Kintigh 2006:155). At its apex, Chaco and the outlying great house communities
have been characterized as a tribute-gathering state, redistributive system, ritually
based pilgrimage center, network of entrepreneurial elites, peer-polity system,
agrarian enterprise, and more (Lekson and Cameron 1995; Mahoney and Kantner
2000:6; Renfrew 2001; Sebastian 1991; Toll 1985; Van Dyke 2007). The nature of the
Chaco system and how it operated are not of immediate concern for this paper;
however, it is clear that Chaco was something unique in Southwest prehistory.
Around 1150 Chaco had ceased to be a regional center, integrating a huge
swath of the U.S. Southwest (Lekson and Cameron 1995:189). Although the “core”
of Chaco had decayed by this time, its influence may have persisted. A massive
group of great houses, Aztec Ruins, was constructed in the early part of the twelfth
century. Like all things Chaco, the post-Chaco role of Aztec has been greatly de-
bated by Chaco scholars. I argue later that the construction of Aztec was part of a
Chacoan reorganization that occurred during the middle decades of the twelfth
century, although other explanations certainly exist (Brown et al. 2008; Lipe 2006;
Reed 2008; Vivian 2008).
Chaco scholars have developed a variety of reasons for why the Chaco sys-
tem “collapsed” around 1150, the most typical involving drought. Regardless of
the cause of collapse, after 1150 population shifted from the San Juan Basin to
the northern San Juan and Cibola regions. Aggregation in the northern San Juan
lasted only about a century before the region was depopulated at the end of the
thirteenth century. In the Cibola region, however, aggregation in pueblos contin-
ued, even to this day. As discussed later, I believe that resilience theory can help
archaeologists understand the different post–Chaco occupation histories of the
northern San Juan and Cibola regions.
Resilience and Southwest Archaeology
Since the mid-2000s, archaeologists have used resilience theory as a

model to help explain prehistoric socionatural interactions (Hegmon et al. 2008;
Nelson et al. 2011; Nelson et al. 2006; Redman 2005; Redman et al. 2009). Below, I
examine the adaptive cycles of social and political institutions for Chaco Canyon
and the northern Southwest (for more discussion on resilience theory and the
adaptive cycle, see Faulseit, chapter 1, this volume). While political and social
institutions are closely related and often grouped together, I later argue they in
fact are part of two distinct adaptive cycles, constituting a larger panarchy.
The North American Southwest has been a testing ground for the use of resil-
ience theory because much research pertaining to socioenvironmental interaction
has been conducted there. According to Dean (2004), the southwestern United
States is one of the few regions of the world where high-resolution paleoenvi-
ronmental data and reconstructions coincide with detailed and comprehensive
archaeological information on past human behavior. Such a large and detailed
data set allows Southwest archaeologists to examine human reaction, adaptation,
and interaction with the environment over large and small scales of time.
Although Southwest archaeologists have addressed the topic of socionatural
interaction for decades (Benson and Berry 2009; Gumerman 1988; Hough 1898;
Kohler 2004), many models have fallen on one of two ends of a spectrum: deter-
ministic, in which humans bend to the whim of the environment, or to the con-
tention that environment has minimal impact on human societies (Dean 2000:89).
However, “in reality, never is it just an environmental story, but, rather, a complex
mosaic of human action, unintended consequences, and natural change” (Fisher
and Feinman 2005:65). Resilience theory provides a new model for researchers to
examine persistent questions of socionatural interaction. Unlike older models, it
is not deterministic and allows researchers to see the complex relationship among
different units of analysis.
Nelson and colleagues (2006) conducted some of the first research to explic-
itly use resilience theory and the adaptive cycle in the Southwest United States.
In their study, Nelson et al. (2006) examined the transition from the Classic to
Postclassic periods in the eastern Mimbres region. A shift in settlement patterns
(from large pueblo villages to small, dispersed hamlets) occurred during this era,
which Nelson and colleagues felt represented the reorganization (α) phase of the
242 J. W. Sedig
adaptive cycle. However, when they analyzed four different variables (resource
selection, household-scale movement, household size and configuration, and
household-level resource processing and storage), they found that only one vari-
able, household-scale movement, met their expectations. Despite their results, the
researchers encouraged archaeologists not to abandon the resilience framework:
“We believe that, rather than reject the work of resilience theorists, archaeologists
and other social scientists need to examine key assumptions of that perspective,
in order to build stronger links between concepts that have emerged in ecology
and their applicability to social processes” (Nelson et al. 2006:426).
Redman and colleagues (2009) used resilience theory to examine long-term
transformation in the Hohokam socioecological system. They identified a period of
growth and relative stability (exploitation and conservation phases, approximately
700–1100), followed by depopulation, the construction of new monuments, and
changes in settlement patterns (release and reorganization, the Classic period,
1150–1450). According to Redman et al (2009:28), “the initial impression derived
from the archaeological record is that short-term political stability and economic
maximization [of the Classic period] were achieved only by weakening the capacity
of the productive system to react to internal and external challenges, which un-
dermined long-term survival of Hohokam irrigation farming and social construc-
tions.” Redman and colleagues argued that the irrigation system the Hohokam
used played a major role in the social transformation that occurred in the Phoenix
basin. As population grew, irrigation became increasingly important to feed more
and more people. According to Redman et al. (2009:33), the Preclassic Hohokam
era represents the growth (r) and conservation (K) phases of the adaptive cycle.
Toward the end of this long period, increasing variability in water flow and pos-
sible down cutting of the riverbed stressed the irrigation system, which caused
a serious transformation toward more social differentiation and hierarchy. This
represents the release and reorganization phases and the collapse of one adap-
tive cycle into a new one. This new adaptive cycle, initiated in the Classic period,
stabilized social relations and allowed for the continuation of irrigation farming,
but it was not sufficiently resilient to maintain Classic period institutions beyond
1450 (Redman et al. 2009:34).
Hegmon and colleagues (2008) used resilience theory to help interpret three
different social transformations in the prehistoric Southwest (Mimbres, Mesa
Verde, and Hohokam). Their work assessed the concept of the “rigidity trap”
in resilience theory through the deep time archaeological research afforded. In
resilience theory, the more “rigid” and less resilient a system is, the more likely
it will be to experience a severe transformation (Hegmon et al. 2008:314). The re-
searchers analyzed numerous variables in each of the regions in order to examine
rigidity. These variables were each given a subjective rigidity ranking. When
compared, the researchers found that the Mimbres region had the least rigidity
(and most resilience); therefore, it experienced the least dramatic transformation
when society reorganized at the end of the Classic period. On the opposite end
of the spectrum were the Hohokam, who were the most rigid (least resilient) and,
therefore, experienced “a long period of human suffering and the decline of both
population and cultural traditions” (Hegmon et al. 2008:320).
In one of the most recent works to apply resilience concepts to Southwest

archaeology, Nelson and colleagues (2011) examined the role diversity plays in the
resilience of a socioecological system. In a study of ceramics from the Mimbres,
Zuni, Hohokam, and Salinas regions, the researchers found that material cultural
diversity decreased as population increased. Such decreases in diversity lead to a
loss of resilience in a system by lessening the capacity to respond in various ways
and spur movement to release and reorganization in an adaptive cycle. The authors
do not suggest a causal relationship between low diversity and transformation
but, rather, “consider the overall pattern of association to establish the potential
for using the archaeological record to examine the long-term effects of different
levels of diversity” (Nelson et al. 2011:25).
While the studies summarized above have laid the groundwork for fu-
ture resilience research in the North American Southwest, they have focused
primarily on small-scale farmers (except for the Hohokam example) and have
been largely ecologically based. There are numerous facets to resilience theory,
and only a small amount have been examined and employed archaeologically.
In this work, I use three aspects of resilience that have been previously ex-
amined in the Southwest—reorganization, rigidity, and diversity—along with
panarchy and apply them to Chaco Canyon, which to this point has escaped
examination from resilience scholars. Specifically, I use these concepts to ex-
amine changes in architecture and political and ritual organization. I argue
that these concepts will help Southwest archaeologists understand post-1150
developments in Chaco Canyon, the northern San Juan, and Cibola regions of the
U.S. Southwest.
Resilience and the End of Chaco
Resilience theory is a tool that Chacoan scholars can and should employ
to examine what has been traditionally viewed as the “collapse,” or “end,” of the
Chaco system. Already, it is clear that resilience is a better concept in examin-
ing the end of the Chaco system than collapse. For years, archaeologists and the
general public alike believed that Chaco collapsed in the mid-twelfth century and
its former inhabitants vanished from the face of the Earth. However, when the
concepts of the adaptive cycle and reorganization are applied, it is evident that
Chaco did not merely collapse, as the term has traditionally been used.
Superficially, the history of Chaco Canyon appears to fit the expectations of
the adaptive cycle commonly used by resilience theorists. Approximately 900–1030
represents growth, 1030–1100 represents the conservation phase, release occurs
shortly thereafter, and reorganization happened sometime in the first decade of
the twelfth century, when there was an increase in new buildings constructed,
Aztec Ruins became the de facto social, political, and ritual capital of the northern
Southwest, and a suite of transformations occurred in the Chaco Canyon and the
Chaco region. Although this entire model needs thorough testing, I begin this
process here by examining the assumption that approximately 1110–1150 repre-
sents the reorganization phase.
244 J. W. Sedig
Holling (2001:395) described the reorganization phase as unpredictable and

highly uncertain but also as ideal for experimentation and the establishment of
new entities that otherwise would be outcompeted. Redman (2005:73) has de-
scribed the reorganization phase as that in which resources are reorganized into a
new system to take advantage of novel opportunities. The new system established
during reorganization may resemble its predecessor or have fundamentally new
characteristics (Redman 2005:73). Previous research (Hegmon et al. 2008; Nelson
et al. 2006; Redman et al. 2009) has demonstrated that almost any type of mate-
rial culture can be used to examine reorganization archaeologically; here I focus
primarily on architecture.
Beginning in the early twelfth century, substantial changes occurred within
and outside of Chaco Canyon, changes, I argue, that correlate with the reorganiza-
tion phase. Around 1110, a new form of architecture, McElmo, appears in Chaco
Canyon. Prior to 1110, great house walls were faced in four different types of
long, thin, sandstone slabs with thick mortar joints (Figure 10-2) (Lekson 1984:17).
Additionally, core and veneer construction techniques were used. According to
Lekson (1984:21), core and veneer, common before 1100 in Chaco, were “a hallmark
of Chacoan building” and consisted of two wall facings separated by a core of
jumbled stones, rubble, mud, earth, or household trash. McElmo masonry rep-
resents a dramatic shift from earlier Classic Chacoan construction techniques.
McElmo masonry is defined by the use of massive, tan, sandstone blocks, the
faces of which have been “pecked,” or ground flush. Only a thin amount of mor-
tar joins the McElmo blocks (Lekson 1984:17, 2007:36). Although cores of jumbled
material are found in McElmo walls, this technique became increasingly rare in
the twelfth century.
The ground plans for McElmo great houses differed greatly from earlier
structures (Figure 10-3). McElmo structures were compact, modular, and sym-
metrical in their ground plan, which was a grid-like square layout with one
to three rows of small square rooms enclosing an aboveground kiva (Lekson
1984:268; Van Dyke 2007:216–217). McElmo structures were also constructed much
more rapidly than earlier great houses (Figure 10-4) (Lekson et al. 2006; Wilcox
2010). Along with taking less time, construction of McElmo great houses appar-
ently took less energy, too; Lekson (1984:257–269) estimates that McElmo structures
required only one-half to two-thirds the person hours of earlier great houses to
build. Interestingly, McElmo great houses are commonly found adjacent to larger
great houses that had longer construction histories (Lekson 1984:257–269). Thus,
McElmo great houses represent something new and are seemingly indicative of
the experimentation and innovation that occurs rapidly during the reorganization
phase (Gunderson and Holling 2002; Holling 2001; Redman 2005).
While new buildings in the early part of the twelfth century were being
constructed in a new style, older buildings were being remodeled and reoccupied
inside and outside of the canyon. Beginning around the mid-twelfth century, dur-
ing what has been traditionally viewed as the end of Chaco, Chacoan great houses
underwent extensive remodeling. According to Lekson and colleagues (2006:100),
inhabitants of the great houses “subdivided large Chacoan rooms, dismantled
ceilings, and inserted small kivas into old square and rectangular chambers.”
Figure 10-2. Examples of wall facing in Cha

coan great houses. Earlier style is from Pueblo
Bonito (left), and McElmo style is from Kin
Kletso (right).
Figure 10-3. Great house ground plans. McElmo structures in 1115+ row.
(From Lekson et al. 2006:69; reprinted by permission from Chaco & Ho-
hokam: Prehistoric Regional Systems in the American Southwest, edited
by Patricia L. Crown and W. James Judge; copyright © 1991 by the School for
Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico; all rights reserved.)
246 J. W. Sedig
Figure 10-4. Construction history of Chaco Canyon great houses. (Redrafted

from Wilcox 2010:Figure 5.8.)
Household trash was deposited in rooms, and hearths, mealing bins, and other
domestic features were added to previously empty rooms (Lekson and Cameron
1995:190). Nelson and colleagues (2006) identified similar patterns of reoccupation
and remodeling in their examination of the reorganization phase in the Mimbres
region. Great houses constructed prior to 1100, during Chaco’s florescence, likely
had strong symbolic ties to whatever Chaco Canyon represented. The reuse and
remodeling of these structures after 1100 probably changed the symbolic mean-
ing of the great houses.
The final piece of evidence for Chacoan reorganization during the mid- to
late twelfth century that I examine in this paper (although others certainly exist)
is the establishment of Aztec Ruins, a massive great house complex located about
50 miles north of Chaco Canyon. Aztec Ruins consists of several great houses, only
one of which (Aztec West) has been extensively excavated (by Earl H. Morris in
the early twentieth century). The construction of Aztec West began around 1110.
Similar to great houses constructed in Chaco Canyon during the early part of the
twelfth century, Aztec West appears to have been constructed rapidly, within a
span of less than 20 years (Brown et al. 2008; Lipe 2006). The size and elaboration
of the Aztec great houses match or exceed that of Chaco Canyon great houses. As
with other Chacoan buildings, there is debate about the function of Aztec Ruins;
however, it seems likely that the establishment of Aztec represented a transfer of
the political and ceremonial seat of power from Chaco Canyon to the northern
San Juan (Judge 1989; Lekson 1999, 2009; Lipe 2006). Viewed through the lens of
resilience theory, the establishment of Aztec represents reorganization, and as dis-

cussed below, Aztec likely was a recapitulation of Chaco in the northern San Juan.
The architectural innovation and restructuring that occurred during the early
twelfth century in the Chaco world appear to fit resilience theorists’ (Holling and
Gunderson 2002:35; Holling 2001; Redman 2005) description of the reorganization
phase. The founding of Aztec Ruins, along with changes in architecture, reflects
new social, political, and/or ritual ideas. It is not clear why McElmo facing became
popular, yet it is certain that beginning around 1110, constructors of Chacoan
architecture switched to this method of facing. Great houses were no longer oc-
cupied by a few special denizens or used primarily for rituals but apparently
became residential buildings (Lekson and Cameron 1995). The transformations
in form and function of the most prominent features of Chacoan influence—great
houses—during the reorganization phase mark the end of Chaco’s golden century
and the splintering of Chaco’s sphere of influence.
Post-Chaco Developments, Northern San Juan and

Cibola Regions
Prior to reorganization, during the eleventh century, evidence of strong

ties to Chaco can be found in both the northern San Juan and Cibola regions (Cam-
eron and Duff 2008; Duff and Lekson 2006; Kantner and Kintigh 2006; Lipe 2006).
After the period of reorganization in the early to mid-twelfth century, the degree
of connection to Chaco and influence of Chaco in the particular regions change.
Although scholars have done an excellent job tracing the historical developments
both north and south of Chaco post 1100, I argue that resilience theory can help
illuminate why those developments occurred. I begin with a brief overview of
post-Chacoan developments in the northern San Juan and Cibola regions and
then move to a discussion on how the concepts of resilience theory can help us
understand these developments.
Post-Chaco Northern San Juan

Archaeological studies have been conducted in the northern San Juan
for over a century. Recent archaeological research, especially that associated with
the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, has done an excellent job outlining the
historical ties between the northern San Juan and San Juan Basin (Lipe 2006; Varien
et al. 1996; Varien and Wilshusen 2002; Wilshusen and Ortman 1999). Work by
these and other researchers has demonstrated that in order to truly understand
developments in the two regions, archaeologists must consider the long history
of movement and interaction that began at least by the Pueblo I period. For the
purposes of this paper, however, I focus solely on post-Chacoan developments in
the northern San Juan and note that the concepts of resilience theory would also
be useful in the examination of the earlier time periods.
Discussion of the post-1100 occupation of the northern San Juan must begin
with Aztec Ruins. The proponents of Aztec serving as a prominent regional center
248 J. W. Sedig
see evidence of its influence in the northern San Juan into the thirteenth century
(Lekson 1999; Lipe 2006). According to Cameron and Duff (2008:43), “Aztec main-
tained enough people and sufficient strength to directly demonstrate their influence
against those who resisted their overtures.” Aztec’s influence does not appear to
have been innocuous; according to Kohler and Turner (2006), the inhabitants of
Aztec Ruins captured women from smaller sites in the northern San Juan and held
them at Aztec. In general, violence appears to be ubiquitous in the northern San
Juan during the thirteenth century (Kuckelman et al. 2000; LeBlanc 1999). During
the Late Pueblo III period (1150–1300), villages were constructed in defensive loca-
tions, such as at canyon heads or in cliff dwellings (Cameron and Duff 2008:40).
Increased violence in the northern San Juan may have been tied to the emer-
gence of competing ceremonial systems in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
According to Glowacki (2006), two distinct forms of ceremonial structures are
apparent during this time: open plazas and unroofed great kivas, which could in-
corporate many people, and multiwalled structures (either D-shaped or concentric
rings) that were exclusionary and used by only a few key individuals. There were
several forms of multiwall structures. D-shaped and circular structures consisted
of a courtyard for one or two kivas, surrounded a single or double row of rooms
(Glowacki 2011:76). These structures are often the most prominent architectural
features of a site, but their use was likely limited to distinct ritual groups (Glowacki
2011:76). These structures are found primarily in the western northern San Juan
region (the furthest from Chaco) and likely were novel post-Chaco innovations.
The other form of multiwall structures found in the northern San Juan during
the thirteenth century does seem to have ties to Chaco (Glowacki 2011; Lekson
1999). These structures consisted of several encircled walls. The most famous of
these multiwall exclusionary structures, the Hubbard tri-wall (Figure 10-5), is
found at Aztec Ruins. Such structures seem to have connections to Chaco and
first appeared during Chaco’s reorganization. According to Lekson (1999:95), one
of the last pieces of monumental architecture built at Chaco was a tri-wall located
behind Pueblo del Arroyo.
The variety of form for religious structures in the northern San Juan region
during the thirteenth century indicates that this was a time of religious innova-
tion, revitalization, and reorganization (Glowacki 2011). At the most basic level,
the religious restructuring led to a split: some ceremonies and rituals, held in
large open plazas and unroofed great kivas, were meant for communal partici-
pation. Conversely, only a select few participated in the ceremonies and rituals
conducted in exclusionary multiwall structures. Some of these exclusionary ritu-
als, specifically those associated the concentric multiwall structures, such as the
Hubbard tri-wall, likely had ties to Chaco Canyon (Glowacki 2011; Lekson 1999).
The D-shaped structures were also exclusionary but seem to have much weaker
links to Chaco (Glowacki 2011). Glowacki (2011) argues that the tension caused
by opposing ceremonial systems, one open and inclusive, the other exclusionary,
with different degrees of connection to Chaco Canyon, was one of the factors that
led to migration out of the northern San Juan at the end of the thirteenth century
(Glowacki 2006). Recent world conflicts (Protestants and Catholics in Northern
Ireland, Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq) can serve as analogs to demonstrate
Figure 10-5. Hubbard tri-wall structure at Aztec Ruins. (From Lekson

2007:Figure 2.20.)
that competing ceremonial and ritual systems could have caused much of the
violence throughout northern San Juan before its depopulation.
Although ritual and ceremonial organization changed during the Pueblo III
period, the household—the foundational social element since at least the Pueblo
I period—continued to be a “powerful place of social negotiation” (Cameron and
Duff 2008:40–41). Great house communities were reoccupied, and in general, com-
munities and population did grow during the early thirteenth century. Yet, even
as population grew, it was with increasing insularity, evidence shows. Accord-
ing to Lekson and Cameron (1995:193), “exchange items were relatively common
in the 12th century in the Mesa Verde region, and all but absent in the 13th.” By
the end of the thirteenth century, the northern San Juan was almost completely
depopulated. Traditional explanations for this have focused on drought, although
research has indicated that the drought was no worse than previous dry spells,
and enough resources were available for continued occupation even in tough
environmental times (Dean 2004; Kohler et al. 2007; Lipe 1995, 2006; Varien et al.
2007). Thus, a variety of explanations for the depopulation for the northern San
Juan by 1300 has been proffered recently, including emigration as result of political
and social breakdown and the pull of new ritual and religious ideas (Glowacki
2006; Lipe 1995).
250 J. W. Sedig
Post-Chaco Cibola Region

Tainter (1988:186) notes that the south (the Cibola region) was first to pull
away from Chaco as its sociopolitical power and influence waned. Immediately
after the reorganization of Chaco began, population in the Cibola region declined
in the north (closest to Chaco) and began to rise and aggregate near modern-day
Zuni (Cameron and Duff 2008; Duff 2005; Kintigh et al. 1996). Although Chacoan
communities with prominent great houses disappeared, the post-Chacoan his-
tory of the Cibola region is a history of aggregation. Cibolan social memory was
diverse, heterogeneous, and blended compared to that of the northern San Juan
(Duff 2005). While the household undoubtedly was an important factor in social
organization, it did not form the basis of community structure, as in the northern
San Juan (Cameron and Duff 2008). Eventually, large, heterogeneous communities
would be organized because Cibolans were not tied to the idea of the individual
household. These aggregated communities could become very large; the Hinkson
community had around 900 rooms (Cameron and Duff 2008:47).
Perhaps the most crucial factor for continued Cibolan growth post-Chaco
was the lack of a strong, coercive regional center. The Cibola region had no Aztec
equivalent. Thus, Cibolans appropriated Chacoan traditions as they saw fit and
were not forced into rigid Chacoan ideals (Cameron and Duff 2008; Duff 2005).
The post-Chacoan occupation of Cibola great houses demonstrates a more open
and heterogeneous approach than in the northern San Juan region. There is no
evidence of ceremonial dichotomy in the Cibola region, as there is in the northern
San Juan. Cibolans held their ceremonies in large, unroofed great kivas (Kintigh
et al. 1996). The post-Chaco Cibolan unroofed great kivas were larger than great
kivas found in Chaco Canyon. The unroofed great kiva at Hinkson, located south
of modern-day Zuni, is 34 m in diameter; the largest great kivas in Chaco Canyon
are 16 to 21 m in diameter (Kintigh et al. 1996:265). Similar unroofed structures are
found in the northern San Juan during the PIII period; however, these are smaller
in size and found within sites located in defensive positions, often surrounded by
an enclosing wall that delineates site boundaries and regulated access into and
out of pueblos (Glowacki 2006:67; Lipe and Ortman 2000:107). Thus, open great
kivas in the northern San Juan apparently were designed only to incorporate a
single community, and Cibolan open great kivas were more inclusive and likely
integrated several communities (Kintigh et al. 1996).
Sites in the Cibola region continued to grow in the post-Chaco era. By the mid-
thirteenth century, several large towns existed. These towns could have thousands
of rooms, were organized around a large, open central plaza, and likely integrated
different social groups, creating a blended social history (Figure 10-6) (Duff 2005;
Duff and Schachner 2007). These sites were not located in defensible positions like
canyon heads and cliffs, as in the northern San Juan during the mid- to late 1200s.
The growing communities in the Cibola region were instead easily accessible
on the open landscape. At the conclusion of the thirteenth century, large towns
became the norm in the Cibola region, and great houses were no longer occupied
(Cameron and Duff 2008:48). Although villages and towns came and went, the
region continued to be occupied, even when the fickle Southwest environment
Figure 10-6. Examples of post-Chacoan sites from the Cibola region, with large
open plazas and hundreds of rooms. (From Lekson 2009:Figure 6.10; courtesy
of the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History.)
252 J. W. Sedig
experienced periodic droughts or decreased rainfall patterns (Dean et al. 1994).

The native people who inhabit this region still live in large, heterogeneous com-
munities organized around an open, integrative plaza.
Resilience Theory in Post-Chacoan Northern San Juan

and Cibola
Although the previous two sections provide only a brief overview of

the long history and extensive research that has been conducted in the northern
San Juan and Cibola regions, I hope to have demonstrated that the two regions
experienced different developments after the reorganization of the Chaco system.
Below, I discuss how reorganization, rigidity, diversity, and panarchy help to
elucidate historic developments in the two regions.
Resilience theorists have recognized the value of diversity in the building
of resilience to perturbations. According to Nelson and colleagues (2011:31), “the
expression and perhaps imposition of conformity may contribute to cooperation or
consensual decision-making and thus may be beneficial in some contexts, includ-
ing times of increasing population density. However, the conformity simultane-
ously constitutes a reduction in diversity that may, in turn, contribute to a loss
of resilience by lessening the capacity of the system to respond in varied ways.”
The attempted imposition of conformity by Aztec Ruins was one of the fac-
tors that caused a reduction of sociopolitical and exploitable resource diversity
in the northern San Juan and contributed to the region’s depopulation at the end
of the thirteenth century. It appears that enough resources were available for the
inhabitants of the northern San Juan to survive the environmental downturn
that occurred at the end of the thirteenth century (Dean 2004). However, instead
of reorganizing into an open and inclusive society in the face of environmental
stress, people became defensive and violent toward one another (Kohler and
Turner 2006; Kuckelman et al. 2000; LeBlanc 1999), with possible attacks launched
from Aztec Ruins (Kohler and Turner 2006). Interaction and trade also declined
(Lekson and Cameron 1995; Glowacki 2006), likely due to increased violence.
Fear of violence may have caused people to stay within their protective villages,
instead of venturing out, exploiting new, diverse resources, or creating new
relationships. The competition between two political-ritual systems could also
have limited social diversity; people may have felt compelled to choose one sys-
tem or another, with no middle ground. This overall decreased opportunity to
exploit a diversity of social and ecological options would have made it difficult
for inhabitants of the northern San Juan to respond to deteriorating climatic
conditions, and within a relatively short period of time, the region was almost
completely depopulated.
Compared to the northern San Juan, the Cibola region was a much more
diverse and less rigid place after the Chacoan reorganization. Although only one
political-ritual system existed in the Cibola post-Chaco (compared to two in the
northern San Juan), this system was nonexclusive and heterogeneous. Instead of
living in isolated, defensive communities with different ritual systems escalating
social stress, Cibolans built larger, more open communities (Duff 2005; Kintigh et
al. 1996). These communities would have housed people with diverse backgrounds
and histories. Wide, unroofed great kivas, which were later replaced by open
plazas at the center of the town, allowed Cibolans to come together and share
in community rituals. Large rituals melded the community; these rituals also
would have been events where diverse ideas were shared. The sharing of ideas,
instead of the close guarding of arcane knowledge, allowed people to devise the
best response to social and environmental perturbations.
For resilience theorists, rigidity is also a concept that limits resilience. “Ri-
gidity traps” are situations that occur when diversity is squeezed out, e.g., when
explicit rules and regulations are created for interaction between members in a
network that inhibits adaptable responses to crises (Hegmon et al. 2008:319). Heg-
mon and colleagues (2008) have previously noted how rigidity in the northern San
Juan caused a more dramatic transformation there than in the less rigid Mimbres
region. It now seems likely that the imposition of sociopolitical rules and regula-
tions in the northern San Juan by Aztec Ruins was a major factor that caused the
region to fall into a rigidity trap, ultimately factoring in the dramatic depopula-
tion at the end of the thirteenth century. As Hegmon and colleagues (2008:314)
state, particular segments of a society can create rigidity traps by attempting to
maintain perceived beneficial conditions. Each political-religious system in the
northern San Juan would have attempted to maintain its own particular beliefs
and/or conditions instead of developing new methods of social interaction and
resource exploitation that could have led to continued occupation of the northern
San Juan. The post-Chaco Cibola region provides a contrast to the rigid northern
San Juan system.
The concept of panarchy within resilience theory can also help delineate the
social and political changes that occurred in the northern San Juan and Cibola
regions after the Chaco reorganization. Conceived in ecology, the concept of pan-
archy was developed as a scalar tool to examine different elements of an ecosystem
hierarchy and how they interact—“from plant to patch, to stand, to ecosystem, to
landscape” (Faulseit, chapter 1; Holling et al. 2002:71). These panarchic levels are
connected, with change occurring more often and rapidly at the smaller levels
(i.e., plants, patches, or stands). Invention, experimentation, and testing occur fre-
quently in the small, rapid levels, while the larger, slower panarchic levels are more
conservative and stable through the accumulated memory of past experiments
(Holling et al. 2002). My interest with panarchy is in examining whether the tool
can also apply to sociopolitical systems—from individual to family, to village, to
sociopolitical system, to regional archaeological cultures. In a hierarchical pan-
archy framework, political and social institutions would constitute two distinct
adaptive cycle levels, but these distinct adaptive cycles are linked together, with
changes in one affecting the other.
Chaco Canyon and the northern San Juan and Cibola regions serve as a case
study, and I argue that the political-religious transformations that occurred in
the northern San Juan during the thirteenth century represent a smaller, rap-
idly changing panarchic level, while regional-level social systems represent the
slower, larger panarchic level. Political and/or religious upheavals can and often
254 J. W. Sedig
do occur rapidly (e.g., the Arab Spring of 2011). The rapid construction of Aztec
Ruins, McElmo great houses, and new religious structures in the northern San
Juan provides evidence of rapid political and/or ritual changes during and after
the reorganization of Chaco (Brown et al. 2008; Glowacki 2006, 2011; Lekson 1984;
Lekson et al. 2006; Lipe 2006). The exact cause for violence in the northern San
Juan after Chaco’s reorganization is unclear, yet local resistance to new, rapidly
developing political and religious institutions seems possible. Thus, in terms
of panarchic representation, the political and/or religious experimentation that
occurred constituted the smaller, fast-moving panarchic level during and after
Chaco’s reorganization. Social acceptance of these new institutions was slower
and often contested, representing the gradual, more conservative panarchic level.
Rapid and dramatic political changes did not occur in the Cibola. Without a co-
ercive capital and the imposition of new religious/ritual ideas, both the political-
religious and social levels moved slowly in the Cibolan panarchical hierarchy,
with little perturbation and upheaval between panarchic levels.
When Chaco was at its apex, during the eleventh century, most social, demo-
graphic, and environmental aspects of the northern Southwest, including those in
the northern San Juan and Cibola regions, were parts of the Chacoan adaptive cycle
and/or panarchy. However, it now seems evident that shortly after reorganization
began, there was a split; the northern San Juan and Cibola regions entered two
different and unique panarchies of adaptive cycles (Figure 10-7). Social memory
of Chaco played a much more prominent role in the northern San Juan than in the
Cibola region. This social memory, the coercive presence of Aztec, and compet-
ing religious systems, along with other factors, caused decreased diversity and a
rigidity trap in the northern San Juan after Chacoan reorganization. The rigidity
of the northern San Juan led to an almost complete depopulation only a century
after Chacoan reorganization, whereas the Cibolans’ open and diverse response
to Chacoan reorganization has led to continued occupation of the region.
Conclusions
While I have focused on the concepts of reorganization, rigidity, di-

versity, and panarchy, these topics can all lead to one bigger, more basic question:
how resilient were the northern San Juan and Cibolan regions post-Chaco? At
this point, the answer seems obvious: the Cibola region was able to maintain
resilience, while the northern San Juan was not. Inhabitants of the northern San
Juan during the thirteenth century lived in household-based, insular communi-
ties where the threat of violence was pervasive (Glowacki 2006; Kuckelman et al.
2000; Lipe and Ortman 2000). Because of this, when climatic conditions began
worsening, people were unable to maximally exploit available resources. Perhaps,
many of these resources were located in dangerous “no man’s lands”—places
between warring factions. A different picture can be painted for the post-Chaco
Cibola region. People lived together in large villages (Cameron and Duff 2008). In
these villages, ideas and innovations were easily spread. This allowed Cibolans
to be resilient and adapt to natural and social perturbations when they occurred.
Figure 10-7. Proposed adaptive cycles for Chaco Canyon and the northern
San Juan and Cibola regions.
Thus, the Cibola region avoided a rigidity trap, and even though large villages
have come and gone, living in aggregated pueblo communities has survived,
even to this day. The people in the northern San Juan fell into a rigidity trap and
were therefore unable to adapt to a variety of political, social, and environmental
changes, and by the end of the thirteenth century, the region was almost com-
pletely depopulated.
At the most basic level, this study was an attempt to introduce the concepts
of resilience theory to Chaco Canyon and post-Chacoan developments in the
northern San Juan and Cibola regions. Although much more research is necessary,
this paper has demonstrated that the concepts of resilience can be useful not only
in the examination of small-scale farming communities but also in larger-scale,
complex societies.
Resilience should not be viewed as a normative, casual theory. At the very
least, much work is needed before resilience is refined enough for broad archaeo-
logical use. Yet, resilience theory does seem promising for archaeology. Archaeolo-
gists have begun to demonstrate that resilience theory is useful in tracing historical
developments in the ancient Southwest. Over 100 years of data collection from
research at Chaco Canyon should provide archaeologists interested in resilience
with a very fertile ground for further developing and refining the theory while
providing new insights into that long-studied, ancient culture.
256 J. W. Sedig
Acknowledgments
I could not have written this paper without the help of several people.
First, I thank Catherine M. Cameron and Stephen H. Lekson for encouraging me
to engage resilience literature and apply it to my research. They have also pro-
vided valuable insight and comments on the various drafts of this paper. They
also suggested that I apply to the visiting scholar’s conference and write this par-
ticular paper for the conference. I also thank Ariella Ruth, who has served as my
personal copy editor for the last few years. Ronald K. “Sonny” Faulseit deserves
my utmost thanks for organizing the conference, making the call for abstracts,
and accepting my work. The conference was spectacular and has really helped
my thinking and understanding of resilience theory. Finally, I thank all of the
conference participants for the excellent discussions we had.
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11. Transformation without
Collapse: Two Cases from
the U.S. Southwest
Andrea Torvinen, Michelle Hegmon, Ann P. Kinzig,

Margaret C. Nelson, Matthew A. Peeples,
Colleen Strawhacker, Karen G. Schollmeyer,
and Laura Swantek
Abstract: Archaeologists now recognize that many societies undergo major

transformations that do not fit the classic model of collapse. Our compara-
tive study of cases in the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico has identi-
fied various kinds of transformations, including reorganizations that allow a
transformed society to continue (e.g., continuity with change and transforma-
tive relocation), as well as complete social upheavals (i.e., “collapse”). We are
also investigating underlying factors for these phenomena, especially those
contributing to reorganization and continuity. Recent work found a general
association between social conformity—indicated in part by a lack of material
culture diversity—and severe transformations. This finding also suggests that
the converse, that diversity (in material culture and other social realms) may
lessen the severity of transformations resulting in reorganizations rather than
collapses. This chapter evaluates that hypothesis through the comparison of
two cases and the kinds of diversity involved in each. Specifically, we exam-
ine evidence of local practices and interaction as distinct social realms. Our
cases include the Pueblo III to Pueblo IV transition in the Cibola region (ca.
a.d. 1275) as continuity with change and the Classic to Postclassic transition
in the Mimbres region (ca. a.d. 1130) as transformative relocation. Our results
allow us to explore the influence social diversity may have on the type of

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
262
Transformation without Collapse 263
transformation(s) to which a society is vulnerable. The analysis has implica-

tions for contemporary society in that it provides insights into some of the
vulnerabilities and tradeoffs associated with social diversity.
The end of the Classic period in the Hohokam region (ca. a.d. 1450) is
a traditional example of societal collapse (Abbott 2003; Hill et al. 2004; Redman et
al. 2009) or what the Long-Term Vulnerability and Transformation Project (LTVTP)
commonly refers to as a severe social transformation (Nelson et al. 2010). High
degrees of social conformity, population density, and investment in infrastruc-
ture, such as a large-scale irrigation system, contributed to the vulnerabilities of
rigidity and attachment to place (cf. Hegmon et al. 2008; Nelson et al. 2011), which
ultimately contributed to the collapse of Hohokam society in the Lower Salt River
Valley (Figure 11-1). Severe transformations (“collapses”) are useful analytical case
studies in that they teach us what vulnerabilities to avoid, but they are only an
extreme end of a spectrum of possible social transformations. Examples of less se-
vere (“noncollapse”) social transformations are more numerous than collapses, yet
they may involve some of the same drivers of change. Thus, studying noncollapse
transformations may provide great insight into societal collapse and how to avoid
it. Noncollapse transformations involve institutional and/or spatial reorganizations
that allow a transformed society to persist. Our analysis of noncollapse transforma-
tions in the U.S. Southwest contributes to the understanding of how changes in the
social configurations of past societies fostered resilience. Stakeholders and policy
makers will be especially interested in the insights this type of analysis can pro-
vide regarding the development of sustainable futures for contemporary societies.
Resilience and Diversity in Social-Ecological Systems
Resilience is the ability of a system to absorb disturbances without

losing its identity (Folke 2006) and its capacity to absorb perturbations while
maintaining essential structures and functions (Holling et al. 2002). A growing
literature on resilience and vulnerability in socioecological systems argues for
the value of diversity in building resilience to perturbations (Chapin et al. 1997;
Elmqvist et al. 2003; Folke 2006; Ives and Carpenter 2007; Low et al. 2003; Nelson
et al. 2011; Norberg et al. 2008; Ostrom 2005; Walker et al. 1999; Walker et al. 2006).
Diversity is seen as a source of options for addressing uncertain future conditions
and influencing the magnitude of change. According to Folke, “biological diversity
is essential in the self-organizing ability of complex adaptive systems (Levin 1999)
both in terms of absorbing disturbance and in regenerating and re-organizing the
system following disturbance” (2006:257–258).
Resilience theorists often assert that social diversity plays the same role in
social systems, but tradeoffs exist in the costs and benefits of diversity (Anderies
2006; Anderies et al. 2007; Janssen and Anderies 2007; Janssen et al. 2007; Schef-
fer et al. 2001). While social diversity may provide a pool of potential structures
264 A. Torvinen et al.
Figure 11-1. Case study areas of the Long-Term Vulnerability and Transfor-
mation Project (LTVTP).
that help address changed conditions, it can be expensive and may detract from
the capacity for collective action. Biological diversity may buffer change but may
slow the responses of ecosystems, lessening their capacity to continue functioning
after disturbance (Kinzig and Pacala 2002). Assuming change is inevitable and
often desirable, understanding how socioecological systems develop and retain
resilience to uncertain conditions is essential to ensuring that change is tolerable
and advantageous, rather than devastating.
Levin (1999) and others have, under the rubric of “robustness,” emphasized
the importance of not only diversity but also redundancy and modularity in
maintaining the resilience of socioecological systems. In Levin’s work, diversity
refers to the diversity of functional types or functions within a system. Redundancy
is the number of agents in a system (i.e., species, individuals, or communities)
capable of performing particular functions. Modularity refers to the connectiv-
ity of a system. Too much or too little of any of these attributes can erode both
robustness and efficiency. If, for instance, systems are too modular, information
and innovation cannot be exchanged. If systems are too connected, social or eco-
logical disturbances that could otherwise be contained will propagate through
the system. Similar arguments can be made for diversity and redundancy.
Anthropologists have also observed these properties, although with some
differences in terminology. Diverse subsistence-related strategies provide a kind
of functional diversity, and social interaction, such as exchange, is a form of con-
nectivity. Hegmon’s (1991) simulation studies based on the Hopi of northeastern
Arizona demonstrate that the most successful (i.e., robust) strategies involved
both multiple field types (functional diversity) and a certain kind of sharing and
exchange (connectivity). Similarly, hxaro exchange relationships maintained by
!Kung San families in the Kalahari create connections with other communities
through which they can gain access to different resources when their local re-
sources are not productive (Wiessner 1982). Several ethnographies provide us with
additional examples of how diverse subsistence strategies (i.e., resource storage,
collection strategies, and field types) and social networks (i.e., sharing of resources)
help to mitigate various ecological risks (e.g., Cashdan 1985; Minc and Smith 1989;
Spielmann 1986). We utilize these ideas in our analyses of local practices and
interaction because diversity in these social realms provides an indication of the
degree of social flexibility within the system.
Social Diversity: Advantages and Disadvantages
According to resilience-theory literature, diversity can be both beneficial

(Chapin et al. 2009; Elmqvist et al. 2003; Folke 2006; Ives and Carpenter 2007; Low
et al. 2003; Norberg et al. 2008; Ostrom 2005; Walker et al. 1999; Walker et al. 2006)
and detrimental (Kinzig and Pacala 2002; Levin 1999) to the persistence of coupled
socioecological systems. Therefore, the LTVTP uses data from long-term archaeo-
logical case studies in the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico to examine whether
social diversity lessens the severity of transformations. Of particular interest is
whether there are certain configurations of social and ecological conditions in which
social diversity does contribute to the persistence of the socioecological system.
A previous analysis found a strong association between social rigidity (in-
cluding conformity) and the severity of social transformations (Hegmon et al.
2008). In this study, material culture homogeneity was interpreted as one indication
of conformity, although the results of this portion of the analysis were inconclusive
because such homogeneity was found in all the cases, including those with mild
as well as severe transformations (Hegmon et al. 2008:Table 6). A more detailed
study of the role of material culture homogeneity and diversity in these processes
is clearly needed. Another study found a correlation between areas of high popu-
lation density and low material culture diversity and noted that these situations
were often (e.g., the Hohokam Classic period) but not always (e.g., the Pueblo III
period in the Cibola region) followed by severe transformations (Nelson et al. 2011).
In contrast, several studies document how social diversity negatively im-
pacts certain aspects of contemporary societies, such as public health (Pongue
2009; Tequame 2010), economic development (Easterly et al. 2006; Tan 2010), social
trust (Alesina and La Ferrara 2005; Anderson and Paskeviciute 2006), and results
in increased social conflict (Varshney 2007; Wilkinson 2009). Recent research by
Putnam (2007), for example, found that higher degrees of ethnic diversity (mostly
resulting from immigration) are associated with lower degrees of trust, altruism,
and community cooperation, but that over time, such fragmentation is sometimes
overcome as new forms of social solidarity are developed.
To summarize, recent research working from different perspectives has con-
cluded that social diversity contributes to resilience and, conversely, that social
diversity may contribute to societal problems. Clearly, both could be correct in
different ways and different contexts. What is needed is an understanding of the
nature of diversity and its role in social processes, and long-term case studies have
much to contribute to this effort. Using archaeological case studies and associ-
ated data, we have designed a methodology that allows us to perform cross-case
comparisons of social diversity preceding and following known transformations
in the past. Our methodology documents the degree of diversity observed in sev-
eral forms of social practice, including cooking technology, subsistence activities,
household organization, local production, intraregional ties, and interregional
interaction. This new approach allows us to ask detailed questions about the
relationship between social diversity in different domains and the nature and
severity of archaeologically documented transformations.
If diversity does, in fact, contribute to resilience, then we expect the social
configurations preceding noncollapse transformations to exhibit high diversity
across these social practices. In order to evaluate these expectations, we first docu-
ment the diversity observed in local practices and interaction patterns, which
comprise the social configuration preceding and following the transformation,
at various spatial scales; then we compare the relative changes in the degree of
diversity observed in each form of social practice analyzed across two case stud-
ies. This process allows us to begin to explore the role different domains of social
diversity may play in transformations.
In the sections that follow, we first explain the importance of studying noncol-
lapse transformations and describe our two case studies: the Pueblo III to Pueblo
IV transition in the Cibola region (ca. a.d. 1275) is an example of what we call
continuity with change, and the Classic to Postclassic transition in the Mimbres
region (ca. a.d. 1130) is an example of transformative relocation. Next, we describe
the methodology we have developed for investigating diversity in various social
realms and spatial scales and then assess the changes in diversity observed through
different kinds of noncollapse transformations. We conclude by considering how
the observed changes created different pathways to resilience in each case study.
Noncollapse Transformations
Since the seminal works of Tainter (1988) and Yoffee and Cowgill (1988),
archaeologists have come to recognize that many societies undergo major trans-
formations that do not fit the classic model of collapse. Earlier work by Nelson
and Hegmon (e.g., Hegmon et al. 1998; Nelson 1999; Nelson et al. 2006) developed
the concept of regional reorganization as a way of understanding how societies
change without disappearing or abandoning their homeland. More recently, our
comparative research on cases in the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico has
identified various kinds of transformations. Most severe are complete social up-
heavals, such as the end of the Classic period in the Hohokam region (ca. a.d.
1450), which was preceded by high degrees of social conformity, integration, hi-
erarchy, and dependence on irrigation agriculture (cf. Hegmon et al. 2008; Nelson
et al. 2010). Less severe transformations are reorganizations in which the society
continues in a new or different way.
We have recognized two forms of reorganizations, continuity with change and
transformative relocation. Continuity with change is defined by the in-situ transfor-
mation of some social practices (e.g., religious or settlement organization) but little
change in the population, which continues to live in the same area (see Hegmon
et al. 2014 for discussion of several examples). Transformative relocation, on the
other hand, is defined by the disintegration and/or reconstitution of settled groups
(i.e., villages, ceremonial centers, or cities) that involves changes in membership
through immigration and/or emigration and a significant change in settlement
location (Nelson et al. 2014). The study of these noncollapse transformations or
reorganizations allows us to learn about how resilience is maintained by compar-
ing both the conditions that precede transformations and the changes that occur
through transformations.
The Pueblo III to Pueblo IV transition (ca. a.d. 1275) in the Cibola region along
the border of central New Mexico and Arizona is an example of continuity with
change (see Figure 11-1). During the PIII to PIV transformation, the Cibola popu-
lation grew and consolidated into fewer and larger nucleated settlements, some
portions of the region become depopulated, and there was a shift in community
integrative space from enclosed great kivas and Chacoan great houses to enclosed
plazas within communities (Peeples 2011). Previous research suggests that the PIII
to PIV transformation affected the Zuni subregion differently from subregions to
the east and south (i.e., Silver Creek and Upper Little Colorado) in terms of social
and institutional change (Figure 11-2). Therefore, the diversity observed in these
different subregions will be compared as part of the present study. The overall
trend in social diversity within the Cibola region as a whole is one of increasing
conformity and isolation, at least in the most densely populated portions of the
region, but not all of the social domains we explore tell the same story.
The Classic to Postclassic transition (ca. a.d. 1130) in the Mimbres region of
southwestern New Mexico is included in this study as an example of transforma-
tive relocation (see Figure 11-1). During the Classic to Postclassic transformation,
we see the depopulation of most of the Mimbres Valley as the residents of large
Mimbres villages moved to smaller hamlets on or near Classic period fieldhouses
Figure 11-2. Occupational subregions of the Cibola case study in central New
Mexico and Arizona.
both in the Mimbres Valley and in the eastern portion of the region (referred to
as the eastern Mimbres subregion), as well as the importation of several kinds of
nonlocal ceramic wares (Hegmon et al. 1998; Nelson et al. 2006). Since the relocation
aspect of the Mimbres transformation is particularly relevant in this example, it is
important to compare any differences in the degree of diversity observed between
the Mimbres Valley and eastern Mimbres area (Figure 11-3). The overall trend in
the Mimbres region is one of population decline and dispersal and a marked in-
crease in social diversity including the development of new external connections.
Assessing the Diversity of Social Practices
Resilience, the ability of a system to absorb disturbances without losing

its identity, can be seen as a form of flexibility. One way to maintain flexibility in
the face of uncertain conditions is to have a diverse array of strategies for deal-
ing with perturbations (Redman and Kinzig 2003). Drawing from the resilience
concepts regarding functional diversity and connectivity discussed above, we
Figure 11-3. Occupational subregions of the Mimbres case study in southwest

New Mexico.
consider these strategies in terms of two general realms (Table 11-1). Local practices
include daily activities, such as food preparation or craft production. Interaction
includes activities such as exchange that creates connections with people in other
settlements. Local practices are often strongly influenced by enculturation; interac-
tion is more likely to involve aspects of style intended to communicate with distant
others (Clark 2004). These two realms represent different scales of maintaining
Table 11-1. Forms of Social Diversity Analyzed and Their Associated
Archaeological Data
Realm of Form of Relevance Archaeological

Social Practice Social Diversity to Resilience Data
Local practices Cooking technology Technological diversity Hearth styles; grinding
allows wider variety of facility styles
agricultural and wild
resources to be pro-
cessed and consumed
Subsistence activities Diverse subsistence Faunal and ethnobo-

strategies increase tanical remains
resilience to produc-
tivity shortfalls and
restricted access to or
depleted levels of wild
game
Local production Diverse ceramic tradi- Local ceramic wares

tions indicate a degree
of social flexibility
within the community
Household Diverse household Architectural arrange-

organization structures indicate that ments; hearth place-
there is a general de- ment; mean room size
gree of social flexibility
within the community
Interaction Intraregional ties Diverse connections at Exchanged decorated

various spatial scales ceramics
indicate networks that
provide flexibility to
Interregional social units in terms Exchanged decorated
interaction of resource sharing ceramics; long-
or immigration/ distance exchange
migration goods
diversity, local practices have to do with the diversity of ideas and practices present
within a community, and interaction has to do with the connections to a broader
social network. Together, these scales provide us with an understanding of the
adaptive capacity of each social configuration.
In order to accurately compare the degree of social diversity observed before
and after each transformation, we have chosen a modified version of Simpson’s
C as our diversity measure. Simpson’s measure of ecological dominance (C =
the sum of the proportions squared) is a measure of concentration with values
Figure 11-4. Hypothetical examples showing how both the number of cat-
egories and distribution among categories affect the 1-C diversity measure.
ranging from zero to one (Pielou 1975:8–9, 1977:309–311). For example, in situa-
tions of maximum conformity in which all observed samples belong to the same
species category, C = 1. Simpson’s C is affected by both the number of different
categories (present and potential) and the distribution among those categories. We
use the inverse (1-C) so that higher numbers indicate greater diversity; hypotheti-
cal examples are illustrated in Figure 11-4. We use this measure to evaluate the
diversity observed in each of the social practices included in Table 11-1; cooking
technology, for example, is evaluated by measuring the diversity observed in the
styles of hearths and grinding facilities found within settlements.
Ceramic data are used to assess the degree of diversity observed in local
production, intraregional ties, and interregional interaction, but these data pre-
sent two complications that need to be addressed. First, expert knowledge of the
patterns of ceramic production and distribution within the case studies is used to
determine the ceramic wares included in local, intraregional, and interregional cat-
egories. While the Mimbres case was straightforward because Mimbres Black-on-
white pottery is the only locally produced ware, research conducted in the Cibola
region reveals more complicated patterns of ceramic production and distribution
(Peeples 2011). Table 11-2 illustrates how the source of ceramic wares was consid-
ered to be local or intraregional in the Zuni and Silver Creek subregions during
the PIII and PIV period. Interregional interaction is assessed using ceramics that
were produced outside of the region, but instead of considering the diversity of
external ceramic wares, the focus here is on the diversity of source areas to which
each region is connected through ceramic exchange. For example, in the Mimbres
case, the northern source group consists of Cibola White Ware, Zuni Glaze Ware,
White Mountain Red Ware, and Showlow Black-on-red. Second, it was necessary
to use a ceramic apportioning technique (Roberts et al. 2012) to assign the ceramic
assemblages of Cibola sites to either the PIII or PIV period. This method takes the
estimated occupation dates for a site and the estimated production dates for each
ceramic type and assuming a normal popularity curve for each type through time
provides an estimate of the relative proportions of each ceramic type deposited
in each interval in which a site was occupied.1
Table 11-2. Local and Intraregional Ceramics in the Zuni and Silver Creek
Subregions of the Cibola Case Study
Intraregional Ceramic Wares
Winslow Orange
Mogollon Brown
Kintiel-Klagetoh
Early WMRWb
Roosevelt Red
Puerco V. Red
Late WMRWb
Salado Series
Cibola WWa
Grasshopper
Zuni Glaze
Subregion Period
PIII X X X X X X X X
Zuni
PIV X X X X X X X X
PIII X X X X X X
Silver Creek
PIV X X X X X
Note: X indicates the ware was an intraregional import to that subregion during the designated time
period.
a WW = White Ware.
b WMRW = White Mountain Red Ware.
The spatial dimension of the diversity data allows us to explore the scale at
which social diversity was experienced in past societies; therefore, it is important
to compare the degree of diversity observed at multiple scales (Figure 11-5). For
example, if intrasite diversity is low (each site has only two observed categories),
but there is considerable intersite difference, then the analysis reveals a high de-
gree of subregional and/or regional diversity (five observed categories) (see Figure
11-5A). On the other hand, if intrasite diversity is high (five observed categories
in each site), but each site has the same observed categories, then the subregional
and/or regional diversity is low relative to the intrasite level (see Figure 11-5B)
but the same as that observed at the subregional and/or regional level in Figure
11-5A. The meaning of such differences in the spatial scale of diversity depends
on the context within which it is observed; such differences are explained when
each case is discussed below.
Social Diversity and Transformations
The first step of our analysis evaluates the hypothesis that social di-
versity contributes to the resilience of socioecological systems, which involves
the examination of the social configurations that precede our transformation
case studies at the intrasite, subregional, and regional scales. Our examples of
continuity with change and transformative relocation both exemplify resilience,
but they do so in different ways that are important to explore and understand as
the modern world attempts to navigate toward a sustainable future.
Figure 11-5. Hypothetical data of two idealized distributions of scalar di-

versity.
Social Diversity Preceding Transformations

Our previous analyses, which found some association between low
social diversity and severe transformations, were limited in that they assessed
diversity in terms of only one line of evidence—the number of ceramic wares
(Hegmon et al. 2008; Nelson et al. 2011). Here we expand on that work by exam-
ining diversity in several social domains (see Table 11-1). If, as our hypothesis
states, diversity contributes to the resilience of socioecological systems, then we
expect to see high levels of social diversity preceding these noncollapse transfor-
mations. At the intrasite scale, both case studies had low to moderate degrees of
diversity in most of the social practices investigated here, which contradicts our
hypothesis (Table 11-3). What is particularly striking about Table 11-3 is that the
social configurations preceding both transformations are very similar, yet they
undergo different forms of noncollapse transformation. This result suggests that
we need to think more carefully about how we define social diversity and explore
the role it plays in social transformations.
The social configuration of the Zuni subregion during the PIII period exhib-
ited a high degree of conformity in almost all of the social practices investigated
here. Conformity is seen in cooking technology, household organization, and
local ceramic production, meaning little diversity was expressed through the
daily activities of individuals living within the Zuni subregion. In addition, few
ceramics were imported into Zuni from elsewhere in the Cibola region or in other
regions during this period.2 Together this evidence suggests a degree of bounded-
ness and insularity that continues to increase until the Protohistoric period (a.d.
1400–1540) (Duff 2002; Schachner 2006).
The social configuration of the Mimbres region during the Classic period also
evidences a high degree of conformity in most of the social practices analyzed
here. In terms of local practices, there is low diversity in cooking technology and
local ceramic production (i.e., Mimbres Black-on-white pottery is the only locally
Table 11-3. Social Configurations Preceding Two Cases of Noncollapse Transformation
Continuity with Change, Transformative

Form of Zuni Subregion Relocation,
Social Diversity PIII Period Mimbres Classic Period
Cooking technology Low Low
Subsistence activities Moderate Moderate
Household organization Low High
Local production Low (2 types) None (1 type)
Intraregional ties No imports —
Interregional interaction None (few sherds from east) Low (few imports)
produced ware). When considered together, our inability to assess intraregional

interaction and the evidence illustrating a lack of interregional interaction suggest
that the Mimbres Classic period was also socially bounded. In contrast to the Ci-
bola case, however, there is high diversity in household organization. Specifically,
some households consisted of one habitation room and one or several smaller
storage rooms, others consisted of two linked habitation rooms, and others were
suites or combinations (Hegmon et al. 2006). Since household organization is the
main distinction in the preceding conditions of our two cases, future research will
investigate the influence this social practice may have in determining a system’s
vulnerability to certain transformations.
While the preceding discussion focused exclusively on comparing the diver-
sity observed at the intrasite scale, it is equally important to assess the diversity
observed at other spatial scales. Unfortunately, it is not possible to complete this
analysis with the data currently available, but we discuss some brief insights.
First, diversity of hearth styles, which represent cooking-technology diversity, is
low at the intrasite scale and tends to form small spatial clusters that also have
low diversity (Figure 11-6). The diversity within each site cluster, however, is dif-
ferent and causes diversity at the subregional and regional scales to be higher
(Table 11-4), which results in a similar spatial pattern to that illustrated in Figure
11-5A. Second, Mimbres Black-on-white is the only ceramic ware produced within
the Mimbres region, thus there is no diversity in this realm (Table 11-5). In contrast,
in the Cibola region, several wares were produced locally in different subregions
(Figure 11-7). At the intrasite (and site cluster) scale, there is low diversity, although
there are considerable differences between clusters, and thus diversity is higher
at larger spatial scales (see Table 11-5), which again results in a spatial pattern
similar to that observed in Figure 11-5A. Finally, two ceramic wares dominate in
the assemblages of sites across the Cibola region, Cibola White Ware and Early
White Mountain Red Ware (Figure 11-8), and Peeples (2011) identified strong ho-
mogeneity in the ceramic designs used on these wares. A limited analysis of the
layout of Mimbres Black-on-white designs recovered from three Classic period
sites, however, shows considerable intrasite diversity but with the same range of
Figure 11-6. Spatial distribution of

cooking-technology diversity in the
Cibola (A) and Mimbres (B) regions.
designs present at different sites (Figure 11-9 and Table 11-6), which is similar to
the spatial pattern observed in Figure 11-5B. Thus, the homogeneity in the designs
used on Mimbres Black-on-white vessels at an intersite scale is comparable to that
observed by Peeples (2011) in the Cibola region. This preliminary result is interest-
ing and requires further testing to solidify the results and implications.
Figure 11-7. Spatial distribution of local ceramic production diversity in the

Cibola region. WW = White Ware; WMRW = White Mountain Red Ware.
Figure 11-8. Photographs of Cibola White Ware (A) and Early White Moun-
tain Red Ware (B). (Reproduced from Peeples 2011:Figure 8.1, Figure 8.2.)
The first part of our analysis sought to test the hypothesis that social diver-
sity contributes to the persistence of socioecological systems, but our results do
not support this hypothesis. Thus, we continue our analysis by comparing the
relative changes (increase or decrease) in the practices that comprise each social
configuration. The second step of our analysis allows us to evaluate whether the
observed changes might help to mitigate vulnerabilities and increase robustness.
Figure 11-9. Diversity and distri-

bution of Mimbres Black-on-white
representational designs (A) and
geometric designs (B). (Bowl im-
ages courtesy of the University of
Arizona, Arizona State Museum,
nos. GP-4953 and GP-4876.)
Table 11-4. Diversity of Cooking Technology Assessed at Multiple

Spatial Scales
Diversity Measures (1-C)

Site
Subregion Region
Subregion Sites Hearths Average
Zuni 18 167 .32 .49 .53
Silver Creek 4 59 .35 .54 .53
Upper Little Colorado 3 27 .20 .25 .53
Mimbres Valley 4 80 .34 .52 .66
Eastern Mimbres 4 34 .39 .69 .66
Table 11-5. Diversity of Local Ceramic Production Assessed at Two S

patial Scales
Diversity Measures (1-C)

Subarea Sites Sherds Site Average Subregion
Zuni 51 29,493 .41 .50
Silver Creek 5 20,249 .39 .35
Upper Little Colorado 1 2,884 .30 .30
Mimbres Valley 8 25,178 0 0
Eastern Mimbres 7 10,765 0 0
Table 11-6. Diversity of Representational and Geometric Designs on

Mimbres Black-on-White Bowls at Two Spatial Scales
Diversity Measure (1-C)

Design Style Sites Sherds Site Average Subregion
Representational 3 518 .40 .38
Geometric 3 892 .72 .72
Changes in Social Diversity through Transformations

Noncollapse transformations are unique because they can show us
how socioecological systems are able to adapt and persist in response to pertur-
bations that might destroy or severely impact the configurations of other, less
resilient socioecological systems. The second component of this study, therefore,
provides us the opportunity to observe how such adaptations are achieved by
comparing the social configurations that preceded transformations to those that
Table 11-7. Relative Changes in the Forms of Social Diversity following

Noncollapse Transformations
Continuity with Change Transformative Relocation

Forms of Diversity
(Cibola) (Mimbres)
Cooking technology ê é
Subsistence activities é ê
Household organization ê ê
Local production é No change
Intraregional ties No change —
Interregional interaction ê é
follow them. Table 11-7 presents the changes in the diversity of practices that are
observed at the intrasite scale in our two noncollapse transformations. Comparing
the results of these transformations side-by-side allows us to identify both how the
social configurations changed and the vulnerability-robustness tradeoffs that are
associated with such changes. The interpretations that can be drawn from such
information will prove vital during a later stage of the LTVTP research program
when the social diversity data will be integrated with the spatial distribution of
agricultural risk on prehistoric landscapes (Strawhacker et al. 2013). This research
will provide us with a fuller understanding of how different configurations of
social and ecological diversity can contribute to or undermine the resilience of
coupled socioecological systems.
The only form of social diversity that expresses the same change in both
of our case studies is the decrease in the diversity of household organization
following each transformation. The low diversity observed in the architectural
arrangements in the Zuni subregion during the PIII period decreases even more
following the transformation. Specifically, the nucleated Pueblo IV pueblos were
built at a large scale with long, parallel walls divided into room segments (what
is known as ladder construction); thus, this decrease in diversity is interpreted
as an indication of increased conformity. In contrast, during the Classic period in
Mimbres, a high degree of diversity was observed in the architectural arrange-
ments of Classic Mimbres villages, and this diversity is reduced following the
transformation, as the houses in small hamlets occupied during the reorganization
phase of the Postclassic period are more homogeneous.
Changes in the diversity of cooking technology and subsistence activities are
probably associated. In the Zuni subregion, the diversity of cooking technology
decreases across the transformation. Following the transformation, it seems Zuni
residents began to perform more and more daily tasks in the same way, which
may have contributed to the development of a stronger, regional identity. In other
words, the decreases in diversity across several social realms may indicate an in-
crease in social conformity. One line of evidence that does not fit with this pattern
is an increase in the diversity of animal categories in the faunal samples recovered
from towns in the Zuni subregion; this is likely due to the depopulation of some
areas with a long history of previous hunting and anthropogenic effects on local
resources and to the initial settlement of areas (such as the El Morro Valley) with
very little sedentary occupation. This process could have provided people with
greater access to previously little-hunted animal populations, which would have
included a greater variety of taxa vulnerable to anthropogenic impacts.
In the Mimbres case, an increase in the diversity of cooking technology, as
evidenced by an increase in the styles of hearths and grinding facilities within
settlements, may have allowed people to process a greater variety of foods, includ-
ing wild resources. The decrease in the diversity of animal categories acquired
following the transformation may be the result of overexploitation preceding the
transformation. Like the Cibola case, some areas (such as the upper Mimbres Valley)
with a long history of previous occupation were residentially abandoned during
this transformation. However, the small hamlets constructed following the transfor-
mation were located in a portion of the region that had previously been settled by
Classic period villages; unlike Cibola, the Mimbres reorganization did not include
a residential shift into previously unoccupied valleys. Thus, this transformation
did not increase access to animal populations that were less heavily hunted.
At this time, our evaluation of the diversity observed in local production is
limited to ceramics. In terms of traditionally defined ceramic wares, local ceramic
production in the Zuni subregion increases in diversity following the transforma-
tion from two (Cibola White Ware and Early White Mountain Red Ware) to four
(addition of Late White Mountain Red Ware and Zuni Glaze Ware) wares. Detailed
stylistic analyses provide a more nuanced perspective. Peeples (2011) found that
the designs painted on ceramic wares in the Zuni subregion became considerably
more homogenous across this transformation. For example, four basic designs
account for over half of all designs painted on the exteriors of polychrome serv-
ing bowls in a large corpus of whole-vessel images from the Zuni subregion. In
contrast, there is little to no evidence of the production of local decorated ceramics
in the Mimbres region after the transformation (although to date, source analysis
is limited). Instead, all decorated ceramics were imported from other regions,
possibly indicating a new emphasis on extensive interaction.
Intraregional interaction in our case studies is indicated by the presence in a
subregion of ceramics that are produced elsewhere in the region. Unfortunately, a
lack of compositional data on Mimbres Black-on-white pottery makes it impossible
to explore this scale of interaction for the Mimbres case (Powell-Martí and James
2006). We are, however, able to assess intraregional interaction patterns within
the Cibola region. As noted above, no intraregional ceramics were found in the
Zuni subregion during the PIII period, and the same is true during the PIV period.
The social boundaries established around the Zuni subregion continued until the
Protohistoric period, when evidence suggests that external social practices, such
as the Katsina religion, finally infiltrated the Cibola social world likely along with
migrants from areas to the south and west (Schachner 2006).
The two cases differ markedly in how interregional interaction changed
across the transformations. Decreasing external interaction contributed to the
continued isolation of the Cibola region from other parts of the Southwest, which
would have increased the vulnerability of Cibola residents to certain disturbances,

but their socioecological system continued to persist. On the other hand, the social
isolation established during the Mimbres Classic period broke down as social
connections were extended well beyond the Mimbres region to numerous distant
areas to the north, south, and east (e.g., El Paso area, Casas Grandes, Rio Grande
area, etc.). In this instance, the social transformation experienced in the Mimbres
region involved the development of external connections that were either not
necessary or simply ignored during the Classic period.
As an empirical exercise, the ability to illustrate the relationship be-

tween different forms of social diversity and transformations is helpful, but can
these findings also help explain why such a transformation took place? What about
the way social diversity changes following a transformation could be contribut-
ing to the resilience of each case? These are important questions, and we have
only recently begun to tackle them. In the meantime, we offer some take-home
messages regarding the goals we set forth for this analysis.
What role does social diversity play in the severity of transformations? The
analyses presented here show that our hypothesis regarding the association of
high degrees of social diversity with noncollapse transformations is not supported.
Instead, we find that moderate to high degrees of conformity are observed in
several social practices prior to the transformations documented in each case. The
most obvious conclusion to draw from this result is that the role of social diver-
sity in transformations is more complicated than we originally anticipated. This
conclusion is further supported by the results of the analyses aimed at exploring
diversity at different spatial scales. Future research will focus on investigating
changes in social diversity through sequences of contiguous transformations and
using a more nuanced approach to spatial variability. This line of research will
provide us with a clearer understanding of how diversity in certain social realms
affects the robustness and persistence of different social configurations.
How do changes in the social configuration of a socioecological system con-
tribute to the resilience of the system following a transformation? Both of the
noncollapse transformations investigated here exhibit long-term resilience, but
this resilience is achieved in different ways. In the Cibola case, the increases in
conformity and social isolation contribute to an increasingly resilient system. Since
this case study seems to illustrate the antithesis of our hypothesis (i.e., increased
conformity contributes to persistence), we need to recognize that the high degree
of conformity in the Cibola social configuration likely made it easier for large
populations to coexist in nucleated towns but at what cost?
Simply understanding how different forms of social diversity are correlated
with different types of transformations is only the first step toward determining
the role of diversity in social-ecological systems and how it is related to both vul-
nerabilities and transformations. This analysis has shown that it is necessary for
us to move beyond the question of whether “diversity is beneficial for resilience”
and instead focus on how and why different forms of diversity are important in
particular contexts.
Acknowledgments
This research would not have been possible without the support of the
entire Long-Term Vulnerability and Transformation Project (LTVTP) research team.
The LTVTP was supported by the National Science Foundation’s Dynamic Coupled
Natural and Human Systems Program (#CNH-1113991). We especially thank the
Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona for providing us permission
to publish photos of two Mimbres Black-on-white bowls from its collections (No.
GP-4953 and No. GP-4876). We also thank the three anonymous reviewers for their
comments that helped us to more clearly articulate and contextualize the results
presented here. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect
the views of the National Science Foundation.
Notes
1. For the purposes of this analysis, ceramic assemblages were apportioned

into 25-year intervals and then combined into longer archaeological phases. This
procedure is designed to address problems associated with comparing assem-
blages from sites with different occupation lengths by both removing those sherds
that do not date to the primary occupation of a site and by distributing the re-
maining ceramic assemblage across each period in which a site was occupied.
2. There is evidence, however, that documents the exportation of White Moun-
tain Red Wares produced within the Zuni subregion to other Cibola subregions
and beyond (Peeples 2011; Schachner et al. 2011).
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Tucson.
12. Tres Zapotes: The Evolution of
a Resilient Polity in the Olmec
Heartland of Mexico
Christopher A. Pool and Michael L. Loughlin
Abstract: This chapter examines the question of why some polities persist and
flourish long after their neighbors collapse. In particular, what accounts for the
long-term resilience of some polities and the collapse of others under similar
environmental conditions and processes? We argue that a key factor is the ability
of leaders to enact variant political and economic strategies at different social and
temporal scales as contingencies demand while effectively articulating strategies
between those different scales. Our study focuses on the polity of Tres Zapotes
in the southern Gulf lowlands of Mexico, which alone among Olmec regional
centers survived the collapse of the La Venta polity. Over the course of the Early
and Middle Formative periods, complex polities centered at the capitals of San
Lorenzo, Laguna de los Cerros, and La Venta experienced overlapping cycles
of growth and collapse on half-millennial scales that resulted in political dis-
solution and regional depopulation. After over 400 years as a regional Olmec
captial, Tres Zapotes flourished for another 700 years before suffering a long,
slow decline. In a context of increasing intraregional competition and declining
access to interregional exchange networks, political reorganization that distrib-
uted power among local factions while maintaining the regional dominance of
the capital was critical to the resilience of the Tres Zapotes polity.
The fundamental question we ask in this paper is, why do some polities
persist and flourish long after their neighbors collapse? Our focus is, therefore,
on resilience at an intermediate social and geographical scale, larger than the
ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
287
288 C. A. Pool and M. L. Loughlin
settlements, factions, lineages, and households that compose the administrative

apparatus and subjects of complex polities and smaller than the macroregional
social-ecological systems and interregional networks within which polities oper-
ate. We are particularly concerned with continuities and changes in the organiza-
tional and ideological systems that constitute and support governance and political
institutions, but we also acknowledge the importance of systemic linkages among
political, economic, technological, and ecological realms as well as interactions
between adaptive cycles operating at larger and smaller scales.
The particular case we examine is the polity centered at the site of Tres Za-
potes, located in the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin (ELPB), between the Tuxtla
Mountains and the Papaloapan River in southern Veracruz, Mexico (Figure 12-1).
This area constitutes the western margin of Olman, the “Olmec heartland.” When
we began research at Tres Zapotes in 1995, one of the questions we sought to an-
swer had been conveniently framed a few years earlier by Diehl (1989:32), “How,
why, and when did Olmec culture collapse and what do we mean by a collapse in
this context?” Two decades later, a series of settlement surveys in southern Vera-
cruz and western Tabasco (Borstein 2001; Killion and Urcid 2001; Loughlin 2012;
Rust 2008; Santley and Arnold 1996; Stoner 2011; Symonds et al. 2002; von Nagy
2003) combined with excavations spanning the Olmec–Epi-Olmec transition at
Tres Zapotes (Pool et al. 2014; Pool and Ortiz 2008), La Joya (Arnold and McCor-
mack 2002), and Bezuapan (Pool and Britt 2000) have provided partial answers to
the questions. Those answers seem to be, on the one hand, that there were many
collapses of Olmec polities, and on the other, Olmec culture in southern Veracruz
did not collapse so much as evolve (Pool 2007:243–246).
Our work and that of our predecessors (e.g., Drucker 1943; Millet 1979; Ortiz
1975; Stirling 1943; Weiant 1943) indicate that Tres Zapotes was the capital of a
regional complex polity (sensu Smith 2003) for more than 1,000 years of its two-
millennium-long history of occupation. It therefore persisted as a regional capital
longer than other sites in the southern Gulf lowlands, such as San Lorenzo (about
500 years [Symonds et al. 2002]), La Venta (about 600–750 years [González 1996;
Rust 2008:1442–1443]), or Matacapan (about 500 years [Santley 2007]). Most signifi-
cant, Tres Zapotes, alone among Olmec regional capitals, survived the collapse
of La Venta and the transition to Epi-Olmec culture about 400 b.c., flourishing as
the head of a regional polity for at least another 700 years.
We argue that a key factor in the ability of Tres Zapotes to survive the Ol-
mec “collapse” and to grow in size and importance as an Epi-Olmec center was a
reorganization of governance from one that centralized power in the hands of a
paramount ruler to one that shared power among the heads of multiple factions
based in the capital. As we discuss below, this political reorganization appears to
have involved a rejection of the ancien régime (symbolically and perhaps physi-
cally) at the same time it incorporated and reinterpreted some of its iconogra-
phy. That is, in the terminology of resilience theory, it involved both revolt and
remembrance (Holling and Gunderson 2002; Redman 2005). Continuity in other
aspects of material culture suggests that change came from within the polity
rather than an intrusive population. It is in this sense, then, that we talk of the
persistence of the Tres Zapotes polity—the regime may have changed, or it may
Tres Zapotes 289
Figure 12-1. Map of southern Gulf lowlands (Olman) with archaeological

sites.
have been forced to share power, but the polity persisted and grew, with Tres
Zapotes remaining its capital.
Resilience Theory and the Collapse of Olmec Polities
As described in greater detail elsewhere in this volume, resilience

theory sees social and ecological systems as moving between periods of stability
and transformation in an adaptive cycle that encompasses initial exploitation of
a new or altered environment (r-phase), slow accumulation and conservation of
resources (K-phase), and release, which may take the form of collapse or slow
decline (Ω-phase) (Redman 2005:72–73). To these traditional phases of ecosystem
succession, resilience theorists have added a critical fourth one, reorganization
(α-phase), during which resources are reorganized in ways that may incorporate
characteristics of the preceding social and ecological system or create fundamen-
tally new ones (Redman 2005:73) or both, as we posit for the Olmec–Epi-Olmec
transition (Jaime-Riverón and Pool 2009).
The analogy of the adaptive cycle provides a useful framework for compar-
ing specific social as well as ecological trajectories (Redman 2005:73). In the case
of archaeological sequences, we may expect variation in the duration of phases
within an adaptive cycle, the degree to which the adaptive cycles at different
temporal and social scales are integrated with one another, and whether any
particular society or polity goes through all phases of a cycle.
The cyclical developmental histories of chiefdoms and archaic states (e.g.,
Anderson 1996; Flannery and Marcus 2000; Marcus 1998; Pool 2005) are particu-
larly amenable to analysis through the lens of resilience theory. Anderson’s (1996)
analysis of Mississippian chiefdoms in the Savannah River Valley provides a prime
example. In Anderson’s developmental model, complex chiefdoms form from the
aggregation of preexisting simple chiefdoms under a single, more powerful or
charismatic chief and then collapse back into a series of autonomous simple chief-
doms as competing factions succeed or fail in consolidating followers under their
leadership. In terms of the adaptive cycle, such sequences represent an extended
time in the r-phase, a variable but often brief time in the K-phase, corresponding
to the duration of the complex chiefdom, followed by rapid collapse and reorga-
nization as simple chiefdoms.
Useful comparisons can be drawn between the Savannah River chiefdoms
and Olmec polities (Pool 2005). Settlement surveys detail the cyclical rise and
fall of the Olmec centers of San Lorenzo, Laguna de los Cerros, and La Venta
and their surrounding settlement systems (Figure 12-2) (Borstein 2001; Rust 2008;
Symonds et al. 2002; von Nagy 2003) (we discuss the Olmec center at Tres Zapo-
tes below). San Lorenzo was settled as a medium-sized village surrounded by
small villages and hamlets in the Initial Formative period (ca. 1750–1450 b.c.) and
flourished between 1450 and 1000 b.c., the Early Formative period, at the head of a
complex polity with a three- to four-tiered settlement hierarchy (Pool 2007:98–99;
Symonds et al. 2002). Laguna de los Cerros also experienced its florescence in the
Early Formative period, rising to its height a little after San Lorenzo. Whether
Laguna de los Cerros was at some point subject to San Lorenzo is open to debate
(Borstein 2001:169–171, 174; Pool 2007:130), but their fortunes seem intertwined
through San Lorenzo’s acquisition of basalt from the hinterland of the other site
(Cyphers 1997). La Venta’s rise to regional prominence may have begun as early
as the late Early Formative period (Pool 2007:160), but its florescence occurred
in the Middle Formative period (1000–400 b.c.) when it headed a three-tiered
settlement hierarchy.
Unlike the Savannah River chiefdoms, however, there is little evidence for
the existence of multiple simple chiefdoms in the regions surrounding San Lo-
renzo or La Venta (Pool 2005; Rust and Leyden 1994; Symonds et al. 2002). Nei-
ther were these Olmec polities replaced by a series of simple chiefdoms in their
former hinterlands. Rather, each suffered political and demographic collapses
that left their hinterlands sparsely populated and their settlement hierarchies
flattened—San Lorenzo about 1000 b.c., Laguna de los Cerros about 900 b.c., and
La Venta about 400 b.c.
Population histories were very different in the Tuxtla Mountains and the
ELPB (see Figure 12-2). In the Tuxtlas, regional population remained low through
the Middle Formative period and rose slightly in the Late Formative period as
small centers were established (Santley and Arnold 1996; Stoner 2011). The ELPB
has not been as extensively surveyed at comparable temporal resolution, but the
windows provided by surveys at Tres Zapotes (4.5 km2) (Pool, ed. 2003), on the
Tres Zapotes 291
Figure 12-2. Population trends in the southern Gulf lowlands. (Data from Bor-
stein 2001; González 1996; Pool and Ohnersorgen 2003; Symonds et al. 2002.)
slopes of Cerro el Vigia (25 km2) (Kruszczynski 2001), and in the El Mesón area (27
km2) (Loughlin 2012) are consistent in indicating settlement growth through the
Middle Formative period and continuing at an increased rate in the Late Forma-
tive, although the pace of increase by period differs in each area.
Thus, there certainly was no demographic collapse in the ELPB at the close of
the Middle Formative period. Neither can one speak of a cultural collapse. Conti-
nuity between Olmec and Epi-Olmec material culture is expressed in long-lived
ceramic types (Pool and Ortiz 2008); groundstone technology (Jaime-Riverón and
Pool 2009); the use of Olmec-derived motifs in Late Formative sculptures (par-
ticularly well displayed in Stela C but also in Stela D); a local tradition of tenoned
monuments (Pool 2010); and the reuse and incorporation of Olmec monuments
in Epi-Olmec architectural layouts (Pool 2008). Moreover, the Late Formative and
Protoclassic periods were times of cultural florescence in the ELPB, expressed
in the development of complex writing and calendrical systems, monumental
construction, and a peak in the frequency of carved stone monuments (Pool
2000, 2010).
Adaptive Cycles in the ELPB
In contrast to either the Mississippian polities of the Savannah River

or the Olmec polities of eastern Olman, the historical development of complex
polities in the ELPB can be viewed as a sequence of five stages corresponding to
two successive adaptive cycles operating at the regional scale (Table 12-1). Here
we use the term stage to delineate epochs characterized by different trends in the
archaeological record, not in the unilineal evolutionary sense of discontinuous
levels of sociopolitical integration.
Table 12-1. Adaptive Cycles in the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin

(ELPB)
Period Stage Phase of Adaptive Cycle

Postclassic (a.d. 900–1521) 5 —
Late Classic (a.d. 600–900) 4 Ω

Early Classic (a.d. 300–600)
Protoclassic (a.d. 1–300) 3 K

Late Formative (400–1 b.c.) r
α
Middle Formative (1000–400 b.c.) 2 W

K
Early Formative (1450–1000 b.c.) 1 r

Initial Formative (2000–1450 b.c.)
Late Archaic (3000–2000 b.c.)
Stage 1: Antecedents to Complex Polities (before 1000 b.c.)

Stage 1 corresponds to the initial r-phase of colonization and resource
exploitation by Archaic and Early Formative societies practicing a mixed economy
of foraging, fishing, and cultivation. Recent research has questioned models that
attributed the emergence of Olmec sociopolitical hierarchies to control over re-
stricted areas of prime agricultural land, such as river levees. In part this derives
from the recognition that Early Formative dependence on maize agriculture was
probably less than was previously thought, although the degree of reliance on
maize apparently varied in different parts of Olman (Arnold 2005; Rodríguez et
al. 1997; VanDerwarker 2006; VanDerwarker and Kruger 2012).
Borstein (2001) hypothesized that reliance on aquatic resources was more
important in major river valleys in the Early Formative period and found sup-
porting settlement evidence that early settlement in the San Juan River Valley
concentrated near the floodplain, only expanding into upland areas presumably
reliant on rainfall agriculture around the beginning of the Middle Formative
period. If Borstein’s model holds for the ELPB, we should find in situ Archaic
occupations concentrated in areas of intensifiable aquatic resources, with later
movement up minor streams and into upland areas. Archaic occupations have
not yet been identified in the ELPB, but sediment cores with evidence of maize
cultivation and forest clearance before ca. 2500 b.c. from elsewhere in the central
(Sluyter and Domínguez 2006) and southern Gulf lowlands (Goman and Byrne
1998; Pope et al. 2001) make sparse Late Archaic occupation likely in the ELPB.
Certainly, the ELPB has (and had) intensifiable environments, particularly along
the rivers and lakes of the Papaloapan delta and in the lagoons backing the mid-
Holocene paleodunes along the coast.
Tres Zapotes 293
By late in the Early Formative period, villages were springing up in the ELPB
(Loughlin 2012), including two 17 ha to 20 ha villages at Tres Zapotes and El Mesón,
located along medium-sized streams near the ecotone between the piedmont of
the volcanic Tuxtla mountains and the highly fertile luvic phaeozem soils of the
alluvial plain. Such locations would have served as attractors for populations
that became the nuclei of regional centers due to advantageous locations on trade
routes (Pool and Loughlin 2006). These locations were also subject to disruption
by ashfalls from volcanic eruptions, although the history of such eruptions before
300 b.c. is less well understood in the ELPB (Lozano-García et al. 2010) than in the
Tuxtlas proper (Santley et al. 2000).
Stage 2: Emergence of Complex Polities (1000–400 b.c.)

Stage 2 corresponds to the Middle Formative period. It continues and
completes the adaptive cycle initiated by the Archaic through Early Formative
inhabitants of the ELPB, as Olmec polities expanded (r-phase) and consolidated
their control over material and ideological sources of power (K-phase). In our re-
construction, however, the breakdown (Ω-phase) of the centralized Olmec political
economy in this first adaptive cycle did not result in collapse of the Tres Zapotes
polity but provided the opportunity for its reorganization and expansion.
During the Middle Formative period, Tres Zapotes expanded from a 17 ha
village to an 80 ha center with another 70 ha of closely adjacent settlements (Pool
and Ohnersorgen 2003; Pool and Ortiz 2008). Recent surveys (León 2003; Pool et al.
2014) have detected no Formative period sites as large as Middle Formative Tres
Zapotes. The regional prominence of Tres Zapotes is further reflected in a corpus of
13 carved stone monuments, including four known ruler images (two early Middle
Formative colossal heads and two late Middle Formative stelae) (Pool 2010). The
colossal heads were found at the eastern and western edges of the site, the stelae
were recovered closer to the center of the site, and excavations near the center of the
Middle Formative site uncovered a basalt column enclosure surrounding an altar
platform in which was set a greenstone column carved with symbols of rulership
(Pool 2010). Elsewhere we have argued that this concentric distribution of monu-
ments emphasized the centralization of authority in the Olmec capital. Jade beads
were imported from Guatemala, and serpentine from either Guatemala or Puebla
was imported for jewelry as well as the greenstone column (Pool and Ortiz 2008).
Evidence supporting our contention that Tres Zapotes operated autonomously from
other Olmec centers includes differences in monument carving styles (de la Fuente
1977, 2000; Pool 2000) and differential participation in overlapping obsidian exchange
networks (Pool et al. 2014).
Although Tres Zapotes became the capital of an Olmec complex polity in
the Middle Formative period, monuments recovered to the north and currently
housed in Lerdo and Cabada suggest both the existence of other, unrecorded
centers and affinities with the larger Olmec center of La Venta, over 100 km to the
east (Pool et al. 2010). At present, it is uncertain whether the relationship of the
northern settlements with Tres Zapotes was one of rivals or peaceful neighbors,
but it seems unlikely they were under its control.
Figure 12-3. Map of the Nestepe group at Tres Zapotes showing basic com-
ponents of the Tres Zapotes Plaza Group (TZPG) plan. Monument Q is a
colossal stone head, illustrated in 12-4.
Stage 3: Expansion and Apogee of Tres Zapotes (400 b.c.–a.d. 300)

The opening of the Late Formative period constituted a critical junc-
ture with respect to the resilience of the Tres Zapotes polity. The exchange net-
works that had supplied Olmec political economies with greenstone and other
exotic prestige goods broke down (Grove 1993). The La Venta polity collapsed,
and nearby volcanic eruptions deposited ash in the northern ELPB (Lozano-
García et al. 2010). Yet Tres Zapotes flourished despite these economic, demo-
graphic, political, and natural disruptions, which ranged in scale from local
to supraregional.
The regional center at Tres Zapotes grew to cover 500 ha, and monumental
construction expanded greatly. In contrast to the highly centralized patterns at La
Venta and Laguna de los Cerros, formal mound construction in Tres Zapotes occurs
in four widely distributed plaza groups that share a basic west-east–oriented layout,
the Tres Zapotes Plaza Group (TZPG) (Figure 12-3). This layout consists of a long
mound to the north of the plaza, a pyramidal or conical mound at the west end,
and a low mound on the long axis of the plaza. Other large mounds and platforms
were built around and between the plaza groups. Most of the monuments from
Tres Zapotes appear to have been carved in this stage, during the Late Formative
and Protoclassic periods (Milbrath 1979; Pool 2010; Porter 1989). Unlike their Olmec
predecessors, these Epi-Olmec monuments in Tres Zapotes proper do not emphasize
the individual person of the ruler, and they were distributed widely across the site.
Surveys to the north of Tres Zapotes in the El Mesón area (Loughlin 2012) and
to the east on Cerro el Vigía (Kruszczynski 2001) indicate increasing regional popu-
lation, although Tres Zapotes grew at a greater rate. Current evidence suggests a
three-tiered-settlement hierarchy consisting of Tres Zapotes, secondary centers,
Tres Zapotes 295
and villages and hamlets, but administrative levels below the secondary centers
are possible. Notably, El Mesón constructed a plaza group following the TZPG
layout. Because the TZPG is rare outside the ELPB and is associated with the
apogee of Tres Zapotes (Pool 2008), its replication at a nearby center suggests
incorporation into an expanding Tres Zapotes polity (Loughlin 2012).
Based on the dramatic shift from Olmec patterns of architecture and monu-
mental sculpture emphasizing centralization of political authority to one in which
individual power is deemphasized and the architectural loci of authority are
dispersed, we have argued elsewhere that the institution of shared governance
among competing factions in the polity’s capital was critical to the resilience of
Tres Zapotes at this point (Pool 2008, 2013). This reorganization corresponds to
the α-phase of a new adaptive cycle; the hypothesized expansion and consolida-
tion of the polity correspond to the r- and K-phases. Notably, the Ω-phase seems
absent from this first cycle.
Stage 4: Decline of Tres Zapotes and Aftermath (a.d. 300–900)

Tres Zapotes experienced a protracted decline in extent and influ-
ence through the Classic period, corresponding to the Ω-phase of the polity’s
second adaptive cycle and resulting ultimately in the site’s abandonment. At the
beginning of the period, it seems still to have been the largest settlement in the
ELPB, and substantial construction phases were added in the principal mound
groups (Weiant 1943), but at 200 ha, its occupied area was less than half that of
its apogee. Once again, a volcanic eruption may have played a part in the politi-
cal history of the region, as suggested by a late Protoclassic ash deposit at Tres
Zapotes (Wendt 2003), although changes in the internal organization of the site
preceded the ashfall (Pool and Ohnersorgen 2003). Beginning as early as a.d. 1,
construction in some plaza groups in Tres Zapotes began to modify the basic
layout, although earlier layouts were incorporated into new arrangements and
construction continued in the Early Classic period (Pool 2008). Layouts also be-
gan to diversify in the El Mesón area, and the TZPG of El Mesón was abandoned
after a.d. 300 (Loughlin 2012:316–317). New forms of construction proliferated,
including monumental platforms and “Stardard Plan” layouts similar to Central
Veracruz examples (Stark 1999; Daneels 2008, cf. Pool 2008), suggesting a change
in the relation between centers and their hinterlands, a weakening and perhaps
retraction of Tres Zapotes’s suzerainty, and the initiation of new adaptive cycles
for emerging political rivals. The ball game may have assumed an expanded
political and ritual role, judging from the consistent integration of ball courts
in Standard Plan complexes. For the first time, Central Veracruz ceramic types
begin to appear in the El Mesón area (Loughlin 2012:155) and the Tepango Val-
ley in the southwestern Tuxtlas (Stoner 2011:427–428), while foreign influences
at Tres Zapotes included Teotihuacan-style ceramic forms and figurines that are
scarce in these areas.
The known variation in distributions of Classic period architectural layouts
and artifact style suggests a highly contested political landscape in the ELPB.
One of us (Loughlin 2012:315–316) has suggested that the area around El Mesón
at this point became a capital zone in its own right, but we acknowledge that its
multiple formal complexes may have been subordinate to a center other than Tres
Zapotes, the location of which remains unknown. If Tres Zapotes and another
center competed for control over different portions of the ELPB, we might expect
the development of a buffer zone at the margin of their territories, but additional
survey will be necessary to evaluate its existence. Under such a scenario, interac-
tion with more-distant polities in the Gulf lowlands and highland Mexico may be
reflected in substantially bounded distributions of foreign or foreign-influenced
artifacts. As it happens, the northern and southern parts of the ELPB appear to
have been subject to different influences from abroad. Tres Zapotes exhibits a
suite of Teotihuacan-style objects that constitute a subset of the Teotihuacan-style
assemblage present in the central Tuxtlas at Matacapan, which may suggest that
interaction with central Mexico was indirect vía that site (Pool and Stoner 2004).
Teotihuacan objects are much less common in the El Mesón area (Loughlin 2012)
or in the Tepango Valley (Stoner 2011), where Early Classic period ceramic styles
and architectural layouts include examples tied to central Veracruz. In short, the
Early Classic period in the ELPB and adjoining areas reflects the interplay of au-
tochthonous development and macroregional geopolitics.
Stage 5: Decline of the ELPB (a.d. 900–1521)

Although authorities generally agree that the ELPB constituted part
of the rich Aztec province of Tochtepec (Barlow 1949; Berdan 1996; Venter 2008,
2012) and a broader “affluent production zone” (Smith and Berdan 2003), evi-
dence for Postclassic settlement is sparse in most of the surveyed portions of the
ELPB and Tuxtlas (Esquivias 2003; Kruszczynski 2001; Loughlin 2012; Santley
and Arnold 1996; Stoner 2011). Venter (2008) has shown that some of the appar-
ent decline previously reported in the Tuxtlas is the result of the persistence of
Classic period ceramic pastes and inattention to characteristic local motifs and
forms (see also Arnold and Venter 2004; Pool 1995). Nevertheless, a downward
demographic trend seems evident and contrasts with peak Late Classic and Early
Postclassic populations in the Coatzacoalcos basin (Symonds et al. 2002). Lozano-
García et al. (2010) attribute the Late Classic and Postclassic population decline
in the western Tuxtlas to climatic change that resulted in wetter conditions after
a.d. 800, offering a sharp counterpoint to recent attributions of the Classic Maya
collapse to extensive droughts at about the same time (Gill 2000; Haug et al. 2003;
Hodell et al. 1995; Yaeger and Hodell 2008; cf. Aimers and Hodell 2011). Current
evidence from the El Mesón region would place its population decline a century
or two later, however, and Tres Zapotes began its decline long before a.d. 800.
Reorganization without Collapse: Olmec to Epi-Olmec
With respect to human societies and other complex adaptive systems,

resilience has been defined as “the ability to withstand, recover from, and reorga-
nize in response to crises” (Martin-Breen and Anderies 2011:7). Over the course of
Tres Zapotes 297
more than two millennia, the inhabitants of the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin
undoubtedly faced many crises at scales ranging from the household to the re-
gional polity and beyond. Here we focus on the scale of the Tres Zapotes polity and
the reorganization that occurred during the Middle to Late Formative transition.
We do not know the precise triggering cause or causes for the events of the late
fifth and early fourth centuries b.c. that resulted in the abandonment of La Venta
and the reorganization we perceive at Tres Zapotes. There is no clear, widespread
environmental change evidenced in the scant data that are available across the
southern Gulf lowlands (Goman and Byrne 1998; Lozano-García et al. 2010; Pope
et al. 2001). The data on population-environment imbalances are likewise ambigu-
ous. Symonds et al. (2002:129) suggest that volcanic and tectonic activity, changing
river courses, and overexploitation of resources in the hinterland of San Lorenzo
may have contributed to the collapse of that polity about 1000 b.c. (see also Ortiz
and Cyphers 1997; Symonds and Lunagómez 1997:157–158). Agriculture intensified
in the vicinity of Laguna Pompal in the Tuxtla Mountains starting about 600 b.c.
(Goman and Byrne 1998), probably reflecting population growth that continued
through the Late Formative period rather than leading to collapse. Populations
do seem to have increased in the vicinity of La Venta through the Middle Forma-
tive period (Rust 2008; von Nagy 2003), but whether and how population growth
played a role in the collapse of the La Venta polity remains to be demonstrated.
Volcanic events certainly have played a role in settlement histories in and
around the Tuxtla Mountains (Santley et al. 2000). Eleven tephra layers in a core
from Laguna Verde document a series of volcanic eruptions that affected at least
part of the ELPB prior to 200 b.c. Of these only the last four, which occurred from
slightly before 300 b.c. to ca. 200 b.c., are dated with some confidence by extrapola-
tion from radiocarbon dates (Lozano-García et al. 2010), but based on depth, the
others would seem to extend well back into the Middle Formative period and
possibly beyond. At Tres Zapotes, tephra layers occur within Protoclassic (a.d.
1–300) deposits and below Middle Formative strata but do not immediately pre-
cede or coincide with the Middle to Late Formative transition. In short, volcanic
eruptions were not a new phenomenon in the ELPB at 400 b.c., and they do not
appear to have stalled regional population growth in the Late Formative period
(Loughlin 2012; Pool and Ohnersorgen 2003).
As noted above, the cyclical pattern of growth, consolidation, and decline seen
among Formative polities in the southern Gulf lowlands (see Figure 12-2) is com-
mon among chiefdoms and archaic states generally, which suggests that internal
social and political processes are at work. At La Venta, trends in political economy
may well have undermined the authority of rulers. In particular, Middle Formative
ceremony at La Venta was characterized by elaborate displays and ostentatious
sequestering of wealth in offerings of imported materials. These offerings included
polished mirrors of iron ore from Oaxaca and Chiapas, figurines and jewelry of
jade from Guatemala and serpentine from Puebla or Guatemala, and massive of-
ferings containing up to 1,000 tons each of imported greenstone. In general, the
circulation of greenstone appears to have declined greatly in Mesoamerica in the
Late Formative period and especially in the Gulf lowlands, indicating disruptions
in the trade networks that supported ruling elites (Grove 1993; Pool 2007).
Figure 12-4. Stone monuments from Tres Zapotes, with images of Olmec
rulers: Monument A (a), Monument Q (b), Stela F (c), and Stela A (d).
Whatever the causes, the disruptions around 400 b.c. provoked a strong politi-
cal response. As pointed out by Blanton and colleagues (1996), Middle Formative
Olmec governance appears to have been characterized by strongly exclusionary
practices that sought to monopolize central control of strategic resources and con-
centrated power in the hands of a single powerful ruler whose rights of access and
authority were supported by a patrimonial rhetoric displayed most prominently in
carved stone images of the ruler. Though these aspects of Middle Formative Olmec
rulership were displayed most spectacularly at La Venta, they were also present
in Tres Zapotes. As noted above, Olmec monuments at Tres Zapotes, which we
date to the Middle Formative (Pool 2010; Pool and Ortiz 2008), include at least four
images of rulers as individuals: the colossal heads, Monuments A and Q (Figures
12-4, a and b, respectively), and Stelae A and F (Figures 12-4, d and c, respectively)
Tres Zapotes 299
(Pool 2010). Stela A is notable in that it depicts the ruler as standing between the
underworld and the sky, placing him in the role of axis mundi.
Another monument referencing the axis mundi is a greenstone cylinder with
a cleft upper end and mat designs carved in its sides evoking Olmec were-jaguar
and/or maize kernel imagery and later associations of the mat with rulership.
This monument was placed upright in an altar platform that was surrounded by
basalt columns at the center of Tres Zapotes. Greenstone also was used as adorn-
ment for two of three individuals in excavated Middle Formative Olmec burials
at Tres Zapotes (Pool and Ortiz 2008).
Several lines of evidence suggest a Late Formative reorganization of gov-
ernance at Tres Zapotes that deemphasized the personal authority of the ruler,
promoted power sharing among factions, and diminished differences in wealth
among elites and between elites and nonelites, all aspects of “corporate” politico-
economic strategies as described by Blanton and colleagues (1996). Most obvious
is the distribution and redundant form of architectural complexes that served
as seats of factional elite power. Four of these Tres Zapotes Plaza Groups were
constructed within the site at distances that varied from 945 m to 985 m from
their nearest neighbor (Pool 2007:143) (Figure 12-5), and radiocarbon dates indicate
overlapping periods of use for at least three of the four plaza groups in the Late
Formative and Protoclassic periods (Pool 2008:Table 2). Each plaza group con-
tained the northern long mound, western pyramidal mound, and central adoratorio
(shrine) that define the TZPG layout. Other mounds were added in similar spatial
relationships to these elements in three of the other groups. Although their sizes
varied, two (Groups 1 and 2) were close to one another in extent and volume, with
neither clearly dominating (Sullivan 2002; Pool 2008:Table 1). Furthermore, our
excavations in middens behind the long mounds found little difference in access to
exotic goods or highly crafted goods among the four plaza groups. Craft produc-
tion attached to the plaza groups, including ceramics, obsidian, and groundstone,
was aimed primarily at supplying the quotidian needs of elites and their retinues,
replicating production conducted in nonelite residential settings (Pool 2003). In
short, architectural and artifactual evidence indicate the redundant functions,
temporal overlap, lack of clear dominance, and less pronounced hierarchy that
would be expected for elite factions participating in a system of shared governance.
The foregoing impression is reinforced by the lack of personalized images of
Late Formative rulers at Tres Zapotes. The clearest representation of Late Forma-
tive rulership at Tres Zapotes proper is in the obverse of Stela C, which depicts
the stylized profile head of a ruler emerging from a quadripartite medallion over
the cleft brow of an earth monster with branches radiating behind him—another
clear image of the ruler as axis mundi but depersonalized in comparison with
Stela A, as if to emphasize the office over the person holding it (Pool 2010). A more
human representation of a ruler is seen standing between a kneeling supplicant
and a standing warrior in Stela D, but it was recovered from an outlying second-
ary center (Group 4), not from Tres Zapotes proper (Stirling 1943; Pool 2010). The
two personalized images of rulers that were employed in Late Formative Tres
Zapotes were the reused colossal heads (see Figure 12-4)—portraits of ancient,
long-dead rulers—set on the south side of the plazas in Group 1 and the Nestepe
Figure 12-5. Plan of Tres Zapotes showing location of plaza groups (Groups
1, 2, 3, and Nestepe) and other mounds.
Tres Zapotes 301
group, opposite to and facing the long mounds in an apparent effort to tie factional
elites to the Olmec founders of the Tres Zapotes polity (Pool 2007). In contrast with
the unmutilated colossal heads, the faces of the rulers on both Stela A and Stela
F have been obliterated. As later monuments, the stelae would have been more
proximate to the transition to the Late Formative period and may have been the
objects of revolutionary ire by leaders of the succeeding regime.
Nevertheless, the Late Formative leaders of Tres Zapotes faced the challenge
of fashioning a collective government among disparate factions that were heirs
to a long history of hierarchy headed by rulers who celebrated their individual
power and hereditary authority (Pool 2013). Elites at Tres Zapotes continued to
express claims to status and power within the factions they led by placing their
residences and administrative buildings on larger elevated platforms and by
incorporating colossal heads as symbols of patrimonial authority in the plans of
their formal plaza groups while expressing interfactional unity through the use
of a common spatial order that associated political authority with cosmological
precepts of directionality (see discussion in Pool 2008, 2010). Although factional
leaders refrained from depicting themselves on stone monuments within the
capital of Tres Zapotes as their Olmec predecessors had, Epi-Olmec monuments
from the outlying site of Group 4 as well as the sites of El Mesón and Alvarado
show rulers in elaborate costumes accompanied by kneeling or sitting subjects.
Consequently, exclusionary claims to power were an important component of
political discourse among, and possibly toward, rivals in the ELPB.
Several aspects of resilience theory lend themselves to understanding

the Middle to Late Formative transition in the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin.
The first, which we employed in our historical overview, is the largely descriptive
framework of adaptive cycles composed of growth, conservation, release, and
reorganizational stages (Holling and Gunderson 2002). The second is a concern
with the linkage of adaptive cycles across a panarchy of different scales in which
mutual interactions between small-and-fast cycles (e.g., of households and fac-
tions), intermediate cycles (e.g., of polities and regions), and large-and-slow cycles
(e.g., of macroregional traditions) may have destabilizing or stabilizing effects
(Gunderson and Holling 2002; Redman 2005; Redman and Kinzig 2003). In this
conceptualization, smaller, faster cycles provide innovation and larger, slower
cycles offer a stabilizing “memory” of past successes and failures (Gunderson
and Holling 2002). We have not focused on this aspect due to space limitations.
Elsewhere, Jaime-Riverón and Pool (2009) underscore the linkages between fast
changes in groundstone technology that occurred within Protoclassic residential
contexts and the long-established and widespread tradition of Olmec stone carving
from which Protoclassic stoneworkers drew. In the Middle to Late Formative politi-
cal history of Tres Zapotes we have laid out, it would appear that rapid changes
initiated at the factional level effected reorganization at the polity level, while a
less rapidly changing cultural repertoire of iconographic modes provided a font
of images and concepts that could be adapted to changed circumstances. Cross-

scale interactions may also be seen in the differential deployment of exclusionary
and collective symbols within and between factions in Tres Zapotes and between
the capital of Tres Zapotes and emerging centers of power elsewhere in the ELPB,
that is, at the scales of faction, polity, and region.
Research on the resilience of contemporary institutions and governments
offers additional insights into ancient political change. Among these is the recog-
nition that “polycentric, multilayered institutions improve the fit between knowl-
edge, action, and socio-ecological contexts in ways that allow societies to respond
more adaptively at appropriate levels” (Martin-Breen and Anderies 2011:18; see
Lebel et al. 2006). This is a good description of the factional confederation we envi-
sion at Tres Zapotes (Pool 2008), and it finds a parallel in Cooper’s (2006) analysis
of the regeneration among Bronze Age urban centers in Syria (see also Nichols
and Weber 2006). That said, the frequency with which centralized, exclusionary
monarchies have emerged and reemerged in the history of Mesoamerica and the
world prevents us from arguing that polycentric, heterarchical, or collective ar-
rangements are the most adaptive in all circumstances.
In sum, the adaptive response that allowed the polity centered at Tres Zapotes
to survive the transition to the Late Formative and flourish while other Olmec
centers foundered included the institution of a system of shared governance,
which allowed the resolution of disputes among multiple power holders as popu-
lations grew and coalesced around existing and emerging centers and factional
leaders. It also resulted in a flattened hierarchy that required less investment in
the acquisition of exotic goods, which were becoming less accessible with chang-
ing trade relationships, and allowed flexibility in pursuing trade partners for
necessary nonlocal goods, such as obsidian. Ultimately, the Tres Zapotes factional
coalition weakened as Protoclassic leaders embarked on divergent architectural
programs and rival centers gained power, especially in the northern part of the
ELPB (Loughlin 2012) and in the Western Lower Papaloapan Basin (Stark 2008).
Nevertheless, the flexibility ingrained in the organization of Epi-Olmec Tres Za-
potes appears to have resulted in a softer landing than the collapse suffered by its
predecessors, with the Tres Zapotes decline stretching out over several centuries.
Acknowledgments
The fieldwork discussed in this paper was conducted with the permis-
sion of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia of Mexico and was sup-
ported by grants from the National Science Foundation (SBR 9405063, SBR 9615031,
BCS-024255), the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies Inc.
(FAMSI grant 02058), the Lambda Alpha National Anthropology Honor Society,
and the University of Kentucky. We are grateful to the many former students and
colleagues and to community members who participated in the fieldwork, as well
as to the people of Angel R. Cabada and Tres Zapotes for their support. Finally, we
thank Ronald K. Faulseit for inviting us to contribute to a stimulating conference
and this volume in the excellent series from Southern Illinois University Press.
Tres Zapotes 303
Note
All dates are in calendar years, not uncalibrated radiocarbon years.
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IV. Long-Term Resilience and
Adaptive Strategies
13. Finding Resilience in Ritual
and History in the Lake
Okeechobee Basin
Victor D. Thompson
Abstract: Much of the archaeological writing on resilience theory has tended

to focus on subsistence economies and their interaction with environmental
change as a way of examining socioecological systems. While these studies
do not deny the role that social, ideological, and historical aspects plays in
the dynamic interaction between humans and their environment, few engage
these aspects as a central part of such analyses. I examine the history of built
environment in the Okeechobee basin and more generally southern Florida.
The archaeological record of this region indicates that the fisher-gatherer-
hunters created and modified their landscapes through the construction of
geometric earthworks, artificial ponds, and transportation canals, along with
other expressions of the built environment, on a regional scale that was sus-
tained for over 2,000 years. I suggest that the one of the primary reasons that
these traditions were continued was the result of ritual and economic inter-
dependencies engendered through earthwork construction and the produc-
tion of resource surpluses at the local community and regional levels. Such
relationships served to mediate environmental conditions and fluctuations, as
well as facilitate community building and the sustainability of such traditions
over protracted periods of time. I use this example to emphasize and explore
the theoretical importance of concepts such as landesque capital and sunk-
cost labor effects in the context of both history and ritual when considering
resilience in socioecological systems.

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
313
314 V. D. Thompson
Much of the archaeological writing on resilience theory has tended to

focus on subsistence economies and their interaction with environmental change.
While these studies do not deny the role that ideological and historical phenomena
play in the dynamic interaction between humans and their environment, few treat
such aspects of these systems as a central part of their analysis. Resilience theory
emphasizes neither stability nor change but, rather, fluidity between various states
(Redman 2005:72). In practice, archaeological studies of resilience tend to focus
on collapse, reorganization, and the whole of the adaptive cycle (e.g., Nelson
et al. 2006; Thompson and Turck 2009). Often in such studies, researchers view
settlement abandonment and the cessation of socially cohesive traditions, such as
feasting and monument construction, as collapse and reorganization within the
adaptive cycle. Such explanations are broad-scale approaches that focus on state
change at large scales. What, then, does it mean when phenomena such as these
comprise the things that persist? In other words, when and in what contexts are
settlement permanence and the continuation of social-ritual traditions, such as
mound building, the slower moving parts of the adaptive cycle?
Despite the fact that archaeological writing on resilience tends to focus on
large-scale ultimate explanations of change, at least theoretically, resilience theory
incorporates concepts that necessitate considering more proximate explanations
and smaller-scale processes (Gunderson and Holling 2002). Central to this idea is
the proposition that adaptive cycles are nested across space and time, which facili-
tate connections to the past and distant places and thus may provide “stability” to
the system as a whole (Redman 2005:73). However, few studies explicitly start out
to examine the nature of how smaller-scale factors influence larger processes. Thus,
larger-scale issues, such as climate and its effects on subsistence, tend to be at the
front of such research. Social relationships, traditions, ritual, and other proximate
causes of socioecological change and stability do not play as great a role in these
writings. However, if we are to understand why people stay together and how
they maintain social traditions even in the face of dramatic external forces, it is
necessary to focus on local-scale social interactions and their material manifesta-
tions and on the ways in which they shape and are shaped by broader ecological
conditions and forces. This approach leads us to view the outcome of what we
see in the long-term record of adaptive systems as the product of generative ac-
tion and relationships between agents within a given environment (Ingold 2000).
Collapse and abandonment are central themes in the archaeological literature
on Eastern North America, particularly studies that focus on the last 2,000 years
prior to European contact. Indeed, this time frame encompasses a number of case
studies of collapse, including the decline of Middle Woodland period–Hopewell
ceremonialism and interaction spheres and the rise and fall of Mississippian
chiefdoms in many areas across the region (Anderson 1994; Anderson and Sas-
saman 2012; Griffin 1960; Hally 2006). Archaeologists often take site and regional
abandonment, along with the termination of mound building, as the evidence for
such collapses, declines, and cycles (Anderson et al. 1995; Hally 1996). Researchers
writing about the decline of such arrangements cite a number of reasons for the
disintegration of the social formations from climate change to cultural exhaus-
tion to the advent of intensive maize agriculture. Regardless as to the underlying
Finding Resilience in Ritual and History 315
reasons of societal collapses in different places at different points in the past, it is

clear that across much of Eastern North America, things often fell apart.
In this chapter, I explore the implications of the long-term occupation of
places on the landscape and the tradition of earthwork construction in the Lake
Okeechobee basin of southern Florida. I argue that the persistence of these two
practices diverges from patterns that archaeologists note elsewhere in the East-
ern Woodlands, where patterns appear to indicate shorter-term occupational se-
quences, punctuated by periods of abandonments, as well as different kinds of
earthwork architecture in general. Although resilience theory provides a set of
proscribed statements about the functioning of larger systems, it does not impli-
cate specific sources of change, nor does it explicitly suggest how social factors
are linked to such processes. Therefore, in order to illustrate my points regarding
the resilience of these traditions, I situate my analysis within a framework that
draws on ideas from historical and political ecology (e.g., Balée 2006; Balée and
Erickson 2006; Crumley 1994, 2007; Marquardt 2013; Marquardt and Walker 2013).
Historical ecology, in its broadest sense, is a research framework that encom-
passes a host of anthropological issues. Much of this research has centered on
agricultural societies, such as those groups found in Amazonia, Central America,
and Europe (e.g., Erickson 2008; Erickson and Balée 2006). These studies have led
to important insights into the nature of human-environmental interactions, par-
ticularly with regard to modification of the landscape for the expressed purpose
of subsistence intensification. Some archaeologists working under this framework
have turned their attention to how groups modify and change the environment in
the absence of intensive agriculture (e.g., Rick and Erlandson 2008; Thompson and
Waggoner 2013). Many of these studies examine the way in which these groups
impacted species richness or diversity through exploitation or environmental
manipulation. In addition to impacts on the environment, historical ecology also
considers the dynamic role that history, ritual, and other ideological notions play
within the context of human-environmental relationships (e.g., Fish et al. 2013;
Kidder 2013; Zedeño 2013). Such a perspective views social institutions, agency,
and the environment as intrinsically interlinked with one another. As Fairhead
and Leach (1996:10) note, if we are to understand “historical patterns of landscape
change, it is necessary to pay attention not only to the technical aspects of land
management and its interaction with ecology, but also to the broader conditioning
of the land use.” Briefly, what they mean by this statement is that there are more
variables than mere subsistence in terms of people’s interaction with ecosystems.
Taking the idea of such dialectical relationships a bit further, Ingold (2012:236)
states, “Any particular phenomenon on which we may choose to focus our atten-
tion enfolds within its constitution the totality of relations.”
I focus my analysis on the creation of ritual and economic interdependencies
created through earthwork construction and the production of resource surpluses
at the local community and regional levels. I use two related concepts throughout
this paper to discuss why people stay together and why traditions persist over
the long term. The first, landesque capital, is frequently used in the historical
ecology literature (e.g., Erickson and Walker 2009; Marquardt and Walker 2013)
and refers to structures or innovations that continue to require maintenance for
316 V. D. Thompson
their sustained existence (Brookfield 1984). Often this term refers to agricultural
innovations or land investments that persist beyond a single crop cycle (Blaikie
and Brookfield 1987; Widgren 2007). Thus, a site or area of land may be the loca-
tion of landesque capital, or people may control or maintain landesque capital.
The second, related concept is “sunk cost labor effects,” which presents the idea
that people take into account prior labor inputs when considering future actions
(Janssen et al. 2002:722). The critical point for Janssen et al.’s paper is that people
are unlikely to abandon a course of action once they have invested a significant
amount of labor into a particular project or relationship, even if they are faced
with a certain degree of negative results (Janssen et al. 2002:722). Thus, we could
state that the creation of landesque capital can create sunk-cost labor effects, and
I argue below that sunk-cost labor effects are not strictly economic but also extend
to the investments in social relationships made and maintained through ritual
associated with landesque capital. With these perspectives, I examine the two
central questions in this paper.
Resilience and Persistence in the Lake

Okeechobee Basin
In order to understand how the social, ritual, and political actions of

an individual work to create the patterns that we observe at the regional level,
I take an approach that looks at the consequences and conditions of coopera-
tion among and between communities within the highly dynamic environment
of southern Florida. I suggest, building on the work of Marquardt and Walker
(2013:889), that the primary reason that these traditions were continued over such
an extended time frame was the result of a unique intersection of the reliance on
aquatic resources, season fluctuation and control of water flows, and the sociopo-
litical rituals associated with large building projects enacted at the community
level. Such activities would have had sunk-cost effects on community cohesion
and create landesque capital associated with specific places on the landscape.
The drive to maintain relationships around labor projects at the community and
regional levels served to mediate the effect that environmental fluctuations had
on the system as a whole. I argue that this ultimately led to the sustainability of
such relationships and the continued generative action of such traditions over
protracted periods of time.
To examine the degree of settlement permanence and mound building over
time and space in the Lake Okeechobee basin (Figure 13-1), I use two specific data
sets that illustrate the persistence of these patterns. First, I rely heavily on my own
work at Fort Center, one of the largest and best-studied sites in the basin. This
site provides a case study of a more or less continuous occupation throughout the
entire time frame that I discuss in this paper, from 800 b.c. to the historic period.
Second, in order to show that such patterns were likely widespread, I analyze the
distribution of different earthwork types within each region. Earthwork sites are
defined here as any site where substantial modification to the landscape has oc-
curred through the intentional manipulation of soils that has altered local natural
Figure 13-1. Location of the Lake Okeechobee study area in southern Florida.
topography. For the Lake Okeechobee basin, such sites include a host of different
categories of earthwork projects, including platform mounds, linear earthworks,
geometric earthworks and barrow pits, effigy barrow pits, artificial ponds, canals,
and burial mounds. I recognize that my focus solely on evidence pertaining to
earthmoving in the region is a potential source of bias. Certainly, many more
sites in the region have less-obvious features. However, since relatively little is
published in the region regarding survey and excavation, I rely on such sites as
a starting point.
318 V. D. Thompson
To track landscape modification in the basin, I created a database of earthwork

sites for areas around the lake, including Glades, Highlands, Martin, Okeechobee,
Palm Beach, and Hendry counties. The data were obtained from published sources
and reports as well as the Florida Master Site File (FMSF). Information from each
individual site was then entered into a database and coded based on universal
transverse mercator (UTM) coordinates, county, site type, types of earthworks
present, and associated ceramic sequences. Once completed, this database was
then imported into ArcMap GIS for simple spatial analysis and visual illustration
of the data.
In the following section, I provide an environmental history of the Lake
Okeechobee basin in a global context, drawing on both archaeological and pa-
leoenvironmental studies and modeling, yielding evidence that the region was
one of dynamic environmental change on both short- and long-term time scales.
Following this, I discuss the nature of the economy in the Lake Okeechobee basin,
making the case that to label them hunter-gatherers or even complex hunter-
gatherers oversimplifies the nature of the activities in the basin. After that, I
employ a regional analysis of sites in the Lake Okeechobee basin to illustrate
that the tradition of earthwork construction was at the same time widespread
and locally sustained over long periods of time. In the final section, I expand
upon the statements outlined above regarding the persistence of places and tra-
ditions in southern Florida in terms of the related concepts of landesque capital
and sunk-cost effects. Finally, I consider the implications of these data for how
we examine resilience in the archaeological record both in terms of theory and
method, particularly regarding the implication that sunk-cost effects imposes
greater vulnerability for past socioecological systems.
Environmental Dynamics in Southern Florida
While a detailed outline of the southern Florida environment is beyond

the scope of this paper, a brief understanding of the major drivers of ecological
change is necessary to appreciate potential sources of disturbance. For the Lake
Okeechobee basin, the factors involved are mostly related to the distribution of
water, which influences not only the availability and distribution of subsistence
resources but also affects the nature of habitable land as well. Therefore, I limit
my discussion on major water features and how they are influenced by natural
processes on both long- and short-term time scales.
Without a doubt the dominant feature of the Okeechobee basin is the lake
itself. The lake, its indigenous name, Macaco or Mayaimi (Worth 2006), formed
around 6,000 years ago (Gleason et al. 1984) and is an integral part of an expan-
sive hydraulic system that covers most of southern Florida and includes both the
Kissimmee watershed and Everglades, known as the Kissimmee-Okeechobee-
Everglades systems (KOE). The lake today covers almost 1,730 km 2 and like
most of southern Florida is home to both Temperate and Caribbean fauna and
flora (Davis 1943; Davis and Ogden 1997:3; see also Scarry and Newsom 1992).
The lake today still supports rich and diverse biotic resources and is a popular
fishing and hunting destination, but it has been modified extensively during
the last 150 years especially with respect to the flow of water (Parker 1974; Stein-
man et al. 2002).
The KOE ranks as one of North America’s most altered hydrologic systems
and is seen by some as on the verge of an ecological collapse (Steinman et al.
2002). Essentially, the KOE system today is regulated by a series of canals, levees,
dikes, and other structures that control and direct water flow. For example, Lake
Okeechobee currently has a 6 m high dike encircling it. This and other modifica-
tions have resulted in a decrease in the overall connectivity of the system as a
whole and have altered both the freshwater recharge of the lake from the Kissim-
mee River as well as sheet water outflows into the Everglades and ultimately the
estuaries of the coasts, resulting in serious environmental costs (Steinman et al.
2002). During predrainage conditions, the water-flow connectivity was greater
and was characterized by dramatic expanses of wetlands covering 3.6 million
ha, which included prairies and tree islands and supported numerous aquatic
and terrestrial species.
For the southern Florida region, hurricanes are by far the most frequently
occurring example of short-term, high-density disturbances known as environ-
mental pulses (Glasby and Underwood 1996). Such storms have the ability to
demolish a region, and despite being a considerable (100 km) distance inland
from the coast, the Okeechobee basin still suffers the ill effects of such events. The
second deadliest hurricane (ranking between the No. 1. 1900 Galveston and the
No. 3. 2005 Katrina hurricanes) in U.S. history found its center along the shores
of Lake Okeechobee. In 1926 and 1928, Okeechobee weathered two category-four
storms. In both cases, the loss of life was dramatic, but the 1928 storm claimed
over 2,500 lives, due mostly to lake surge (Blake et al. 2007). Such storms would
have also represented dramatic environmental pulses in the past, but the peri-
odicity and frequency of such storms have varied over time. Reid Bryson of the
Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin has modeled tropical
cyclone history for southern Florida (Callaghan 2008:Figure 3). The model shows
that between 4000 and 3500 b.p. (2000 b.c. and 1500 b.c.), there was a dramatic
increase in tropical-storm activity for the area, which was followed by a precipi-
tous decline. We see another spike in activity between 2500 and 1500 b.p. (500
b.c. and a.d. 500) again followed by a decline (Callaghan 2008:66). Interestingly,
at the Pineland site on Pine Island along the southwest coast of Florida, there
is evidence of at least one major storm (i.e., hurricane) to impact the site around
cal. 300 a.d. as evident from the presence of marine animals (e.g., monk seal),
articulated littoral bivalves, and transported sand over certain areas of the site
(Marquardt and Walker 2012:26–27).
Sea-level fluctuations and climatic changes in terms of temperature repre-
sent the sustained, long-term, or chronic disturbances known as environmental
presses, which may result in a long-term response within the ecosystem that are
relevant to the present study (Glasby and Underwood 1996). Both of these phe-
nomena are linked to water flows within the KOE system, lake levels, and storm
frequency, but the details of these interactions are not well understood. The Gulf
Coast is the location of ongoing research on sea-level reconstructions (Marquardt
320 V. D. Thompson
and Walker 2012, 2013; Tanner 1991, 1992, 1993; Walker 2000; Walker and Mar-
quardt 2013; Walker et al. 1994, 1995; Widmer 2002, 2005), and much of the more
recent research is based on archaeological data, which is perhaps a proxy that is
becoming increasingly more important in sea-level studies (Thompson and Worth
2011). Based on this research, the past 3,000 years have seen fluctuations on the
order of several meters of sea-level change (Balsillie and Donoghue 2004; Kemp et
al. 2011; Ljungqvist 2010; Marquardt and Walker 2012, 2013; Walker 2013; Walker
et al. 1994, 1995; Wang et al. 2011). In southwest Florida, archaeological research
at sites such as Pineland, Wightman, Solana, and Cash Mound suggests a series
of transgressive and regressive sea-level episodes (Marquardt and Walker 2013).
This work indicates that there were fluctuations in sea level beginning with higher
sea levels between 100 b.c. and a.d. 500 (Wulfert High), then lower ones during
a.d. 500–850 (Buck Key Low), followed by another rise, a.d. 850–1200 (La Costa
High), then another lowering between a.d. 1200 and 1850 (Sanibel II Low). Fur-
ther, these high and low stands correspond to periods of global climatic episodes,
such as the Roman Warm (300 b.c.–a.d. 550), Vandal Minimum (a.d. 550–850), the
Medieval Warm (a.d. 850–1200), and the subsequent Little Ice Age (1200–1850 a.d.)
(Marquardt and Walker 2013).
These studies of the environmental history of southern Florida show that
it was and is a dynamic place. Fluctuations in the area would have been at once
predictable at one level and unpredictable at other scales and time frames by
the inhabitants of the basin. For example, they knew that at some point hurri-
canes would make landfall; however, where or exactly when would have been
less certain, and longer-term changes in sea level would have been less predict-
able. The processes outlined above would have affected the Lake Okeechobee
basin given the low topographic relief of southern Florida. Even small changes
in sea level would have influenced water flow and distribution in the region.
The question, then, is, how did these factors influence the timing and scale of
mound building and settlement persistence in the region? Certainly, in some
cases where extreme flooding occurs, we see evidence of the collapse of such
traditions (e.g., Kidder 2006). As I allude to earlier in the paper, however, this
does not appear to have been the case for Lake Okeechobee and probably not
for southern Florida in general.
Procurement, Production, and Persistent Places
The ability of the peoples in the basin to absorb the impacts from vari-
ous kinds of large-scale environmental changes was, in part, related to how they
provided for their daily needs. Unlike many case studies of collapse, the people
who constructed the monumental earthworks of Lake Okeechobee were not in
any way involved in agriculture, although early arguments regarding the nature
of earthwork construction in the region suggested that they functioned as a type
of wetland maize agriculture technology (Sears 1977, 1982). The early identification
of maize pollen associated with the Fort Center site seemed to support this no-
tion. However, recent work indicates that not only were the soils not conducive to
maize agriculture (Johnson 1990, 1991) but the pollen was also likely introduced via
bioturbation from later deposits associated with the Seminole and Euro-American
populations who occupied the location following its abandonment (Thompson et
al. 2013; Thompson and Pluckhahn 2014). While the inhabitants of the basin were
clearly never agriculturalists at any point in their history, to characterize them
merely as hunter-gatherers or even complex hunter-gatherers oversimplifies the
multifaceted economy that was a part of the larger social and ritual traditions.
Instead, I suggest that we consider the subsistence activities of these people in
terms of procurement and production.1 Thinking in these terms allows for a better
articulation with respect to how groups might mitigate environmental changes
through such activities. In addition, these terms force us to consider how certain
resources were obtained, which has implications for social relationships, as well
as economic ones.
Procurement
Procurement involves obtaining resources already present in the en-
vironment without large labor investments in facilities or environmental altera-
tions and characterizes a portion of the economy of the Lake Okeechobee basin.
Hale’s (1984, 1989, 1995) faunal analysis from large earthwork sites in the region,
such as the Big Circle Mound group, Fort Center, and Ortona, provides important
insights regarding this aspect of life in the region from a.d. 200 to 1500. While
in general there appears to be a broad spectrum of resource exploitation, the
basin’s inhabitants relied heavily on aquatic resources, specifically, turtles and
small bony fish, that would have required nets to capture (Hale 1989:187). The
aquatic environment around Lake Okeechobee provided year-round stable, reli-
able, predictable, and abundant resources much like we see associated with other
so-called complex hunter-gatherers (Price and Brown 1985), and its inhabitants
likely perceived it as highly productive, as opposed to one of scarcity (Bird-David
1990, 1992). Even when people occupy such environments, however, they do not
immediately create or necessitate lasting historic interdependencies between
households or commitments to specific places on the landscape (Thompson and
Moore 2015).
In addition to the general environmental productivity of the basin, the pro-
nounced rainy season would have concentrated resources, creating anticipated
surpluses of food (Thompson and Moore 2014). Specifically, annual reflooding
events of sloughs, oxbow lakes, and other areas of standing water during the rainy
season would have replenished fish and other marine animals (Hale 1989:190).
Large-scale exploitation of such concentrated resources would have required co-
operative labor; if such events became highly structured in time and space, they
could possibly create a greater commitment to particular places. Such activities
have the potential to attract large numbers of participants and lead to economic
intensification (Spielmann 2002), particularly if these happen at the same place
every year. Given the available evidence, it seems that the inhabitants were ex-
ploiting resources in this fashion, as some of the earliest of the larger sites (e.g.,
Fort Center) are located next to these features (e.g., oxbow lakes) (Figure 13-2).
322 V. D. Thompson
Figure 13-2. Meander scar (oxbow lake) along Fisheating Creek across from
the Fort Center site (A), LiDAR image of Glades Circle (B), and LiDAR image
of Great Circle complex at the Fort Center site (C).
The exploitation of particular plant resources may have also constrained use
of the landscape. Archaeobotanical analysis in the southern Florida coastal Calusa
region suggest that these groups may have had tropical home gardens of mostly
nondomesticated tropical plants during the few centuries before and during Eu-
ropean contact (e.g., Newsom and Scarry 2013; Scarry and Newsom 1992). Like
their coastal counterparts, the inhabitants of the Okeechobee basin likely took
advantage of the plant resources; however, at this point, few published archaeo-
botanical studies are readily available. Recent and past work at Fort Center has
identified a number of native plants that were economically important; however,

it seems there was not one staple plant resource indicated by these data, and many
of these plants are often found in lakeshore or river-edge environments (Morris
2012; Sears 1982; Thompson et al. 2013). In addition, ethnohistoric documents sug-
gest that the inhabitants made use of local nondomesticated tubers to produce
flour, and many of the sites in the region are located where such plants would
have been relatively available (d’Escalante 1944; Hale 1989:189).
Production
Given the nature of procuring resources from the environment out-
lined above, I argue that the start of lasting interdependencies and histories among
households and specific places on the landscape began with the frequent exploi-
tation of anticipated surplus resources associated with annual flood events in
the basin. These traditions may have their roots in the Late Archaic prior to 1000
b.c. and were most likely accompanied by concomitant rituals during collection
events. These practices in turn led to the development of economic and ritual
intensification at certain places on the landscape. In the Okeechobee basin, this
manifests itself in the first earthwork construction, beginning between 800 and
600 cal b.c. (Thompson and Pluckhahn 2012:Table 1). It is possible that inhabit-
ants of the basin constructed such structures even earlier because some of these
features are superimposed on earlier earthworks; however, none of these features
have direct dates (Thompson and Pluckhahn 2012:56–57).
The earliest earthworks in the basin are circular ditch and berm features (see
Figure 13-2). Circular ditches range from 61 m to 366 m in diameter (Carr 1985:289).
These earthworks usually, though not always, have a mound in the interior of the
circle. Originally, thought to be a form of irrigation technology by Sears (1982),
new research implicates both ritual and economic functions for this architecture
(Carr 2012a; Thompson and Pluckhahn 2012).
Several attributes suggest that the circular earthworks in the basin functioned,
in part, as ritual architecture. First, some of these contain central, conical mounds
within the enclosures. The mound at the center of the Great Circle at the Fort Center
site is at the geometric center of the earthwork (Thompson and Pluckhahn 2014).
While the exact function of these mounds is uncertain, it is unlikely that they are
solely related to water control, as they take a diversity of forms and are found in
very different environmental settings. Second, the circular earthworks demarcate
enclosed spaces or plazas. Few artifacts are found in these areas. Sears’s (1982)
excavation of a 330-m-long trench through the Great Circle recovered little in the
way of cultural material, as compared to other areas of the site (Sears 1982). Fi-
nally, if these spaces were cleared, then they could have served as large plazas for
communal rituals. Possible supporting evidence for this is the noted increases that
Thompson and Pluckhahn (2014) observe in microscopic carbonized wood from
deposits from the Great Circle at Fort Center, which they suggest indicate large-scale
land clearance associated with earthwork construction and habitation at the site.
In addition to communal ritual, the circular enclosures of the Okeechobee
basin also likely served economic functions. Specifically, these ditch and berm
324 V. D. Thompson
constructions would have redirected the flow of water, particularly during the rainy
season (Carr 1985, 2012a, 2012b; Thompson and Pluckhahn 2014). Carr (1985:288–301,
2012a) argues that such earthworks served as complex fish weirs during annual
flood events. Such structures would require regular maintenance. Indeed, the
Great Circle at Fort Center evidences multiple building episodes (Pluckhahn and
Thompson 2012). In addition to the excavation of the earthwork itself, additional
facilities controlling the water flow in and out of the ditch would have been required
and would necessitate additional labor. Thus, similar to the oxbow lakes of the
basin, these circular ditch and berm structures would have captured fish during
the annual flood events. The difference, however, between these structures and the
natural features within the landscape is that the structures allow the inhabitants
to control water flow and thus increase their ability to produce and/or capture fish
surpluses at a predicable place and time—in other words, anticipated surpluses
(Thompson and Moore 2015). Such features represent the first large-scale labor
projects in the basin and in essence create landesque capital. Such projects would
have sunk-cost effects on populations, creating even greater interdependencies
between households in the basin, as well as a greater commitment to specific places.
Engaging the Monumental

I argue that the first ditch and berm earthworks emerged in a context
where both ritual and social relationships were intimately tied to the production
of surplus resources. Such practices would have created relationships beyond al-
ready established kinship ties that were important to maintain. Communal rituals
and ceremonies would have developed intertwined histories between previously
disparate individuals, households, and lineages, creating the desire to express and
reinforce the relationships in these contexts again and again. That is, they have a
sunk-cost effect on participating households in that the building of relationships
through ritual and common-pool labor projects factor into household and larger
kin-group decisions to maintain such relationships. One way communities could
have continued to reinforce such relationships would be to elaborate on established
traditions. For the Okeechobee basin, I suggest that this was accomplished through
ritual-related earthwork and water-facility construction at the community level,
a practice that continued until the abandonment of the region in the 1700s due
to European disease and English-allied Creek and Yamasee slave raids, among
other factors (see Marquardt 2001; Thompson and Worth 2011).
The elaboration of earthworks seems to have begun not long after the first
circular ditch and berm earthworks were established and in some cases emerged
simultaneously. At Fort Center there is evidence that the inhabitants of the site
constructed some of the low earthen mounds located away from the Great Circle
complex at around the same time (Thompson and Pluckhahn 2012:Table 1). And
small earthen-mound groups appear to date almost through the entirety of the
Belle Glade period (ca. 1000 b.c.–a.d. 1700) (Johnson 1996). Over time, however,
earthen architecture became increasingly more elaborate and complex.
Johnson (1996) provides a useful summary of earthworks in the region in
terms of both typology and chronology. Earthwork sites in the basin contain
Figure 13-3. Example of earthwork complex in the Lake Okeechobee basin.

This is a composite topographic map of Fort Center based on LiDAR and total
station mapping at 20 cm contour intervals. On this map are overlays of Carr
(1975) sketch map and Sears (1982) map of the site. (From Thompson and
Pluckhahn 2012:Figure 2.)
a wide variety of forms and include conical mounds, house mounds, platform
mounds, crescent-shaped mounds, ditches, borrows, embankments (both linear
and curved), artificial ponds, and canals (see Allen 1946; Austin 1993; Carr 1985;
Carr et al. 1995; Johnson 1996; Milanich 1994; Sears 1982; Wheeler 1995; Widmer
2002). Based on the available data, Johnson (1996) organizes these into six types:
circular ditches, circular-linear earthworks of two types (A and B), linear embank-
ments, square-rectangular earthworks, barrows, and mound groups (Figure 13-3).
As stated above, mound groups span the entire sequence; however, quite
frequently, these mounds are associated with other types of earthworks (John-
son 1996:253). Type A circular-linear earthworks are circular embankments with
linear embankments terminating in habitation mounds. Type B are the same as
Type A except that Type B has multiple, linear embankments radiating from the
circular embankment, forming spokes (Johnson 1996:253). Type A appears to be
the earlier of the two, dating between a.d. 200 and 1000, and Type B occurs after
a.d. 1000 up to the historic period. Finally, linear embankments that are not part
of circular earthworks and postdate these other constructions most likely date
to the historic period. The other two types of earthworks, square embankments
326 V. D. Thompson
and effigy barrows, in the basin have yet to be securely dated and, at present, are
not useful chronological markers.
In addition to these landscape modifications, there is also direct evidence
for water-control facilities at some of these sites in the form of ponds and canals.
Artificial ponds occur at several sites in the region. The pond at Fort Center is by
far the most extensively excavated. Excavations by Sears (1982) recovered numer-
ous burials and hundreds of carved wooden effigies in the form of birds, cats, and
other mammals. The recovery of such artifacts as well as the information from
the two associated mounds indicates intensive ritual behaviors associated with
mortuary practices. Sears (1982) suggests that these activities occurred between
a.d. 200 and 600–800, and recent radiocarbon dating of one of the wooden effi-
gies (cal a.d. 540 to 650) corroborates Sears’s temporal designation for this feature
(Thompson and Pluckhahn 2012:Table 1).
In some cases, such as the Fort Center site, these practices resulted in a more
or less continuous occupation and modification of this particular locale for over
2,000 years, creating what Thompson and Pluckhahn (2012) refer to as a “monu-
mental persistent place.” This site is one of several in the basin that evidence all the
earthwork types that are assignable to time periods. In addition, the radiocarbon
record of Fort Center also corroborates its long-term occupation. Therefore, it ap-
pears that not only are earthwork-construction traditions long lived in the basin
but also they are long lived at particular places on the landscape.
In summary, ritual practices are present in all societies. Therefore, I assume
that the inhabitants of the basin engaged in such activities prior to the construc-
tion of any of the earthworks (see Rapoport 1990, 1994). However, I argue with
the founding of the circular ditch and berm earthworks, integrative community-
level rituals become increasingly important to reinforce. Thus, the inhabitants
of the basin continued to intensify ritual activities in the form of labor projects,
such as the mound-pond complex at Fort Center (see Thompson and Pluckhahn
2012) that were not as directly related to surplus production in the same way as
the first circular ditch and berm earthworks. However, these additional labor
projects reinforced community ties and became part of the landesque capital of
specific sites.
Earthwork Complexes, Canals, and Waterways
That inhabitants of the basin engaged in earthwork construction and

sunk-cost labor projects at the site level does not fully explain the persistence
and resilience of sites and these traditions as a whole. To understand this, we
must consider these practices from a regional perspective. The brief discussion of
earthworks above indicates considerable variation in their form; however, there
do appear to be common themes in the layout and design of the earthworks, sug-
gesting considerable integration between communities of builders. I argue that
basin inhabitants engaged in activities that would have facilitated supracommu-
nity integration in two specific ways. First, inhabitants tended to construct earth-
works on areas of high ground (e.g., oak hammocks) that were located in relative
Figure 13-4. Frequency of earthwork types in study area and frequency of

sites where a particular earthwork type occurs.
proximity to one another. Second, site communities engaged in canal-construction

labor projects that connected sites and other waterways to one another, facilitating
travel and connections within the basin.
A brief examination of the large earthworks sites in the basin illustrates
several of the patterns alluded to above. Given what we presently know regard-
ing the timing and scale of large-scale earth-moving projects in the Okeechobee
basin, several patterns are immediately apparent. First, there is a great diversity
of earthwork types. Over 202 individual earthworks are in the study area (Figure
13-4). By far, the most ubiquitous earthwork is the unknown-mound category.
Many of these mounds are likely habitation mounds; however, given that so few
of these have been investigated, it is difficult to estimate exactly how many of
these actually represent this category. Both curved and linear embankments rep-
resent the second and third most frequently occurring earthworks. While both
of these do occur separately at some sites, they often co-occur to form specific
architectural layouts. Burial mounds and circular ditches are the fourth and fifth
most frequently occurring earthworks. Finally, a wide variety of earthwork types
(e.g., barrows, square ditches, etc.) represent the remainder of the earthworks in
the study area.
Another general pattern is that there appears to be a large number of earth-
work sites (n = 39) in this six-county area around the lake located in relative
proximity to one another. In fact, 90 percent of the earthwork sites are located
328 V. D. Thompson
within 10 km of another earthwork site, and 72 percent are located within 5 km

of another center (Figure 13-5). Most appear to be located in three counties on
the west side of the lake. There are two noticeable clusters of earthworks in this
area, one around Fisheating Creek (the Fort Center Cluster) and another along the
Kissimmee River (the Kissimmee Cluster). Each of these clusters of earthworks
is associated with a mound-complex site (e.g., the Fort Center site), which was
occupied throughout the duration of the Belle Glades period (ca. 1000 b.c.–a.d.
1700). These types of sites occur away from clusters as well, suggesting that at the
very least these were locations that could support populations and concomitant
activities for extended periods of time.
Finally, it seems that all the major earthwork sites are located within the zone
of the projected water flow prior to historic modification, making them subject to
annual flooding events (see the section on environmental dynamics). However,
most of the earthworks are located on well-drained soils mitigating to some extent
the impact that such floods might have (Hale 1984; Johnson 1990, 1991).
As noted above, the data seem to suggest that the availability of dry land
at least partly influenced the inhabitants of the basin to construct earthworks so
close together. However, there are likely many other factors beyond simply dry
land that influenced the actions and decisions of these groups. One of the most
likely of these was travel between sites. As I argue below, far from encompass-
ing communities, the Okeechobee basin was home to an integrated network of
communities that interacted with each other socially, ritually, and politically. An
extensive canal network that the inhabitants of the basin used for transport and
trade in the region facilitated this high degree of connectivity among people from
various locations.
In the extensive wetland landscape that is southern Florida, the canoe was
the primary mode of transportation (Figure 13-6). Direct archaeological evidence
of canoe technology dates as far back as the Archaic (Wheeler et al. 2003). Even as
late as the twentieth century, parts of the Everglades bear the mark of Seminole
canoe trails through the seas of grass and water (Carr 2012b:Figure 5.2). These
trails were likely the same ones used by the Calusa and their ancestors, prior to
their abandonment of the region (Carr 2012b:100). Such paths were likely the first
ways in which sites and communities were connected in the basin. Between 800
b.c. and 1600 a.d., the people in the basin and along the coast constructed large-
scale canal systems (Marquardt and Walker 2012, 2013; Wheeler 1995).
Unlike the canal systems of the American Southwest and southeastern Asia,
these constructions in Florida were designed for transport and trade (Luer 1989a,
1989b). While archaeologists note that some canals were constructed in the north-
western part of the state (Wheeler 1995, 1998), most appear to be confined to south-
ern Florida. It addition, it appears that some, or parts of some, were ceremonial
in function (Luer 1989a, 1989b; Luer and Wheeler 1997).
The excavation and maintenance of canals would have been large-scale labor
projects that joined together multiple communities. Research on the Pine Island
canal along the coast of southwest Florida provides some insight into scale of the
labor required to construct these structures. This canal is around 4 km long and
crosses Pine Island. Marquardt and Walker (2012:51) estimate that around 29,903
Figure 13-5. Sites (black dots) in the study area with 10 km buffer zones (gray
circles) surrounding them. In almost all cases, earthwork sites are within 10
km of another center.
330 V. D. Thompson
Figure 13-6. Example of a canal along the southwestern coast of Florida. This
is a LiDAR map of the Pineland site complex. The linear feature bisecting the
two large shell mounds is the canal, which runs for 4 km across Pine Island.
Similar canals link sites in the interior wetlands.
m3 of earth were moved for its construction, which does not include the smaller
canals and water-control facilities. This allowed the inhabitants of the Pineland
site to cross the island and to gain access to the Caloosahatchee River, which then
could be taken into the interior to the Lake Okeechobee basin (Marquardt and
Walker 2012:51; see also Blanchard 2008). As Marquardt and Walker (2013:884) note,
the canal is a kind of landesque capital for the residents. Similar to the sites in the
Lake Okeechobee basin, the Pineland site evidences a long history of occupation
from a.d. 50 to historic contact (Marquardt and Walker 2012, 2013).
Similar to the earthworks that represent sunk-cost labor projects at the com-
munity level, canals, particularly those that link sites together, would have been
sunk-cost labor projects for multiple communities. The average length of canals
in the region is 4.6 km (range 1.6 km to 15.5 km), which is perhaps related to the
fact that many sites are less than 5 km from another earthworks site. Depth and
width of canals vary, and research on the Pine Island canal indicates that at least
some of these features were 5.5 m to 7.1 m wide and over 1 m deep (Luer and
Wheeler 1997). In summary, I argue that similar to the earthworks that helped to
reinforce histories of social relationships at the community level, the canals played
this same role at the regional level. Both the earthworks and the canals reinforced
connections basin-wide on multiple levels, thus increasing the overall connectiv-
ity among individuals and communities, which I argue, increased the overall
resilience of these traditions and relationships as a whole across space and time.
Sunk-Cost Labor, Landesque Capital, Ritual,

and Resilience
The Lake Okeechobee basin presents archaeologists with an interesting

case study by which to evaluate the nature of collapse among ancient societies.
Briefly, the emerging picture that I present of the basin suggests that despite a
highly variable environment, the people of the region never experienced a large-
scale collapse in the sense of a rapid loss in sociopolitical complexity and popula-
tion. In addition, as I argue, many of the locations evidence long-term continuity
in occupation as well as a sustained tradition of earthwork construction, which I
call persistent monumental places (Thompson and Pluckhahn 2012).
I argue that the inhabitants of the Lake Okeechobee basin were able to sustain
these lifeways because of several interrelated factors. In general, the wetland envi-
ronment was a productive one, where inhabitants were able to procure resources
easily. Seasonally, large concentrations of surpluses could be collected over short
periods of time. However, exactly where these occurred varied. I argue that as
with most large surplus-collection activities by hunter-gatherers, large-scale ritu-
als accompanied these events (see Johnson and Earle 2000). In constructing the
first earthworks, the inhabitants not only altered where and when these surpluses
occurred but also subtly altered their perception of the environment and of time.
The construction of these earthworks created histories of both places and
people. Through engagement in these sunk-cost labor projects, greater interde-
pendencies among households were established, and communities and specific
places began to accumulate landesque capital (see also Marquardt and Walker
2013:884, 888–889). In other words, such activities were at once allowing people
to consider prior labor investments (i.e., sunk-cost effects [Janssen et al. 2002]) but
also facilitated the continued maintenance of certain features of the landscape (i.e.,
landesque capital [Brookfield 1984]). These new relationships were then expressed
through rituals and ceremonies designed to reinforce and retell such histories
in their social, political, and economic senses. As Spielmann (2002:203; 2007:288)
notes, ritual plays a key role in the economies of small-scale societies, and to un-
derstand production, consumption, and distribution, we must contextualize these
activities within ritual activities. I suggest that basin inhabitants expressed their
various relationships through rituals centered on the flow of water. It is likely that
such rituals were always present; however, the scale of both the rituals and num-
ber of participants likely increased with the move toward production at specific
locales. This would allow the participants in such activities to predict when and
where such events would occur (Thompson and Moore 2015).
At the regional scale, similar processes were at work creating histories among
communities. Specifically, I argue that the construction and maintenance of canals
332 V. D. Thompson
were multicommunity affairs and that like earthwork construction at the site
level served to reinforce connections among communities. Furthermore, canal
constructions were sunk-cost labor projects at the regional level, which created
common-pool landesque capital for the participant communities.
Based on my above outline of the general argument of this paper, it seems
that sunk-cost labor projects that created landesque capital at the community
and regional levels increased the overall connectivity of groups over time. For
the basin, I argue that this connectivity was reinforced by rituals and ceremonies
on intra- and intercommunity levels. This, of course, has implications for how
we consider resilience and collapse in ancient societies. In particular, this study
sheds light on the possible role that large-scale sunk-cost labor projects had for
the functioning of such systems in the past.
Janssen and colleagues (Janssen and Scheffer 2004; Janssen et al. 2002) note
that sunk-cost labor projects may increase the overall vulnerability of such sys-
tems. Using data from Prehispanic agricultural Puebloan groups from the Ameri-
can Southwest, the authors present a convincing argument that in such cases (i.e.,
agricultural communities), this practice may indeed lead to overexploitation of
resources and eventual collapse (Janssen et al. 2002). At the end of their article,
they cautiously suggest the possibility that the effects of sunk-cost labor projects
may be generalizable to many studies of collapse. At first glance, it would seem
that because the inhabitants of the Lake Okeechobee basin engaged in sunk-cost
labor projects at the community and regional levels, then this system would be
especially vulnerable to collapse. However, as I note, this is not the case in the
KOE. Janssen and colleagues may be correct in regarding the nature of sunk-cost
labor projects in certain situations; however, at least in some cases, such activities
do not make societies more vulnerable to collapse but, rather, have the opposite
effect—they make them more resilient to environmental changes. Understanding
under what conditions sunk-cost labor may negatively affect specific traditions
(e.g., earthworks construction) and ways of life is important if we are to understand
why particular societies take certain historical paths.
There are several reasons why sunk-cost labor projects do not have the same
effect on the societies of the Lake Okeechobee basin. First, the interdependen-
cies among households and communities that were reinforced through ritual
were relationships that once established were important to maintain. Specifi-
cally, these relationships were important because they were predicated on com-
munity rituals, social capital, and the landesque capital held in common among
(i.e., earthworks, fish weirs) and between (i.e., canals) communities. While many
communities engaged in sunk-cost labor projects at the community level (e.g.,
the building of mounds and kivas at specific sites), fewer groups engaged in such
activities at the supracommunity level, which create lasting physical structures
at the regional level. Thus, unlike large kivas at a particular site that integrate a
number of communities for only ritual purposes at specific times of the year, the
canals served to at once connect communities physically as well as ideologically
year-round—although the canals may be more important during the dry season.
Furthermore, once constructed, such connections become part of a shared history
beyond the single-site community, creating social capital as well. Finally, these
shared histories were likely reinforced through rituals associated with water at
the site level.
The other important component of how and why the Okeechobee example
differs is related to the overall economy and how basin inhabitants viewed and
interacted with the environment in general. Perhaps the most obvious difference
is that the economy was predicated on fishing, hunting, and gathering. This is not
to say that fisher-hunter-gatherer societies were more resilient than agricultural
ones, although this is certainly a point that others and I have considered in other
publications (see Fitzhugh 2012:36; Thompson and Turck 2009). And, perhaps,
for small-scale hunter-gatherers, it may be at least, in part, the case, as Fitzhugh
(2012:36) argues for Kuril islanders. However, the inhabitants of the basin were
interacting and operating on larger regional scale and engaging in monumental
labor projects, so the same argument would not apply. How then did the inhabit-
ants of the basin maintain these traditions?
I suggest that because people engaged in both procurement and production
activities, this allowed them to maintain traditions and interdependencies even
in the face of large-scale environmental changes. The early modifications of the
landscape associated with these endeavors set the stage for the increased value
that people would have placed on such relationships. This in turn contributed to
larger and more frequent ceremonies that were most likely often associated with
mound construction. Coupled with emergence of these new community-based
relationships was the beginning of canal construction, which facilitated connec-
tions among not only various parts of the landscape but various groups of people
as well. The ease of transport by canal permitted inhabitants the flexibility to con-
tinue engaging in ritual activities even when surplus collection at specific locales
(e.g., circular earthworks or even modified oxbow lakes) did not produce optimal
yields. That is, inhabitants could still procure surpluses from the surrounding
landscape. And, the greater connectivity provided by the canals and waterways,
once established, allowed inhabitants to transport surpluses collected elsewhere
by canoe back to sites with little in the way of transport costs.
In conclusion, sunk-cost labor effects and landesque capital are useful con-
cepts to consider when examining human-environmental dynamics. Largely,
landesque capital, particularly with regard to agricultural fields, has been used
to discuss economic inequality (e.g., Earle and Doyel 2008). This may also be the
case in the basin. However, I take a slightly different perspective in this paper
in linking this concept to the resilience of socioecological systems. As I show, at
least certain contexts, landesque capital and sunk-cost effects increase resilience
rather than lead to collapse or large-scale state changes. Furthermore, I suggest
that to understand the role of such processes, we must consider their implications
for not only economic but also social and ritual relationships. Such a perspec-
tive allows for a better understanding of how landesque capital and sunk-cost
effects play out at both the intra- and intercommunity levels and articulate
with various historical trajectories, resulting in traditions that are either more
resilient or vulnerable to large-scale changes within the broader environment.
Such lessons from ancient societies may in turn lead to more generalizable pat-
terns for modern ones.
334 V. D. Thompson
Acknowledgments
First, I thank Ronald K. “Sonny” Faulseit for inviting me to be a part

of the wonderful conference he put together, Beyond Collapse. The research pre-
sented here was supported in part by the National Geographic Society (Grant
8772–10). My consideration of the articulation of sunk-cost labor and landesque
capital was inspired by a blog post by Michael Smith in which he wondered why
people engaged in this literature did not cite one another. A number of colleagues
offered comments and thoughts on the ideas presented in this paper. These in-
dividuals include Faulseit, Chris Rodning, William Marquardt, Thomas J. Pluck-
hahn, and Stephen A. Kowalewski. I also thank the three anonymous reviewers
of my chapter for their insightful comments and suggestions. I alone, however,
am to blame for all errors, omissions, and fits of confusion.
Note
1. Ingold (2000) suggests that we use the term procurers instead of hunter-
gatherers or foragers. He says this largely based on a critique of the way archaeolo-
gists write about these groups in the literature—largely from a perspective (e.g.,
human behavioral ecology) that treats their actions as little more than patterned
responses and rational economic decisions. He still believes that these groups,
however, differ fundamentally with agriculturists and therefore wishes to retain
a way to differentiate them. However, he does not specify how we might go about
discussing more-diverse hunter-gatherer economies; therefore, I use the comple-
mentary concept of production to talk about variation in the different activities
of the people of the Lake Okeechobee basin.
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14. Resilience and Persistent Places in
the Mississippi River Delta of
Southeastern Louisiana
Christopher B. Rodning and Jayur M. Mehta
Abstract: The Mississippi River Delta and surrounding areas of southeastern

Louisiana encompass coastal, estuarine, and riverine environments shaped by
long-term changes in the courses of the Mississippi River and other streams
and shorter-term cycles of storms and floods. Archaeology demonstrates resil-
iency of Native American settlement and societies in southeastern Louisiana
and the formation of persistent places that have contributed to permanence and
resilience in these highly dynamic landscapes. This paper considers the archae-
ology of southeastern Louisiana from early periods of prehistory through Eu-
ropean contact, with particular emphasis on sites at which earthen mounds are
present and with reference to Native American oral tradition about how land
is formed and how land emerges after floodwaters recede. Permanent places
in southeastern Louisiana promoted resilience and stability in dynamic envi-
ronmental settings that were and are susceptible to catastrophe and collapse.
The Mississippi River Delta of southeastern Louisiana encompasses

one of the largest areas of wetlands in North America, and archaeology attests
a long and a rich history of Native American settlement (Figure 14-1). Native
Americans have lived in coastal, estuarine, and riverine environments of south-
eastern Louisiana for the past 10,000 to 15,000 years (Figure 14-2), although many
areas of land and wetlands in the Mississippi River Delta are younger than that.
This landscape is shaped by the formation of natural levees and crevasse splays,

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
342
Resilience and Persistent Places in the Mississippi River Delta 343
Figure 14-1. Culture sequence for southeastern Louisiana. (After Kidder

1995:34; Rees 2010a:12.)
344 C. B. Rodning and J. M. Mehta
Figure 14-2. Deltaic lobes and archaeological sites with earthen or shell mounds
in southeastern Louisiana. (After Blum and Roberts 2009:488, 2012:663;
Törnqvist et al. 1996:1695; site location data courtesy of the Louisiana Office
of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism, Division of Archaeology, Baton Rouge.)
the development and abandonment of deltaic lobes by the Mississippi River and
other streams, coastal subsidence and the advance or retreat of coastlines, annual
cycles of hurricanes and floods, and other environmental forces. This chapter
summarizes archaeological evidence from southeastern Louisiana to consider
whether adaptations to the dynamic environment of the Mississippi River Delta
demonstrate resilience, that is, the capacity of groups of people to endure episodes
of gradual and sudden change, and the capacity for those groups to regenerate
themselves in the aftermath of environmental change and societal crisis or col-
lapse. Written versions of Native American oral tradition from the Gulf South
shed light on relationships between people and place in a dynamic landscape of
earth and water. An interpretive approach grounded in oral tradition emphasizes
a humanistic consideration of resilience within an ever-changing landscape in
southeastern Louisiana characterized by variability and unpredictability at re-
gional and local scales.
Resilience
Resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to disturbance and

damage through recovery and regeneration (Folke et al. 2010; Gunderson 2000;
Holling 1973, 2001; Peterson et al. 1998; Walker et al. 2004). For cultural systems,
resilience is the capacity of a community to restore or to transform itself in the
aftermath of a disturbance, whether an environmental calamity or catastrophe,
an anthropogenic alteration, an encounter with a different cultural group, or a
societal crisis or collapse (Adger 2000; Berglund 2010; Butzer 2012; Butzer and
Endfield 2012; Dugmore et al. 2007; Dugmore et al. 2009; Dugmore et al. 2012;
Dunning et al. 2012; Dunning et al. 2009; Endfield 2012; Faulseit 2012; Fisher 2005;
Fisher and Feinman 2005; Fisher et al. 2009; Gotham and Campanella 2011; Gotts
2007; Harris 2012; Hill et al. 2009; Hunt and Lipo 2010; Luzzadder-Beach et al. 2012;
Nelson et al. 2011; Ravesloot et al. 2009; Redman 1999; Redman and Kinzig 2003;
Redman et al. 2009; Rosen and Rivera-Collazo 2012; Scarborough 2009; Streeter et
al. 2012). One of the core elements of resilience theory is the concept of an adap-
tive cycle, including four discrete phases: colonization and exploitation (r-phase),
conservation (K-phase), release (Ω-phase), and reorganization (α-phase) (Holling
2001; Redman 2005). Adapting these concepts to archaeological perspectives on
human settlements and societies, resilience is the capacity of a cultural system or
a cultural landscape to absorb the effects of climate change and other long-term
environmental changes, periodic storms and short-term climatic episodes, such
as droughts and seasonal cycles, anthropogenic impacts on past landscapes, and
cultural practices related to interactions within and between groups of people. This
capacity in past societies can be reflected archaeologically in evidence of social
and political structure, subsistence practices, settlement patterns, and aspects of
the built environment, including monumental earthworks.
Social structure, or patterned social arrangements that both derive from and
shape social life, can promote resilience. Highly centralized societies with pro-
nounced hierarchies are also potentially highly vulnerable to collapse. They can
fail catastrophically and can take longer to regenerate following environmental
disturbances or other destabilizing developments than more decentralized social
networks (Delcourt and Delcourt 2004; Gunderson and Holling 2002). Societies
can become less resilient as they become more highly organized, centralized,
and too rigidly bound to specific cultural practices and pathways (K-phase of the
adaptive cycle; see Gunderson and Holling 2002; Holling 2001:394). By contrast,
societies with minimally hierarchical or heterarchical community structure may

be more resilient in the sense that they are better able to regenerate themselves
after disturbances or ruptures (during the α-phase of the adaptive cycle; see Red-
man 2005:73; Redman and Kinzig 2003). With this point in mind, evidence of sta-
tus distinctions in prehistoric Native American societies in the forms of prestige
goods and monumental earthworks is more pronounced in other areas of the
Mississippi Valley and southeastern North America than they are in southeastern
Louisiana (Rees 2010c).
Subsistence practices that emphasize diversification and flexibility promote
resilience (Delcourt and Delcourt 2004; Gunderson and Holling 2002). These char-
acteristics may be evident from species diversity in archaeobotanical and zooar-
chaeological assemblages. Although intensification of a narrow range of resources
may enable the generation of large surpluses, as in the case of growing maize,
beans, and squash in many areas of the Native American Southeast during later
prehistory, such a focused subsistence strategy is not always necessary, and it can
contribute to the inflexibility of cultural systems (Holling 2001:395). Maize may
not have been as important in foodways of native peoples in the Lower Missis-
sippi Valley and coastal Louisiana as it was other areas of the Southeast (Fritz and
Kidder 1993; Kidder 1992b, 2004b:557; Kidder and Fritz 1993; Rees 2010c:186–187).
Resilience may also be reflected in archaeological evidence of settlement pat-
terns and architecture, including monuments. Settlement patterns conducive to
resilience may include site locations on stable or enduring landforms, site types
that are amenable to periodic shifts in response to environmental and cultural
changes, and loci that are permanent or persistent places of domestic activity
and public events. Persistent places are settings for cultural activity spanning
long periods, whether continuous or episodic (Gallivan 2012:316; Thompson and
Pluckhahn 2011:49), and persistent monumental places are settings in which monu-
ments form permanent connections between people and place even as nearby
settlements shift and landscapes change (Thompson and Pluckhahn 2011:50). Not
all persistent places have monumental architecture (Schlanger 1992), and not all
persistent monumental places necessarily begin as monuments (Thompson 2007;
Thompson and Andrus 2011; Thompson and Pluckhahn 2010). Following other
archaeologists studying cultural landscapes in the American Southwest (Schlanger
1992), the Green River Valley of Kentucky (Moore and Thompson 2012), southern
Florida (Pluckhahn et al. 2010; Thompson, chapter 13, this volume, 2009; Thomp-
son and Pluckhahn 2011), coastal Georgia (Thompson et al. 2004; Thompson and
Turck 2009), and Australia (Littleton and Allen 2007), this paper considers the role
of persistent places in promoting resilience within the Native American cultural
landscape of southeastern Louisiana. Persistent places can be recognized archaeo-
logically as sites of long-term cultural activity. At sites in southeastern Louisiana,
such places can be identified with reference to evidence of midden accumulation
and the construction of earthworks, and the construction of mounds atop midden
deposits (see also Thompson, chapter 13, this volume).
Given the variable environmental conditions of southeastern Louisiana and
the dynamic landscape and “waterscape” of the Mississippi River Delta and
the Gulf Coast, archaeological evidence should demonstrate the development
of resilience in Native American landscapes and lifeways in the long term. The
following consideration of environment and climate in southeastern Louisiana
emphasizes the development and abandonment of successive deltaic lobes of the
Mississippi River, changes in sea levels and coastlines, and cycles of hurricanes
and flooding. Archaeological evidence about social structure, subsistence prac-
tices, settlement patterns, and over 5,000 years of monumentality in Louisiana
sheds light on practices and places that promoted resilience.
Environment and Climate
The landscape of southeastern Louisiana is shaped largely by water,

including water transported by the Mississippi River and other streams, precipi-
tation, floods, hurricanes and other storms, and changing sea levels. Sediments
transported by rivers form natural levees and crevasse splays. Changes in sea lev-
els affect coastlines and coastal environments in southeastern Louisiana, and they
also alter stream gradients, which then affect the course of the Mississippi River
and the development and abandonment of deltaic lobes, in deltaic cycles spanning
1,000 to 2,000 years (Donoghue 2011; Gagliano 1984; Penland and Ramsey 1990;
Törnqvist et al. 2004). From the perspective of human lifespans and generational
cycles, these processes take place very gradually. Other sources of environmental
change are more rapid, including hurricanes and other storms and periodic floods.
Such events are predictable in the sense that people know they will happen and
in the sense that they follow seasonal and annual cycles, but the timing, location,
intensity, and spatial extent of storms and floods are difficult to predict precisely,
creating uncertainty and instability, within social-ecological systems of the Mis-
sissippi River Delta.
Sea levels in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean reached present lev-
els between 6,000 and 5,000 years ago (Donoghue 2011:22; Thompson and Worth
2011:53), corresponding to the temporal division between the Middle and Late
Archaic periods in Louisiana. Sea-level rise accelerated along the northern Gulf
Coast between 4,600 and 4,400 years ago (Balsillie and Donoghue 2004, 2009), cor-
responding to the Late Archaic period but predating Poverty Point culture. Sea
levels along the North Carolina coast were relatively stable from 100 b.c. through
a.d. 950 (Kemp et al. 2011), and if this stability is applicable to the northern Gulf
Coast, then perhaps sea levels in the gulf were relatively stable during the Marks-
ville, Baytown, and early Coles Creek periods (Brown 1984; Hays and Weinstein
2010; Kidder 2002b; Lee 2010; McGimsey 2010; Roe 2007; Roe and Schilling 2010).
Recent geological research in the Mississippi River Delta demonstrates evidence of
accelerated sea-level rise during the period from a.d. 1000 to 1200 (Gonzalez and
Törnqvist 2009), corresponding to the late Coles Creek period. Currently, relative
sea-level rise in coastal Louisiana is 1.04 cm per year, due largely to increased
rates of subsidence and erosion (Penland and Ramsey 1990).
The Mississippi River has changed course periodically, as it has avulsed
into new river channels, or as it has been captured by older distributary river
channel scars that offer shorter and steeper routes to the Gulf (Blum and Roberts
2009, 2012; Fisk 1944; Frazier 1967; McIntire 1958:98; Pearson 1988; Saucier 1994a;
Schilling 2004:32–43; Törnqvist et al. 2006, 1996). Deltas are created by deposition
of sediments where rivers enter deeper and less turbulent water (Saucier 1994a).
Deltaic lobes form rapidly, and once they stabilize, sediment discharge decreases
(Roberts 1997). Deltaic lobes are portions of a delta complex that can be attributed
to a single distributary or a small number of distributaries; they shift through
littoral drift, or transport of sands by breaking waves and longshore currents
(Blum and Roberts 2012; Saucier 1994a:137). The river regime in the Mississippi
River Delta “involves a large load of fine-grained sediment, an appreciable range
between high and lower river stages; low wave energy, littoral current, and tidal
ranges in the Gulf of Mexico; active regional and local subsidence; and a warm,
moist climate that allows a dense vegetative cover” (Saucier 1994a:136).
As time goes by, the flowing water feeding deltas cuts more and more chan-
nels and branches, thereby reducing stream gradient and promoting stream cap-
ture and avulsion upriver as water seeks steeper gradients (Roberts 1997). Mean-
while, as successive lobes of the Mississippi River Delta have grown seaward
and have spread across the continental shelf, the courses of the river to the gulf
have grown longer and more difficult. Eventually, these developments have led
the river to cut new channels to the gulf, starting the deltaic cycles anew. Deltaic
lobes are subject to compaction, subsidence, and erosion; abandoned lobes are more
strongly affected by these processes because there is no longer any sediment input.
As the gulf has advanced in areas of abandoned deltaic lobes, lakes, bayous, and
bays have formed, including Lake Salvador and Lake Borgne, near which many
archaeological sites are located (Saucier 1999; Shuman 2007).
After sea levels stabilized between 6,000 and 5,000 years ago, the formation of
modern deltaic lobes began (see Figure 14-2; Blum and Roberts 2009:488, 2012:663;
Törnqvist et al. 1996:1695). The Maringouin-Sale-Cypremort subdelta formed be-
tween roughly 7,500 and 5,000 years ago, during the Middle Archaic period, on
the west side of the study area, and the Teche subdelta slightly to the east formed
between 5,500 and 3,500 years ago, during the Late Archaic. The St. Bernard sub-
delta formed from roughly 4,000 to 2,000 years ago, spanning the Late Archaic
and Early Woodland periods, along the southern edges of Lakes Maurepas and
Pontchartrain. The Bayou Lafourche subdelta formed between roughly 2,500 and
500 years ago, spanning the Woodland and Plaquemine/Mississippi periods. The
Plaquemines-Balize subdelta (also known as the Plaquemines-Modern subdelta;
Balize is derived from the eighteenth-century French-colonial settlement near the
mouth of the river, whose name means “seamark”) began forming at 1,300 years
ago, and the Atchafalaya–Wax Lake subdelta began forming after 500 years ago
(Roberts 1998). Whereas the St. Bernard and Bayou Lafourche subdeltas formed in
relatively shallow water, perhaps only 15 m deep, the Plaquemines-Balize subdelta
has been forming in water that is much deeper, near the precipice of the continental
shelf. Both of these deltaic lobes are currently active, and the Mississippi River
would probably shift to the current course of the Atchafalaya River were it not for
modern artificial levees that keep the river flowing toward New Orleans and for
the Old River control structure, which diverts some water upstream from modern
Baton Rouge into the Atchafalaya Basin (Keown et al. 1986; Knox 2007:174). The
development of the Plaquemines-Balize subdelta began just before or just after the
development of Coles Creek culture in Louisiana (Kidder 1992c, 1998b, 2002b), and
early stages in the development of the Atchafalaya–Wax Lake subdelta correspond
closely to the timing of early European contact in North America.
Native peoples of southeastern Louisiana lived through these landscape
changes, and people probably often colonized new landforms as they developed,
but deltaic cycles transpired much more gradually than cycles of hurricanes and
other storms and episodes of flooding. Periodic storms and flooding undoubtedly
influenced settlement patterns and other aspects of aboriginal ways of life, per-
haps favoring settlement locations in areas with minimal flooding, for example.
Generally speaking, hurricanes and other storms are more common and more
intense during periods when climatic conditions are warmer and wetter. During
the interval between 5,400 and 5,000 years ago, Middle Archaic mounds were built
at Watson Brake and at several other sites in northeastern Louisiana, probably most
often during periods of climatic stability, but the end of Middle Archaic mound
building in this area may correspond to an episode of frequent and catastrophic
flooding in the Lower Mississippi Valley caused by El Niño–Southern Oscilla-
tion (ENSO) events (Hamilton 1999; Saunders et al. 2005). As demonstrated by a
high-resolution record of sedimentary data from Ecuador (Moy et al. 2002), ENSO
events dramatically increased flooding in the Lower Mississippi Valley, creating
“dire ecological disruptions that are probably implicated in the abandonment of
all known Middle Archaic complexes” (Saunders et al. 2005:664), perhaps in pro-
cesses analogous to the release and reorganization phases in the adaptive cycle
outlined by resilience theory. Similarly, and at the end of the Late Archaic, there
were dramatic changes in precipitation and temperature in the Mississippi River
basin between 3000 and 2600 cal b.p., leading to greatly increased frequency and
magnitude of flooding in northeastern Louisiana and other areas and to the end
of the Poverty Point culture (Kidder 2006:196–197, 2009; but see Gibson 2010a),
setting the stage for cultural developments during the succeeding Woodland
period and another iteration of release and reorganization phases. The extent to
which these climatic developments affected groups in southeastern Louisiana is not
clear, although Kidder, Roe, and Schilling (2010) propose that after a settlement
hiatus in northeastern Louisiana during the early first millennium a.d. (the Early
Woodland period) and changes in the course of the Mississippi River, northeastern
Louisiana was recolonized by people from points to the south and east, including
areas farther downstream in the Lower Mississippi Valley. During the Medieval
Warm period, roughly a.d. 950 through 1250, climatic conditions in North America
were warmer and wetter than they are at present, and climatic conditions were
cooler and dryer than at present during the Little Ice Age, a.d. 1400 through 1700
(Mann et al. 2008; Mann et al. 2009; Vermeer and Rahmstorf 2009).
Although the effects of the Medieval Warm period and Little Ice Age on
Native American settlements and societies were probably more significant in
northern latitudes of North America, hurricanes and other severe storms may
have been more frequent and more intense in southeastern Louisiana during the
Medieval Warm period (the late Coles Creek period) than during the Little Ice
Age (the mid-to-late Plaquemine/Mississippi period) and perhaps more frequent
and more intense than at present. Historical data on hurricane frequency and
severity from 1886 to 2005 demonstrate the following patterns (Keim and Muller
2009:46–48; McIntire 1958:30–31). For the Gulf of Mexico as a whole, for each five-
year interval, there were 3.3 tropical storms, 1.7 minor hurricanes, and .6 major
hurricanes corresponding to modern categories 3, 4, and 5 in the Staffir-Simpson
scale used by the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center in
the United States. Acknowledging the potential problems of extrapolating from
five-year averages to intervals of 100 years, these data indicate that there were
roughly 66 tropical storms, 34 minor hurricanes, and 12 major hurricanes in the
gulf during any given century. Storms can make landfall at many places along the
Gulf Coast, not all hurricanes come ashore, and hurricane frequency and intensity
have varied from one decade to another. During the past century, islands along
the coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama have experienced considerable
degradation as a result of hurricanes (Otvos and Carter 2008), and some hurricanes
could have had comparable impacts on islands and wetlands in southeastern
Louisiana during prehistory. As demonstrated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
in 2005, Hurricane Gustav in 2008, and Hurricane Isaac in 2012, even category
1 and 2 storms can have dramatic impacts on southeastern Louisiana. Impacts
on modern infrastructure and contemporary communities are not directly ap-
plicable to prehistoric settlements and societies in coastal Louisiana, but storms
comparable to Isaac and Gustav could have dramatically altered the landscape, at
least temporarily, and they could have significantly disrupted the lives of Native
American people and places in the past, thereby favoring settlement patterns and
persistent places that promoted resilience and permanence.
Culture Sequence
The culture sequence in Louisiana and the dates and characteristics of

successive periods, archaeological phases, and archaeological cultures are outlined
elsewhere (Ford 1935a, 1935b, 1935c; Gibson 1985a, 1985b, 1996a; Haag 1965; Neu-
man 1977, 1984a, 1984b; Phillips 1970; Phillips et al. 1951). There are relatively few
intact Paleoindian sites in Louisiana, but evidence of lanceolate projectile points
documents Paleoindian settlement by at least 12,000 to 13,000 years ago (Neu-
man 1984a:56–74; Rees 2010b). Paleoindian groups in Louisiana were hunters and
gatherers who practiced residential or logistical mobility during early episodes of
colonization and exploitation of diverse environmental zones within the Lower
Mississippi Valley (Gagliano and Gregory 1965; Hillman 1990; Saucier 1994b). The
following summary focuses on evidence about subsistence practices, settlement
patterns, architecture and monuments, and social structure.
Archaic, 8000–1000 b.c.

During the transition from Paleoindian to Archaic periods, hunters
and gatherers adapted to the development of mast forest environments and the
onset of Holocene climatic conditions. After early colonization of “staging areas”
in the Central Mississippi Valley, the Tennessee River Valley, and elsewhere dur-
ing the Early Paleoindian period, people spread out to other areas during the Late
Paleoindian period, and regional cultural traditions began to develop (Anderson
1990). Mobility probably decreased somewhat while territoriality increased during
the Early Archaic period, as evident from decreasing frequency of nonlocal stone
in Early Archaic assemblages and the diversification of projectile point types in
different areas (Daniel 2001; Rees 2010b:52–60). During the course of the Archaic
period, native groups became well adapted to woodland environments, achieving
“primary forest efficiency” through focusing on resources, such as nuts, grasses,
game, and fish, and developing regional networks of interaction and exchange that
contributed to the development of complex hunter-gatherer societies (Anderson and
Sassaman 2004; Caldwell 1958; Sassaman 2004; Sassaman and Anderson 2004). Less
is known about Early Archaic lifeways in southeastern Louisiana than is known
about later periods, in part because many areas of land and wetlands in coastal
Louisiana had not yet formed and because many Paleoindian and Early Archaic
sites throughout Louisiana have probably been buried by alluvium following dra-
matic changes to the environmental conditions and the courses of rivers during
the transition from Pleistocene to Holocene climatic regimes (Rees 2010b:36–42).
Monumental earthworks were first built in the Lower Mississippi Valley
during the Middle Archaic period, between 6,000 and 5,000 years ago (Arco et
al. 2006; Saunders 2010a, 2010b; Saunders and Allen 1997; Saunders et al. 1994).
The largest and best-known Middle Archaic mounds are those at Watson Brake,
located near the current course of the Ouachita River and the former course of the
Arkansas River, in northern Louisiana. The period during which mounds were
built at Watson Brake and other Middle Archaic sites corresponds to a period
of climatic instability and periodic drought (Hamilton 1999; Saunders 2010:75;
Saunders et al. 2005:664), perhaps prompting ritual practices related to building
earthen mounds, creating anchors between people and particular places and ar-
eas within the landscape. Based on the kinds of animal bones and plant remains
found at Watson Brake, as well as the amounts of stone tools and flintknapping
debris at the site (Johnson 1980, 2000), there is evidence of year-round occupation,
although not necessarily permanent year-long occupation by a large community.
Aside from the earthworks themselves, there are no archaeological indicators of
social hierarchy or political centralization during this period. Although there are
several examples of known Middle Archaic earthworks in northeastern Louisiana
(Saunders 2004; Saunders and Allen 1994; Saunders et al. 2001; Saunders et al.
1997), there may be at least seven sites with earthworks dating from this period
in southeastern Louisiana (Homburg 1992, 1993; Jones 1993; Neuman 1988, 1993;
Saunders 2010a; Saunders 1994). Mound building seems to have come to an end at
approximately 2800 b.c. (Saunders 2010a:74–76), and although mounds themselves
were still present within the landscape, there was a hiatus in mound building
until after 1700 b.c. (Gibson 1994a:167–170, 2004:268, 2010b:77), during the Late
Archaic period. From this perspective, the transition from the Middle Archaic
to Late Archaic in Louisiana seems analogous to the release and reorganization
phases of the adaptive cycle model in resilience theory (Redman 2005). Given the
florescence of Poverty Point settlements in Louisiana and Mississippi and the
development of widespread, multiscalar networks of trade and exchange (Gibson

1979, 1994b, 1994c, 1996b, 1996c, 1998a), the Late Archaic period demonstrates the
exploitation and conservation phases of the adaptive cycle.
The Late Archaic period is characterized by the Poverty Point site and culture,
which is manifested at sites throughout Louisiana and Mississippi, including
several sites near Lake Pontchartrain and elsewhere in southeastern Louisiana
(Ford and Webb 1956; Gagliano 1963; Gagliano and Saucier 1963; Gibson 1994a,
1998b, 2006, 2007, 2010b; C. H. Webb 1968, 1982). Seasonal indicators from Poverty
Point and elsewhere demonstrate evidence of relatively permanent residence at
some sites, although Late Archaic hunter-gatherer-fisher societies maintained
mobility as an aspect of settlement systems. The Poverty Point site itself includes
six concentric earthen ridges, several earthen mounds, and low-lying areas and
ponds nearby that may represent borrow pits (Gibson 1998b, 2000; Kidder 2002a;
Kidder et al. 2004; Ortmann 2010; Ortmann and Kidder 2013; Sassaman 2005).
North of these earthworks is the Motley mound, and to the south is the Lower
Jackson mound, both of which may predate Poverty Point, and both of which
may have been reference points for the placement of the Poverty Point earthworks
themselves (Gibson 2009). Situated along Maçon Ridge, near Poverty Point, are
many other sites with earthworks, some from the Archaic period, some from the
Woodland period, but Poverty Point itself seems to have been largely abandoned
after the Archaic period. Abrupt changes in temperature and in the frequency and
severity of flooding in the Lower Mississippi Valley led to environmental destabi-
lization, settlement discontinuity, and the abandonment of Poverty Point sites; it
contributed to major alterations in society, economy, and politics in northeastern
Louisiana during the Early Woodland period (Kidder 2006). If these trends had
similar effects and implications farther downstream in southeastern Louisiana,
then the transition from the Archaic to Woodland periods in the Mississippi River
Delta may have encompassed changes analogous to the release and reorganization
phases in the adaptive cycle conceptualized by resilience theory (Redman 2005).
Woodland, 800 b.c.–a.d. 1200

Tchefuncte culture and the (Early Woodland) Tchula period (800 b.c.
to a.d. 1) follow Poverty Point in the culture sequence in Louisiana (Gibson 1998c;
Hays and Weinstein 2010; Melancon 1999; Neuman 1984a:113–136; Shenkel 1984b).
Tchefuncte sites are present in marshland surrounding Lake Pontchartrain, and
they are commonly located on relict levees and in other settings along the courses
of secondary streams, rather than on larger waterways (Toth 1988:21–23). Tchefuncte
subsistence patterns emphasized plants and animals from rivers and marshes,
and the diverse zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical assemblages from some
sites reflect year-round occupation (Byrd 1994). Large shell middens are present
at some sites, reflecting long-term and relatively large-scale occupations (Shenkel
1974, 1984b). Tchefuncte settlement patterns in northeastern Louisiana include per-
manent or semipermanent villages placed on areas of relatively high ground, with
villages surrounding a central mound (Ford 1990; Hays and Weinstein 2010:105–
107; Kidder et al. 2010; see also Greenwell 1984:141). One of three mounds at the
Lafayette site in south-central Louisiana has been excavated, and at the base of
this Tchefuncte burial mound were several burial pits and arcs of postholes rep-
resenting structures (Ford and Quimby 1945:21–22; Weinstein 1986, 1995). Most
known Tchefuncte burials were placed in middens, and there is no evidence of
pronounced social or status differentiation in burial placement or in grave goods
(Ford and Quimby 1945:25–26; Hays and Weinstein 2010:109–110). Mounds were
not new in Louisiana, but important innovations during the Tchula period include
the widespread adoption of clay pottery (Kidder 2004b:546) and the establishment
of relatively permanent settlements in some places. There are no clear examples
of Early Woodland mounds in the Mississippi River Delta, but the greater per-
manence and persistence of settlement locales demonstrate transformation and
reorganization following the Archaic-Woodland transition, and the placement of
burials in some mounds and middens at sites in south-central and northeastern
Louisiana may reflect an emphasis on emplacement of people and groups during
the course of this reorganization. From the Middle Woodland period, there are
more sites with burials placed in mounds and within midden deposits, reflecting
greater permanence of some settlement locales and the further development of
persistent places.
As evident at the Marksville and Crooks sites in central Louisiana, the Marks-
ville culture demonstrates the participation of at least some Middle Woodland
groups (a.d. 1 to 400) in Louisiana in networks of exchange and ceremonialism
that were part of the Hopewell interaction sphere, spanning much of the Mis-
sissippi Valley, the Ohio Valley, and other areas of eastern North America (Ford
1936; Ford and Willey 1940; Neuman 1984a:137–168; Toth 1974, 1979, 1988). At the
Marksville site, situated along an abandoned channel of the Mississippi River, an
arcuate earthen embankment and adjacent ditch enclose an area of roughly 16 ha,
within which there are six earthen mounds, several of which are conical in shape,
and others of which are rectangular platforms (McGimsey 2010). At and near the
Marksville site are several circular or semicircular earthen rings, encircled by
ditches, enclosing large central fire pits (McGimsey 2003). One of the mounds at
Marksville was a burial mound, and hundreds of people were buried in one of the
two known Middle Woodland mounds at the nearby Crooks site (Ford and Willey
1940). Most Marksville habitation sites represent small-scale settlements, and there
is little or no evidence of pronounced social differentiation, except at sites like
Marksville itself, where only a small number of people—perhaps a clan or a fam-
ily—were entitled to burial within one of the mounds (McGimsey 2010:128–129).
Subsistence practices within the Marksville culture demonstrate continuity of
hunter-gatherer-fisher adaptations, and what evidence there is from Marksville
sites demonstrates subsistence diversity and an emphasis on locally available
resources in the varying environmental conditions surrounding individual sites
(McGimsey 2010:130). Within southeastern Louisiana, as seen at the Big Oak Island
site along the southeastern edge of Lake Pontchartrain, at least 50 bundle burials
were placed in at least one of several “midden knolls” atop an arcuate shell mid-
den that dates to the Tchula period (Shenkel 1984a). Little is known about Middle
Woodland domestic life and settlement patterns in southeastern Louisiana, but
the continued use of the Big Oak Island site demonstrates long-term settlement
continuity in at least some locales (McGimsey 2010:125–126). Middle Woodland

mortuary ceremonialism at Big Oak Island may reflect the development of a per-
sistent monumental place (sensu Thompson, chapter 13, this volume; Thompson
and Pluckhahn 2011), with burials situated at an Early Woodland site that had
been the locale of permanent or semipermanent residential activity.
Greater settlement permanence and greater degrees of monumentality are
evident in the Troyville culture, dating to the Baytown period, from a.d. 400 to 700
(Belmont 1984; Ford 1951; Ford and Willey 1940; Gibson 1970, 1984a, 1984b; Walker
1936). Troyville culture is best known from the Troyville, Greenhouse, Gold Mine,
and Mount Nebo sites, located in central Louisiana; there are also many Baytown-
period Troyville-culture sites in coastal Louisiana, including shell middens and
other sites in marshes in the Mississippi River Delta and coastal Louisiana (Neu-
man 1984a:170–171, 1984b), reflecting, perhaps, colonization and conservation of
some wetland areas and the utilization of diverse subsistence resources from
estuarine, freshwater, and terrestrial resources (Neuman 1984a:194–196; Springer
1973, 1974, 1980). The Troyville site itself, located along the Black River in central
Louisiana, includes nine or more earthen mounds, eight of which are enclosed
within an earthen embankment; there is evidence of Marksville-period activ-
ity at the site, although mound stages, post-in-ground structures, and middens
have generated dates that fit within the Baytown period (Lee 2010:143–154). At
the Greenhouse site, in the Red River Valley, large pits with evidence of repeated
burning and firing are interpreted as evidence for feasting, probably related to
mortuary ceremonialism, given the presence of burials, earthen mounds, and an
oval plaza at the site (Lee 2010:140–141). Aside from the scale of the earthworks
themselves—one of the mounds at Troyville was 25 m tall (Rees 2012:487–489)—
and aside from the burials in mounds (Neuman 1984a:161–163, 204–207), there is
little evidence from burials or architecture of pronounced social differentiation
during the Baytown period in central and northeastern Louisiana, and there is
no evidence of mound building in southeastern Louisiana during this period.
The large earthworks at sites from this period in northeastern Louisiana contrast
the absence of such sites in southeastern Louisiana, but there are a great many
mound sites and nonmounded sites in the Mississippi River Delta attributable to
the succeeding Coles Creek period, at the point at which many landforms in the
delta, such as those near Lake Salvador and Bayou des Allemands, were taking
shape (Pearson 1988; Shuman 2007).
The Coles Creek culture and the Coles Creek period date from a.d. 700
through 1200 (Kidder 1992c, 1998b, 2002b, 2004b). Coles Creek culture is evident
early on at sites between the mouth of the Red River and the Yazoo Basin of north-
western Mississippi, but there is also ample evidence of Coles Creek settlement in
the Mississippi River Delta and coastal Louisiana (Brown 1981a, 1984). Elsewhere
in eastern North America during this time frame, many groups began relying
primarily on cultivated plants as dietary staples, but Coles Creek groups in the
southern Lower Mississippi Valley maintained hunter-gatherer-fisher adapta-
tions during this period (Brown 1984:101–107; Roe and Schilling 2010:169; Smith
1986; Steponaitis 1986). Community centers were situated at sites with large plat-
form mounds placed around plazas, and considerable earthmoving activity was
necessary to build both mounds and plazas (Kidder 2004a; Roe 2007; Roe and
Schilling 2010:162–163). Through time and as seen at the Bayou Grande Cheniere
site in southeastern Louisiana and at the Greenhouse and Raffman sites in north-
eastern Louisiana, access to plazas at Coles Creek mound centers became more
and more restricted, and this development is probably related to increasing social
differentiation within Coles Creek communities (Rees 2012:490; Roe and Schilling
2010:160–161). Some people probably lived at Coles Creek ceremonial centers, but
many people lived in dispersed settlements in surrounding areas, periodically
gathering for events that took place on and around mounds and plazas themselves.
Grave goods are rare in Coles Creek burials, and mortuary practices emphasized
community identity more than individual differentiation (Kassabaum 2011). There
is little direct evidence for Coles Creek social hierarchy and political centralization
except for mounds and plazas themselves (Kidder 1998a, 1998b), and, perhaps,
the dampening of status differentiation after death served to minimize or even
to mask social inequality and political centralization (Kassabaum 2011:220–223),
thereby promoting resiliency and adaptive flexibility within Coles Creek culture.
The Woodland period in eastern North America encompasses innovations,
such as the widespread adoption of clay pottery and the adoption of the bow
and arrow, the domestication of native plants, and the early development of vil-
lages. During the Woodland period of southeastern Louisiana, there is evidence
of permanent or semipermanent settlements in some areas, although evidence
indicates they were supported by an economy largely based on foraging rather
than farming. As they probably were during the Archaic period (Saunders 1994),
earthen monuments were present in southeastern Louisiana, although they were
not as large as mounds like those at Troyville nor as large as Coles Creek mounds
in the Yazoo Basin of Mississippi. Most of the Archaic mounds in southeastern
Louisiana are located in upland settings north of Lake Pontchartrain (Saunders
1994:119), but mounds were built during the Woodland period along the lower
reaches of the Mississippi River, such as those at the Bayou Grande Cheniere site.
Other than mounds themselves, there is no clear evidence for pronounced social
differentiation or political centralization in southeastern Louisiana during this
period, consistent with long-term adaptive flexibility expected of resilient social-
ecological systems. Coles Creek mounds and nonmounded sites in southeastern
Louisiana are perhaps associated with colonization and exploitation phases of
the adaptive cycle.
Late Prehistoric, a.d. 1200–1540

Within the Lower Mississippi Valley and coastal Louisiana, Plaquemine
and Mississippian cultures date from the thirteenth century through the period
of European contact (Brown 1976, 1985, 1998, 2004, 2007; Davis 1984, 1987; Ford
1936, 1951; Jeter 2007; Kidder 1994, 1995, 1998a, 2007; Livingood 2010:15–17, 68–71,
141–142; Neuman 1984a:258–283; Quimby 1951, 1957; Rees 2010c; Weinstein 1987b;
Weinstein and Dumas 2008). There are broad similarities between the characteris-
tics of Plaquemine and Mississippian material culture and settlement plans, and
large earthen platform mounds and plazas are present at some Plaquemine and
Mississippian sites, such as the Medora site near Baton Rouge and the Magno-
lia mounds near Lake Borgne. Several Plaquemine sites with very large earthen
mounds are in northeastern Louisiana (Routh, Fitzhugh, and Transylvania, for
example; Hally 1972) and southwestern Mississippi (Anna, Emerald, and Winter-
ville, for example; Brain 1978, 1989), but mounds in southeastern Louisiana are
comparatively more modest in scale. Mound sites attributed to the Mississippian
culture in southeastern Louisiana include Magnolia, Thom, Buras, Toncrey, and
Sims (Davis 1984; Kidder 2004b:557–558; Rees 2010c:180–182). Immediately west
of the present study area in southeastern Louisiana is the Petite Anse region,
encompassing Vermilion Bay and Avery Island, the setting for late Mississippian
sites for groups who were involved in salt processing and production and who
probably had close ties with groups situated farther north in Louisiana and Mis-
sissippi (Brown 1980, 1981b, 1999; Davis 1984:221; Rees 2010c:183–185).
Across much of the American South, subsistence practices during the late
prehistory had come to focus on crops, such as maize, beans, and squash, supple-
mented by gathering wild plants and hunting game, such as deer and turkey.
Maize was widely adopted in northeastern Louisiana by the fifteenth century,
and it became important in southeastern Louisiana at that point, as well (Kidder
1995:343–346, 2004b:557), but maize was not as important in the Mississippi River
Delta as it was farther upstream and farther inland. Maize was valuable both as
a food staple and a crop that could generate large surpluses in support of social
demands and political activity. Perhaps, there were alternative sources of surplus
in coastal Louisiana (M. C. Webb 1982), especially in low-lying areas where culti-
vation may have been less productive than natural levees and other high ground
(Rees 2010c:185–187). Meanwhile, activities yielding more immediate returns than
farming and resources that did not require storage may have been important to
groups in southeastern Louisiana.
At Mississippian sites across much of southeastern North America, elaborate
iconography is present on copper, greenstone, mica, marine shell, and some forms
of pottery. This iconography is associated with the Mississippian Ideological In-
teraction Sphere (MIIS), formerly known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
(SECC). With some exceptions, such as a single spatulate stone celt fragment from
the Sims site and two stone disc fragments from two sites nearby (Mann 2006,
2007; Weinstein 1987a), there is minimal evidence for the participation of groups
in southeastern Louisiana in networks of prestige-goods circulation and display
connecting them with other points and peoples in the Mississippian Southeast
(Kidder 2004b:557–558; Neuman 1984a:261–263; Rees 2012:493; Williams and Brain
1983:416–419).
The Sims site, located near Bayou des Allemands and Lake Salvador in south-
eastern Louisiana, includes either five or six earthen mounds dating to the Mis-
sissippi period and midden deposits reflecting occupation by Coles Creek groups
(Davis 1981, 1984; Davis and Giardino 1980; Hays 1995; Weinstein et al. 1977). Coles
Creek pottery from the Sims site closely resembles Coles Creek pottery from other
sites in southeastern Louisiana (Davis 1984:222–223); the Mississippian pottery
from Sims and from the Magnolia mounds includes types that are widespread
in coastal zones of Louisiana, southern Mississippi, southwestern Alabama, and
northwestern Florida (Brose 1984; Brown 2003; Kidder 2004b:557–558; Knight

1984). Although the Sims site may or may not have been occupied continuously
throughout the Coles Creek and Mississippi periods, it does represent a persistent
place on the landscape during this time frame (Thompson and Pluckhahn 2011).
The earthworks at the Sims site are, perhaps, comparable to the “bone houses”
that were present at some historic Chitimacha settlements (Rees 2007:91), where
the bones of deceased chiefs were bundled and buried underneath mounds that
were said to have been roughly 4 ft to 5 ft tall (1 m to 2 m) (Swanton 1911:351). Late
prehistoric mounds were typically situated at strategic points along waterways
(Kidder 2004b:557); Sims is located between the Mississippi River and Bayou des
Allemands, and the latter stream connects with Lake Salvador and other streams
forming a possible route from near the Mississippi to Barataria Bay and the Gulf
of Mexico (Shuman 2007:106).
As with preceding periods, there is minimal archaeological evidence from
southeastern Louisiana for social hierarchy or political centralization in south-
eastern Louisiana except, perhaps, for the presence of monumental earthworks
themselves. Earthen mounds are not necessarily direct reflections of pronounced
social hierarchy and political centralization (Howey 2012; Kidder 2012; Thompson
2007), but they are indicators of varying degrees of planning and mobilization of
people and resources. With this point in mind, mounds were present at an early
date in Louisiana, especially in northeastern Louisiana. Some mound sites in
central Louisiana (such as Troyville), northeastern Louisiana (such as Raffman),
and farther upstream in the Natchez Bluffs and Yazoo Basin regions of the Lower
Mississippi Valley have larger mounds and much more complex spatial layouts
of mounds and plazas than those seen in southeastern Louisiana. Earthworks
at Bayou Grande Cheniere, Sims, Magnolia, and other sites are monumental in
scale, but fewer such sites are in the Mississippi River Delta than farther inland
and farther upstream.
Contact Period, a.d. 1540–

Surviving members of Hernando de Soto’s expedition, led by Luis de
Moscoso following Soto’s death in 1541, sailed down the Mississippi River to its
mouth in 1543, after having spent two years in the Central Mississippi Valley,
parts of Texas and Arkansas, and the northern part of the Lower Mississippi Val-
ley (Hudson 1997; Milanich 1990; D. F. Morse 1990, 1992; Morse and Morse 1990;
P. A. Morse 1990; Smith 1990). Following this brief presence of Europeans along
the edges of Louisiana, there were no recorded contacts between colonists and
native groups in Louisiana until the late seventeenth century, when French voya-
geurs descended the river and began exploring the Lower Mississippi Valley and
coastal Louisiana (Brain 1979, 1988, 1994; Brown 1979, 1982, 1990, 1992; Ethridge
2010; Kidder 1990, 1993). During the late 1600s and early 1700s, groups along the
Gulf Coast of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana often moved from one place
to another in response to opportunities for trade and interaction with French
colonists as well as in response to the sometimes devastating effects of warfare,
disease epidemics, and the colonial slave trade (Davis 1984; Giardino 1984; Knight
1984; Usner 1998). This apparently fragmented geopolitical landscape gave French
colonists the impression that native groups in the Mississippi River Delta did not
have enduring or permanent connections to particular places.
Following travels in Texas and Arkansas beginning in 1718 and diplomatic
visits with Caddo, Wichita, and Quapaw groups, Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe
visited native groups in the vicinity of New Orleans in 1722, and he described the
Washa and Chawasha as “wandering people of the seacoast” (Swanton 1911:30).
Similarly, Lieutenant Jean-François-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny wrote in his
memoirs of life in the French colony of Louisiana during the 1720s and 1730s,
“The Indians [of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi] live in the prairies or in the
midst of the forests, and even on the shore of the sea. Some of the former have
no permanent dwellings and so are called itinerant Indians, but others have fine
villages” (Sayre and Zecher 2012:337). This characterization broadly fits other
documentary evidence about the shifting settlements and shifting alliances of
native groups in the Mississippi River Delta during the late 1600s and early 1700s
(Giardino 1984:237–242; Sayre and Zecher 2012:336–337). The sequential or simul-
taneous occupation of particular sites by different native groups may have been
related to the fact that there is relatively little habitable dry land in southeastern
Louisiana relative to the size of marshes and other wetlands (Giardino 1984:240).
The periodic inundation of many areas of southeastern Louisiana may have con-
tributed to the apparently greater emphasis on hunting and gathering by these
“wandering peoples of the seacoast” than the emphasis on farming farther north
in the Lower Mississippi Valley and in other areas of the Gulf South. This point
notwithstanding, there were some large, permanent settlements in southeastern
Louisiana during the postcontact period, and there were Native American settle-
ments at mound sites, such as Gibson, Dulac, and Sims (Giardino 1984:257).
Several mounds attributed to the Plaquemine culture are located in the Atcha-
falaya Basin, near the western edge of the Lower Mississippi Valley, within the
historic Chitimacha homeland (Rees 2007). Many of these sites were built during the
late Coles Creek or early Mississippi periods (Rees 2007:88–89), with diverse combi-
nations of earthen mounds, plazas, causeways, and ridges at different sites, as well
as varying arrangements of mounds relative to adjacent bayous (Rees 2007:90–91).
There is no evidence that the Chitimacha or other groups in southeastern Louisiana
built mounds during the period after European contact—as did people at the Jordan
site and perhaps elsewhere in northeastern Louisiana (Kidder 1992a; Kidder and
Saucier 1991)—but the historic Chitimachas, Washas, Chawashas, and neighboring
groups inherited a landscape dotted with earthen mounds and, in cases such as the
Grand Temple Mound beside the outlet of Bayou des Allemands at Lake Salvador,
monumental accumulations of shell (Shuman 2007:98–99).
Native American Oral Tradition
During the eighteenth century, coastal areas of southeastern Louisiana

were home to several culturally related native groups, including the Washas, Cha-
washas, and Chitimachas (Giardino 1984; Swanton 1911, 1946, 1952). These groups
were distinct sociopolitical entities and communities, but they lived in similar
environmental settings, they spoke related languages, and they had a shared
cultural history (Brightman 2004; Goddard et al. 2004; Goins and Caldwell 1995;
Kniffen 1976; Kniffen et al. 1987; Kniffen and Hilliard 1988; McWilliams 1953, 1981).
Other groups in southeastern Louisiana include the Acolapissas, Bayagoulas, and
Houmas, speakers of Muskogean languages, which are different than Chitimichan
(Campisi 2004; Guevin 1987; Martin 2004; Read 2008). Members of many of these
groups became absorbed within the Chitimacha community, and Chitimacha
ways of life endured through the 1800s and 1900s, thus there are written accounts
of Chitimacha oral tradition (Brightman 2004; Gregory 2004).
One Chitimacha myth, “The Creation” (Judson 1914:5–7), describes how land
and people were first made when the Earth was covered with water.
When the Earth was first made, the Creator of All Things placed it un-
der water. The fish were first created. But when the Creator wanted to
make men, there was no dry land. Therefore Crawfish was sent down
to bring up a little earth. He brought up mud in his claws. Immediately
it spread out and the earth appeared above the waters [Judson 1914:5].
One point of interest here is the reference to the crawfish bringing up
mud from the bottom of the water to make dry land. Of course, rivers still create
landforms by depositing sediments on natural levees. The reference here to the
mud and earth “spreading out” is analogous to the geomorphological processes re-
sponsible for creating natural levees and crevasse splays. It is tempting to broaden
this analogy to the Mississippi River Delta as a whole, in that fluvial deposits are
constantly forming new land along the lower reaches of the Mississippi River.
Much of the land in southeastern Louisiana has been formed within the past 5,000
years, largely from sediments delivered and deposited by the Mississippi River.
Not only does the earth spread out through natural processes, such as the forma-
tion of crevasse splays and natural levees, but also through the cultural practices
associated with building earthen mounds. According to cosmogonic myths attrib-
uted to the Cherokee and other Native American groups in the American South,
mounds are earth icons (Knight 1986, 2006), and following the Chitimacha origin
myth excerpted here, mound building reenacts the construction of the Earth itself
by the mythical crawfish.
Another Chitimacha myth, “The Flood” (Judson 1914:19), explains the process
of land emerging out of water after an episode of flooding. “When the waters
sank, he [the red-headed woodpecker] was sent to find land. He could find none.
Then a dove was sent and came back with a grain of sand. This sand was placed
on top of the great waters and immediately it stretched out. It became dry land”
(Judson 1914:19). Here again is a reference to land spreading out, like the reference
in the Chitimacha origin myth to land spreading out after the crawfish brought
mud up from under the water. Mounds were artificial “dry land,” although they
probably originated as basketloads rather than as grains of sand. It is possible
that the flood here refers to a flood of a biblical sort, but flooding does happen in
southern Louisiana, of course, quite often. After floods, dry land, perhaps includ-
ing mounds or areas around them, would have been well known to people living
in the vicinity, and they may have been places of refuge or temporary settlement
when floodwaters or threats of flooding were present.
References in Chitimacha oral tradition to land spreading out are analogous
to the processes by which natural landforms develop in coastal and wetland envi-
ronments like those of Louisiana, and perhaps they can also be seen as parallels to
mound building. From this perspective, mounds mark permanent and persistent
places in the landscape, they represent dry land surrounded by wetlands, and
they represent world symbols and Earth icons. Across much of the Mississippian
southeast, including areas in the Lower Mississippi Valley, platform mounds were
built at the centers of large, permanent towns, and they materialized enduring
attachments between towns and particular places. Within the wetlands of coastal
Louisiana and within the shifting settlement patterns of native groups in the
Mississippi River Delta, sites with mounds were persistent monumental places,
and they rooted Native American groups within an ever-changing landscape.
More broadly, references in Chitimacha oral tradition to land spreading out
demonstrate similarities with Earth Diver myths in several Native American
traditions (Dundes 1984; Kidder 2012:467; Kongas 1960; Rooth 1957). In the Chiti-
macha case, the Earth Diver is the crawfish, bringing earth up from the bottom of
the water that formerly covered the entire world (Judson 1914:5). In the Cherokee
case, the Earth Diver is the water beetle, the “grandchild” of the beaver (Mooney
1900:239). Earth Divers known to other native groups in northern North America
include muskrats and ducks, and those in western North America are turtles. The
prevalence of Earth Diver myths in Native North America probably reflects the
great antiquity of this theme in Native American mythology and cosmology, but
it also fits comfortably within the dynamics of landscape and water in the Mis-
sissippi River Delta and coastal Louisiana.
Archaeological sites and oral traditions are both palimpsests that ac-
cumulate during the course of long periods of time. Both Chitimacha oral tra-
dition and archaeology in the Mississippi River Delta demonstrate resilience
of settlement within the dynamic landscape of southeastern Louisiana in the
following respects. First, Chitimacha oral tradition refers to earth forming in
ways analogous both to Native American mound-building practices that have
a very long history in Louisiana and to the geological processes through which
land has been formed along the lower reaches of the Mississippi River. These
Chitimacha myths refer to land emerging from water and to the persistence (or
stability and transformation) of people and places in Louisiana in the aftermath
of disturbances, such as periodic flooding. Mound building in coastal Louisiana
and along the lower reaches of the Mississippi River reenacted the emergence of
land out of water, and following the perspective that Native American earthen
mounds in southeastern North America are earth icons (Kidder 2012; Knight
2006; Rees 2012), mounds in southeastern Louisiana can also be seen as persistent
monumental places that created permanence in dynamic riverine and estuarine
environments. Meanwhile, the broader long-term trends outlined in our sum-

mary here of the cultural sequence in Louisiana and the Mississippi River Delta
(see Figure 14-2) likewise demonstrate the long-term development of resilience
within Native American settlements, subsistence practices, and social structure.
Although domesticated crops, such as maize, became important food sources
by the fifteenth century, cultigens may not have been as important nor as wide-
spread as they were farther north in the Mississippi Valley and other areas of
eastern North America (Listi 2013:124). Maintaining the practice of or at least the
option of foraging for food may have been helpful to people living in an environ-
ment affected by periodic episodes of severe storms and flooding and in an envi-
ronment in which large areas of land are periodically or permanently inundated
by water. Meanwhile, hunting, gathering, and fishing could potentially generate
large surpluses in the productive environment of southeastern Louisiana. Foraging
could also generate immediate returns, rather than or in addition to the delayed
returns of cultivating and harvesting crops. These practices promoted stability
and resilience in an environment affected greatly by the dynamics of long-term
shifts in the courses of streams, cycles in the formation and abandonment of deltaic
lobes, and shorter-term cycles of storms and floods.
Permanent and persistent places within such a dynamic landscape likewise
promoted stability and resilience. Earthworks are present at many sites in south-
eastern Louisiana (see Figure 14-2), and these loci can be identified as persistent
monumental places (Thompson and Pluckhahn 2011). Not all such sites began as
monuments, and there were occupations predating several mounds, sometimes
with mounds built atop midden deposits from those preceding occupations.
Mound building was analogous to the natural processes by which rivers create
levees and other landforms in southeastern Louisiana, and mound building was
also analogous to the emergence of land out of water as outlined in Chitimacha oral
tradition. Mounds themselves and other kinds of persistent places that may have
been present in this landscape probably became resources that complemented
others available to people whose subsistence practices included plant cultivation,
hunting, gathering, and fishing.
The environment in southeastern Louisiana is shaped largely by water and
weather, both of which are forces of change and disturbance. The changing courses
of streams, the deposition of natural levees, the formation and abandonment of
deltaic lobes, fluctuations in sea levels, and episodic events, such as hurricanes
and floods, all generate instability. Permanent and persistent places within such a
dynamic landscape promoted stability and resilience, as did subsistence practices,
and modes of social and political organization that did not emphasize differentia-
tion, hierarchy, and centralization.
Descriptions of abandoned villages in coastal Louisiana and Mississippi
and characterizations by eighteenth-century French colonists of native groups
along the northern Gulf Coast as “wandering tribes of the seacoast” and “itiner-
ant Indians” reflect, in part, the devastating and disruptive impacts of European
contact through warfare, disease epidemics, and the Native American slave trade.
It may also be the case that the shifting locations of settlements and shifting social
configurations seen in the Mississippi River Delta and surrounding areas during
the late 1600s and early 1700s reflect, in part, an adaptation to life in an environ-
ment that was vulnerable to dramatic, long-term changes and periodic, short-term
disruptions by cycles of storms and flooding. The long history of Native American
settlements and societies in this kind of environment in southeastern Louisiana
probably guided responses by native groups to early episodes of French contact
and colonialism and the forces of disturbance and disruption unleashed by them.
Acknowledgments
Thanks for contributions, comments, and encouragement from Ronald

K. “Sonny” Faulseit, Heather Lapham, Paul Welch, Brian Butler, Mark Rees, Rob
Mann, Torbjörn Törnqvist, Zhixiong Shen, Dan Healan, William Balee, Carole
Crumley, Victor Thompson, Tom Pluckhahn, Vin Steponaitis, Ian Brown, Tris-
tram Kidder, Kevin Gotham, Richard Marksbury, Marco Giardino, Dave Davis,
Dennis Jones, Cheraki Williams, Rachel Watson, and Chip McGimsey. Thanks
to the Center for Archaeological Investigations at Southern Illinois University
Carbondale for hosting the conference at which this paper was first given. Bryan
Haley helped compile data about hurricane frequency along the Gulf Coast.
Cheraki Williams, Rachel Watson, Chip McGimsey, and the Louisiana Division
of Archaeology provided access to data from the state site file database about
archaeological sites in southeastern Louisiana. Support for this research comes
from the Louisiana Board of Regents; the Louisiana Division of Archaeology;
and the Department of Anthropology, the Center for Archaeology, the School
of Liberal Arts, and the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane Uni-
versity. Any problems with this paper are the responsibility of the authors and,
principally, the lead author.
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15. Political Economy and
Craft Production before
and after the Collapse of
Mississippian Chiefdoms
Maureen Meyers
Abstract: This paper traces the change in structures used for trade during the
late prehistoric Mississippian and early historic period in the Southern Ap-
palachian Southeastern region. Certain houses were used for exchange dur-
ing the late prehistoric period in this region, and in some ways, particularly
size and location, they resemble later historic Cherokee council houses. Thus,
there appears to be a material correlate of exchange that in some ways stays
constant throughout time in the region, despite the collapse of Southeastern
chiefdoms and the rise of the so-called Civilized Tribes. There is constancy in
the presence of a place of exchange; however, how and why that place is used
differ because the nature of exchange was different between the prehistoric
and historic periods. During the Mississippian period, it served to reinforce
chiefly power while also providing a public space for communal feasting.
After contact, exchange was done on a more individual basis, yet community
was maintained through the use of council houses. Understanding how na-
tive economies transformed in this region will help us understand how they
operated both before and after collapse in the Southeast. This research will
provide specific examples of structures used for exchange prehistorically and
historically and identify the role of the individual and the community in the
maintenance of exchange systems over time.

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
380
Political Economy and Craft Production 381
In 1787 Thomas Jefferson excavated a mound on his property along the

Rivanna River near present-day Charlottesville, Virginia (Jefferson [1785] 1964).
He speculated about the meaning and use of this and similar mounds and went
so far as to recall “a party passing, about thirty years ago, through the part of the
country where this barrow is, went through the woods directly to it, without any
instructions or enquiry, and having staid about it some time, with expressions
which were construed to be those of sorrow, they returned to the high road . . . and
pursued their journey” (1964:95–96). Jefferson wondered why the memory of past
lifeways lingered on for some natives, that is, why cultural resiliency existed for
native groups. There is a long history in the Southeast of the examination of this
question, beginning with the reconstruction of the De Soto entrada (expedition)
and ensuing Spanish explorations into the region (Ethridge and Hudson 2002;
Hudson 1976, 1990, 1997; Hudson and Tesser 1994) but also including more recent
studies of postcontact native societies (Lapham 2005; Marcoux 2010); changing
economies after contact (Saunt 1999), and far-reaching consequences of slaving on
native cultures and economies (Ethridge and Shuck-Hall 2009). One major question
raised by this research is, how similar were historic native tribes to their prehistoric
Mississippian ancestors? Asking such a question speaks to larger anthropologi-
cal questions, namely, what parts of culture are resilient after collapse, and why?
This chapter examines changes between Mississippian and postcontact native
groups in the Southern Appalachian region, specifically with regard to the ways
in which their modes of production were organized and how the organization of
production in each society operated to exacerbate or minimize tensions between
those with greater access to resources and those without such access. For Missis-
sippian cultures, this is more easily identified as elites vs. nonelites, but the use
of such terminology is misplaced for historic native groups. Yet, the same tension
was present. This tension can manifest itself as one between the community as
a whole and those few members of the community who attain power over that
community. In this study, during both time periods, power was attained through
manipulating production so as to increase power.
Individual Power vs. Community Power
Mills (2004) suggests a tension exists in chiefdom societies between

elites and the large community, and this tension is often most pronounced at the
formation of a chiefdom. The chief walks a tight line in a chiefdom by trying to
convince the members of his community that they are not losing their own power
by giving him more power. He is well aware that they can vote with their feet.
That is, if a chief obtains too much power without adequately providing for the
community’s needs (and these needs are both tangible and intangible), without
convincing them it is worth ceding him their own power, then they can leave him,
thereby, ironically, leaving him powerless.
Therefore, the chief must provide tangible and intangible value for the com-
munity to make himself worthy in their eyes to be chief—whether they realize it
or not. In fact, it may work better if they do not consciously realize it. Blitz (1993a)
382 M. Meyers
notes that as maize production intensified in the central Tombigbee River Valley
of southwestern Alabama (a.d. 1000–1600) (Blitz 1991) at the same time that small,
dispersed farmsteads located around chiefly centers (Blitz 1993a:81). This settle-
ment pattern change allowed labor to be reorganized to accommodate intensified
maize production. Ceramic vessel analyses revealed little significant difference
between the mound and village remains in terms of decoration, ware, and vessel
shape (Blitz 1993a:93), yet faunal and architectural data suggest that feasts and
large-scale food storage were held on mounds. That is, there were differences be-
tween mound and village contexts, but they were subtle, leading Blitz (1993b:93)
to conclude that “the person standing in the maize field in June may have been the
same individual who consumed ‘choice cuts’ of venison with kin in a ceremonial
building atop a mound at the local center in December.” Individuals who could
make use of their multiple statuses might be able to, over time, increase their
social status within the community, although at other centers in the Mississip-
pian Southeast, like Cahokia (Pauketat 1994), the differences between elites and
commoners were much more explicit and likely caused more obvious tensions
between these two groups. Whether the differences between the elite and the
commoner in Southeastern chiefdoms were great or minimal, differences in social
status generate tension, and such tension needs to be negotiated between leaders
and the community in order for the chief to maintain and increase his power.
If such tensions are present, they can be manifested in multiple ways; one
way is through economic control, specifically through the organization of labor.
Labor can be organized by an elite or a small group of elites, but it can also be
organized at the household level. Elite control of organized labor can include the
production of craft goods, usually for exchange. This particular control of labor
by elites is more likely to increase tension with a community because the pro-
duction of goods appears to more directly benefit the chief, while benefits to the
community through the production of goods may not be clear to the community
or may not even exist. The organization of labor at the household level benefits
individual households but if successful, also creates tension between those indi-
vidual households and the larger community in which those households reside.
In the Southeast both during and after the Mississippian period, there is a
tension present between individuals and the community. During prehistoric times,
that tension exists at different levels between elites and communities and is a result
in part of elite control of the production of nonutilitarian goods.1 Production and
exchange of such goods more apparently benefit the chief instead of the community,
and the chief must ameliorate this tension in some way. During the historic period,
individual households controlled their own labor and production; however, they
operated in a capitalist economy, and as a result, household success could be in op-
position to community success. For both periods, tension between individuals and
households is a constant, although it operates in different political economies. Cul-
tural resiliency can manifest itself through that persistent tension. This can be iden-
tified archaeologically through remains of craft production at different levels (elite
and individual households) and through structural remains of public buildings.
In this chapter, I examine evidence for craft production at three Missis-
sippian sites in the Southern Appalachian region: Carter Robinson (located in
Figure 15-1. Location of Southern Appalachian region sites discussed in text.
southwestern Virginia), Toqua (located in eastern Tennessee), and Little Egypt

(located in northwest Georgia). Craft production is identified through artifactual
and structural remains at these sites. These data are contrasted with evidence for
craft production of deerskin at historic native sites in the same region. The evidence
for elite power contrasted with community integration is based on structural
remains at both prehistoric and historic sites.
Archaeological Evidence: Carter Robinson, Toqua, and

Little Egypt
The three prehistoric examples used here are the sites of Carter Robin-
son, Toqua, and Little Egypt (Figure 15-1). Carter Robinson was occupied during
the fourteenth century and is a frontier chiefdom located on the northwest edge
of the Mississippian world (Meyers 2011). Toqua is a large, multimound, middle
and late Mississippian period site located in eastern Tennessee (Polhemus 1987).
Little Egypt is located in northwestern Georgia, was occupied during the middle
and late Mississippian periods, and consists of a large village and two mounds
(Gougeon 2002; Hally 1980a, 1981, 1986). I present evidence for labor organization of
craft production and tension between those with and without power at these sites.
Before presenting the evidence for craft production, I want to clarify what I
mean by this term. Craft specialization has been viewed as a marker of state-level
formation (Helms 1992), where craft specialists are persons employed in the pro-
duction of particular crafts on a full-time basis. For such persons, craft production
is their livelihood, which means they are often under the control of elites who
then own these goods and often trade or use them in sacred rituals, both of which
384 M. Meyers
Figure 15-2. Plan view of Carter Robinson excavations showing Structures

1 (A), 2 (C), 3 (B), and 4 (A). (Adapted from Meyers 2011.)
increase chiefly power. More recently, archaeologists have recognized a range of

specialization exists in prestate societies (Brumfiel and Earle 1987; Costin 1998;
Shimada 2007). Cobb (2000:36) notes that craft specialization should be understood
in the broader context of a culture’s political economy. Specifically, as a form of
production, specialization must be “examined within the wider arena of social
relations that constitute the labor process” (Cobb 2000:36). With this in mind, a
different type of craft specialization can be identified that I term craft production,
or the production of crafts on a part-time basis. In craft-production activities, the
labor used to create goods may or may not be controlled by someone else; how-
ever, a chief probably profits in some way from the production of crafts. One
defining difference between craft production and craft specialization is that craft
production is done in conjunction with other tasks and therefore does not need to
be done on a full-time basis. As a result, there is a decrease in control over craft
production by a central leader and an increase in control over that production by
either individuals or households. Although craft production is a different form of
production, it can (but does not necessarily) lead to craft specialization. In terms
of hierarchical societies in which hierarchy is not fully institutionalized, craft
production can be used, likely in conjunction with other strategies, by elites to
increase their own status. Indeed, they or members of their households may be
producing the crafts on a part-time basis.
Table 15-1. Vessel Types Found in Carter Robinson Structures
Structure
Vessel Form 1 2 3 4 Total
Bowl 25 1 3 8 37
Jar 11 2 – 8 21
Pan 2 – – – 2
Plate – – – 1 1
Total 38 3 3 17 61
Source: Adapted from Meyers 2011.
Carter Robinson
Excavations at the Carter Robinson site identified remains of five struc-
tures (Meyers 2011) (Figure 15-2). Of these, Structure 3 appears to be an earlier
wall-trench structure with few artifact remains—evidence suggests it was swept
clean of debris before abandonment. Three other structures (1, 2, and 4) are later,
single-set post structures. A fifth structure is based on remains identified from
limited excavations on the southern flank of the mound, which included a hearth
and postmolds; the entire footprint of this fifth structure was not uncovered, so
little is known about its time period or length of occupation. Structures 1 and 4
were occupied at the same time; Structure 2 has evidence of multiple rebuilding
episodes; its latter occupation is contemporaneous with Structures 1 and 4.
Structure 1 is different from the other structures in multiple ways. First, it is
located closest to the mound. Second, it is larger than the other structures at the
site. Third, it lacks a hearth. Related to this lack of a hearth is a difference in the
types of ceramic remains found in Structure 1 as compared to Structures 2, 3, and
4. Structure 1 contains significantly more bowls than the other structures (Table
15-1); jars and pans were the other vessel types recovered from Structure 1. These
data suggest Structure 1 was used in a different way from the other structures
at Carter Robinson.
Three structures at the site, 1, 3, and 4, contain evidence of craft production.
Structure 3 contained 16 drills and a broken cannel coal pendant; as stated above,
Structure 3 appears to have been cleaned before abandonment, so additional
evidence of craft production may be missing. Structure 4 contained two tools
(a graver and a chisel), as well as six shell cutting-edge tools although no beads.
Structure 1 contains evidence of all stages of shell bead production. These stages
are represented by the presence of finished beads, unfinished (i.e., unpolished,
partially cut, or broken) beads, shell debris with cut marks, cutting-edge tools,
shell tool fragments, and drilled shell debris. As compared to the other structures,
85 percent of the tools and beads found at the site are located in Structure 1.
Remains within the structure provide additional evidence of craft production.
Two features in Structure 1, Features 100 and 106 (see Figure 15-2), are identified
386 M. Meyers
as shell bead production and end-stage processing areas, based on their size,
location in the structure, and the remains of beads, polishing stones, drills, grav-
ers, and mussel shell fragments found within these features. Of the two features,
Feature 100 is larger. Analysis of ceramics from the feature indicates it was used
continuously throughout the structure’s occupation. By contrast, analysis of ce-
ramics from the smaller Feature 106 indicates its use dates to the second part of
structure occupation.
In addition, the presence of tools in Structure 1, specifically, drills and polish-
ing tools, are evidence craft production. As compared to the other three structures,
Structure 1 has the greatest variety and quantity of tool types. In particular, this
structure has the most drills, points/drills (drills created from projectile points),
celts, chisels, hammerstones, and a tool assemblage that indicates the production
of beads occurred in Structure 1 in larger quantities than in other structures.
Particularly noteworthy is the large number of drills, over 40, recovered from
Structure 1. Further, there is an absence of domestic objects (bannerstones and
mortar and pestle) in Structure 1 that are present in the other structures, indicating
a different use for this structure as compared to the others. Overall, the evidence
indicates that shell bead production was focused around Features 100 and 106 in
Structure 1, and craft production was not a focus of other structures uncovered
at the site to the same degree.
Toqua
Excavations at the Toqua site (Figure 15-3) in eastern Tennessee identi-
fied a total of 133 structures (Polhemus 1987). Of these, 87 (65 percent) dated to the
later Dallas period, which is indicated by the presence of single-set (as opposed to
wall-trench) structures. Four types of Dallas-phase structures were identified by
Polhemus (see Figure 15-3). Type 4a is a primary domestic structure with public
and private areas. A total of 59 structures (68 percent of all Dallas-phase structures)
of this type were identified. Type 4b is a rectangular structure of single-set post
construction with eight main roof supports; as a result of the increased number
of roof supports, the roof is more substantial, and the building overall is larger.
One example of this type was identified. Type 5a structures (11 percent of all
Dallas-phase structures) are small, single-set, post, rectangular structures with
large postholes and surface-fired areas and were often associated with Type 4a
structures. Polhemus (1987:241) interprets them as “semiopen sheds utilized for
cooking, food processing, and perhaps grain storage.” Type 5b structures are
large, open shed or portico, rectangular buildings, interpreted as public build-
ings. Thirteen such structures were identified (15 percent of the all Dallas-phase
structures), and all but one is found on Mound A; the one exception, Structure 132,
is located on the Mound A platform. Their location suggests they are associated
with individuals of high status (Polhemus 1987:241).
Of the Type 4a structures, or the primary domestic structures identified at
the site, floor areas of these structures range from 211 to 1,444 ft2. Some differ-
ences in structure size are apparent across the site. For example, those located in
the West Village area are smaller (average 378.5 ft2) than those in the village area
Figure 15-3. Approximate location of Structure 3 and Mounds A and B at Toqua

(A) and structure-type floor plan (B). (Adapted from Polhemus 1987:6, 232.)
(average 496.5 ft2), and those on the summit of Mound A are much larger (aver-
age 736.9 ft2). Polhemus (1987:222) was able to distinguish between Dallas-phase
domestic structures and public buildings; the differences are “reflected in size and
relative interior elaboration rather than basic technological attributes.” Of all the
primary domestic structures, two are different from the other Type 4a structures:
Structures 3 and 14. Structure 3 is located on Mound A platform; Structure 14 is
located on Mound A.
Polhemus (1987:284) identified a number of features in Structure 14 that dif-
ferentiate it from other domestic primary structures found in nonmound locations.
These include a greater percentage of public floor space within the structure, a
raised clay dais with clay partitions, and a greater size of the structure. Combined
with its location and contents, these factors indicate the structure was different. Its
location atop the mound, combined with its similarity to other domestic primary
structures in terms of basic shape, presence of a hearth, and presence of beds that
could accommodate four individuals, suggest it is a chiefly residence. There is
388 M. Meyers
evidence in this structure of shell working. Two clusters of beads are present in
restricted locations in the structure, along with drills.
Structure 3 is also a large structure located close to Mound A, on its platform,
and contains evidence of a large flintknapping workshop (Polhemus 1987). Exca-
vation showed that throughout the Dallas phase, a structure was always present
in this location (Polhemus 1987:257), as indicated by repeated hearths in the same
area of the structure. Unlike the Carter Robinson structure, this structure does
contain a hearth; however, other archaeological evidence revealed differences from
other structures at the site. It was located on a platform which was “made up of a
succession of structures having encompassing clay embankments, within which
a leveling fill was added following the destruction of each successive structure”
(Polhemus 1987:257). Only the upper floor level contained cultural material. At
this level, a clay-faced bench was located along each wall with clay partition walls.
Polhemus (1987:258) notes the structural differences of Structure 3.
The structure is approximately 38 ft square situated on a secondary
platform at the foot of the north face of Mound a and displays a num-
ber of architectural elaborations which differentiate Structure 3 from
domestic primary structures in the surrounding villages. The greater
percentage of public floor space, that area encompassed by the main
roof supports, and the more formal clay facing to the partitioned beds
or benches fronting the public floor area suggest a more public function
for the structure. The greater size and specific location also suggest a
specialized function.
The patterning of various materials within the structure provides evi-
dence that it was used differently from other structures. Faunal and botanical
materials were primarily located in front of the bed and/or bench on the east
wall, with smaller amounts in other parts of the structure (Polhemus 1987:258).
The same patterning is true of the lithic debitage recovered; the quantity of lithic
debitage recovered is evidence of craft production occurring here. A substantially
larger amount of debitage (over 60,000 pieces) as compared to other structures
at the site was recovered here; these pieces represented all stages of projectile-
point production. In addition to a diverse tool assemblage, worked bone and shell
were recovered, the latter also concentrated on the east wall. Additionally, “two
grooved stone hammer or club heads were found near the northeast main roof
support” (Polhemus 1987:259). With regard to the evidence for craft production,
specifically, flintknapping, Polhemus described Structure 3 as “the best example
of Dallas Mississippian flintknapping known and one of the better examples of a
Mississippian workshop in the Southeast” (1987:895). No other structure at Toqua
contained evidence of flintknapping on such a large scale.
Evidence for domestic occupation of Structure 3 is unclear. A hearth is present
throughout multiple rebuilding episodes dating to the Dallas phase. Faunal and
botanical materials are present and focused along the east wall of the structure.
Although over 24,000 sherds were recovered here, most were quite small (less than
.5 in in diameter), indicating breakage and/or trampling of vessels had occurred.
Sherds were recovered across the structure but were more heavily concentrated on
the eastern side (60 percent of total number of sherds (Polhemus 1987:Figure 5.15).
Few of these were able to be cross-mended; of those that were, the following vessel
forms were identified and included, by order of frequency (Polhemus 1987:259): jars
(n = 117), simple bowls (n = 32), cazuela bowls (n = 14), two colanders, and a double
bowl. None of these were cooking vessels. Most of the vessels (68 percent of the jars,
59 percent of the bowls, and 85 percent of the cazuela bowls) were located on the
eastern half of the structure (Polhemus 1987:Figure 5.15). Structure 3 is associated
with a Type 5b structure, Structure 132 (Polhemus 1987:375–376). This portico-like,
open, rectangular structure was associated with Structure 3 over multiple rebuild-
ing episodes. It contained a single burial with the remains of seven individuals.
A third structure, Structure 51, also located on Mound A, is noteworthy in
that it was likely a public building. A large rectangular structure with eight main
roof supports, it is the only one of its kind at Toqua. The large number of interior
postholes (Polhemus 1987:322) indicates replacement of interior benches occurred
on a frequent basis. This building is both large and substantial and likely served
a public function within the community. No evidence of craft production was
found here.
In sum, Toqua contained a large amount of structures, mostly domestic, but
also some nondomestic structures for special use. These include Structures 3 and 14,
both containing evidence of craft production; Structure 132, a portico-like structure
associated over time with Structure 3; and Structure 51, a probable public building.
Little Egypt
The Little Egypt site (Figure 15-4) in northwestern Georgia is located
on the Coosawattee River at its confluence with Talking Rock Creek (Gougeon
2002:22; Hally 1980a, 1980b). This multicomponent site contains evidence of an
Archaic occupation, but its most substantial occupation was during the Little
Egypt (a.d. 1350–1475) and Barnett phases (a.d. 1475–1575) of the Late Mississippian
period (Gougeon 2002:25). During the former stage, Mound A was constructed,
and four stages were completed. During the latter stage, the site was expanded,
and a second mound constructed. Excavations between 1969 and 1972 by Hally
(1980a, 1980b) identified three domestic structures (1, 2, and 3). Piece-plotting of
artifacts was done of the intact floors of Structures 1 and 2.
Structure 1 (see Figure 15-4) was a large structure (32 ft by 30 ft; 960 ft2 of
floor space) (Gougeon 2002:32) located on a low terrace or earthen platform on the
east side of Mound A (Gougeon 2002:31). This terrace was approximately 2 ft (60
cm) tall and was attached to the mound. The structure itself was dug into a basin
dug into the terrace and likely had only one construction stage (Gougeon 2002:32),
based on the single-construction stage of a central hearth and the presence of
one set of exterior wall posts. The structure appears to have been destroyed by
fire. Multiple partition walls extended from the outer walls to the central posts
(Gougeon 2002:34), and there was an entrance on the east corner.
Ceramic sherds were found across the structure floor but were concentrated
in the west, north, and east corners. A total of 22 whole or partial vessels were
recovered (Gougeon 2002:95) and included 11 jars, four rim bowls, six carinated
390 M. Meyers
Figure 15-4. Approximate location of mounds and structures at Little Egypt

site (A) and plan view of Structure 1 (B). (Adapted from Gougeon 2002:29, 33.)
bowls, and a large pinched-rim fragment, interpreted by Hally (1983) as a griddle.

Debitage was concentrated along the northeastern wall (over 440 flakes), and
21 tools (projectile points or knives) were recovered in the northeast part of the
structure, with others (n = 8) around the structure (Gougeon 2002:97–98). Grind-
ing and percussion tools were also concentrated in the northeast area. Botanical
remains included corn from a few areas of the structure, as well as hickory shell
nut fragments, as well as other remains, including acorn shell, walnut, and butter-
nut. Pigment remains recovered from the structure included graphite, magnetite,
hematite, and possibly limestone (Gougeon 2002:88).
Faunal remains included varying amounts of white-tailed-deer remains
found across the structure in concentrated amounts and included six partial deer
skulls (see below). Bear remains were more limited, but as Gougeon (2002:109)
points out, they overlap with deer in some areas. Other, smaller mammal remains
(opossum, raccoon, river otter, canines, and rodents) were found north and south
of the hearth (Gougeon 2002:109), and multiple species of turtle were also present,
as well as birds and snakes.
Craft production in this structure may be indicated by the presence of deer
remains that suggest the processing of deer hides was a primary activity here.
Six partial deer skulls were recovered and included only elements from the back
half of the cranium (Gougeon 2002:93), which “suggests that brains for tanning
hides were brought back to the structure in their original containers.” Gougeon
(2002:93) elaborates.
One partial deer skull consisted of bases of both antlers and large
portions of the top of the skull cap. These fragments exhibit wear pat-
terns that may be the result of hide-working activities. The fronts of
both bases are worn quite smooth. The top of the deer skull may have
been held in the hand and used to break the fibers of hides, and over
time caused the polished, abraded areas observed on the antler bases.
His analysis indicates these were present in what he interprets as a processing

area where females worked. In addition to the deer, a substantial amount of bear
elements, particularly bear jaw and jaw elements, was found in the structure,
which led Hally (1980b:588) to state this “suggests that the bear remains were
brought to the site for reasons other than subsistence.”
Structure 2 was located in the presumed village and was rebuilt at least once
and possibly twice. The structure was approximately 24 by 21 ft and had 510 ft2
of floor space (Gougeon 2002:40). It did not burn, and so evidence for partition
walls in the form of deposits of daub or charred posts was not present (Gougeon
2002:40), but the piece-plotted artifacts, combined with the flotation data, suggest
the presence of at least two partition walls on the structure’s southeastern side
(Gougeon 2002:42). There were likely more, but determining their presence and
location is less certain. The structure did contain a central hearth and a thick (15
cm) and large deposit of chert debitage, as well as nonchert rocks and nonflaked
stone tools (Gougeon 2002:43). Because the structure was not burned, little botani-
cal material was recovered.
Ceramic remains from this structure were also distributed over the surface
of the floor. Twenty-one whole or partial vessels were recovered and included
pinched rim jars, carinated bowls, flaring rim bowls, and stamped jars. Flake
debitage was concentrated in the northwest part of the structure; tools were con-
centrated in the southeastern part and included 42 projectile points and/or knives
(PP/K), scrapers, and other flaked tools (Gougeon 2002:116). Corn kernels were also
recovered, in smaller amounts than Structure 1, likely because of better preserva-
tion as a result of the burning of Structure 1 (Hally 1981). Hickory, acorn, walnut,
butternut, bean, persimmon, honey locust, and other seeds were recovered. Less
deer and bear were present. Other smaller mammals, birds, turtles, and snakes
were also recovered.
Structure 3 was located in the habitation area on the south side of the plaza,
about 100 ft north of Structure 2 (Gougeon 2002:45). It measured approximately 22
ft by 20 ft with approximately 444 ft2 of floor space and was rebuilt at least twice,
with hearths associated with each rebuilding. Like Structure 1, it was destroyed
by fire. Remains of two interior partition walls were identified, and there were
likely more, based on artifact remains. Multiple vessels were located along the
north wall, and there was a distribution of flakes along the south wall. The likely
entrance was placed in the southeast corner (Gougeon 2002:48). One feature con-
tained a dense concentration of lithic materials (mostly chert) (Gougeon 2002:49)
under the southeast corner, which Hally (1980b) interpreted as a flint-working area.
Ceramics were also distributed over the floor area in this structure. Vessel
fragments were present in the north, east, and south areas and included two jars
and eight bowls (Gougeon 2002:130), as well as several vessel fragments that could
not be assigned to form. Flaked stone materials were found across the structure,
and PP/Ks were concentrated in the southeast corner (Gougeon 2002:130). Botanical
remains were similar to those found in the other two structures but also included
squash remains and seeds and a gourd fragment. Deer is present but no bear, and
raccoon, squirrel, rabbit, turtle, bird, fish and snake were recovered (Gougeon
2002:139–141). Finally, the production of stone pipes is suggested by the presence
392 M. Meyers
of unworked phylite and the presence of stone-pipe bowl-and-stem fragments,

which Gougeon (2002:176) interpreted as broken during production.
The structures at Little Egypt exemplify both difference and similarity, and
this may be related in part to status differentiation at the site. Structure 1 is dif-
ferent from the other two structures in both its location and size. Its location,
attached to Mound A on a platform, is a likely indicator of higher status. Its size
is twice that of Structures 2 and 3, and this may also indicate status differences
among the structures. Craft production, in the form of deerskins, is present in
this and not other structures. In addition, pigments are present only in Structure
1. Together, these material differences indicate status differences, as compared to
the other households. However, as Gougeon (2002:185–187) pointed out, there are
similarities among all three structures. All three contain similar layouts, particu-
larly in terms of the location of activity areas, living spaces, central hearth, and
storage areas (Gougeon 2002:185). There is little evidence, based on the botani-
cal remains, that provisioning of elites occurred at Structure 1. There is also no
evidence of the production of status items in Structure 1, and, indeed, stone-pipe
production appears to have occurred in Structure 3. Gougeon (2002:185) suggested
this site resembles Wilk’s (1983:113) closed village economy model, where social
differences are concealed; for example, house floor plans are similar, but house
sizes differ.
The three examples provided above suggest that craft production areas were
present at some mound sites in the Southern Appalachian region. Further, the
way in which these craft production sites were organized by elites varied. At
all three sites, the area of craft production is located in structures that are close
to the mound, are larger than other structures at the site, and contain evidence
of craft production. What differs is that craft production varies at each site. At
Carter Robinson, it is related to creating shell beads, objects of status. At Toqua, it
is related to flintknapping, which could be both functional and status related. At
Little Egypt, it is the production of deerskin hides. The differences likely reflect the
different roles these sites played in local and regional economies. Carter Robinson
as a frontier crafted items for trade, and there is little evidence of large-scale corn
production at the site (Meyers 2011). Meyers suggests that crafting items for trade
was a way to increase power at frontier hierarchies (Meyers 2015). Toqua was a
larger site, and the creation of utilitarian and nonutilitarian tools may have al-
lowed the elite controller of that labor (which may have been the elite person) to
meet multiple economic needs. This would have increased power for that person
by providing essential needs for the community and for elites. At Little Egypt,
differentiation is suggested by the larger size and location of the structure but
not by its layout—this makes it different from the other two sites, whose layout
and artifact remains suggest the structures were not used primarily as domestic
areas. These similarities may have served, as Gougeon (2002:185) pointed out, to
ameliorate or smooth over differences between elites and nonelites within the
community. For all three sites, it is important that craft production is set aside in
a special area for that purpose; how that craft production functions within the
community differs to some degree, but it directly relates to differential status
within communities.
Historic Period
During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the post-
contact historic period, the Cherokee native group formed in western North Caro-
lina and eastern Tennessee. In eastern Tennessee, the late prehistoric Mississip-
pian phase included the Dallas (a.d. 1300–1600) and Mouse Creek (a.d. 1400–1600)
periods (Schroedl 1998; Sullivan 1987, 1995). It is likely that some descendants of
both Mouse Creek and Dallas groups formed part of the historic Cherokee society,
as suggested by similarities in material culture between these two groups. By the
seventeenth century, many of the earlier site locations for Mouse Creek and Dallas
were abandoned, and locations closer to the mountains, along the French Broad
River, were more densely populated. Such a location may have been avoided by
settlers looking for arable agricultural land and would have afforded the Cherokee
some degree of autonomy. In western North Carolina, work by Dickens (1976) and
Keel (1976) addressed Cherokee prehistory. Dickens noted that the closest mate-
rial ties to these western Carolina sites are Dallas in Tennessee and Wilbanks in
north Georgia. Keel (1976) favored an in situ model of development for Cherokee
because of the many common elements found in prehistoric and historic sites in
the region. He agreed with Dickens’s interpretations of Cherokee ties and noted
that the Qualla phase is coeval with historic Cherokee.
More recently, Rodning (2001, 2002) examined Cherokee structures and settle-
ment patterns in the region. He focused on the site of Coweeta Creek, a large vil-
lage inhabited during the seventeenth century, and found similarities between
the Coweeta Creek town and those in surrounding regions dating to the sixteenth
century, suggesting a broad continuity in cultural ideals, which are exhibited in
town plans. Similar to the Creek, Rodning (2002) argued that not all residents of
historic Cherokee, particularly in the seventeenth century, formed one coherent
ethnic group; only at the end of the seventeenth century did the social entity
known as “Cherokee” form. Prior to this time, there was a negotiable relationship
between towns, and it appears that no one town held a special status over others.
Power was found in multiple domains; for example, women could attain power
through landholding and, later, dressing deerskins. This spread of power across
different social domains effectively prevented aspiring paramount chiefs from
forming regional polities ruled by their kin, as present during the prehistoric
Mississippian period.
Historic Native Craft Production and Settlement
Studies of historic native craft production and settlement (Lapham

2005; Marcoux 2010) demonstrate that a change in the organization of craft produc-
tion occurred after contact, which is reflected in settlement patterns. This change
both reflects the social, political, and economic changes affecting natives during
the historic period and contributed to these changes.
In southwestern Virginia, east of the Carter Robinson site, Lapham (2005)
identified changing strategies of household production of deerskin at three sites
394 M. Meyers
(see Figure 15-1). The Hoge site is the earliest occupied site, with a late fifteenth- to
mid-sixteenth-century occupation (Buchanan 1984; Jones and MacCord 2001), Crab
Orchard was occupied during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
(Egloff and Reed 1980; Jones and MacCord 2001; MacCord and Buchanan 1980),
and Trigg was the latest occupied site, during the entire seventeenth century (Boyd
1993; Buchanan 1984). Hide processing was present at all three sites but was most
intensive at the Trigg site, where it occurred among most households (Lapham
2005:139). At that site, Lapham found no specific activity areas associated with hide
processing in nonhousehold areas within the village; rather, they were found in
most household structures. She also examined the distribution of nonlocal (i.e.,
trade) goods in burials and found an increase during the seventeenth century,
“suggesting that the proportion of the population exchanging and gifting these
items had increased as well” (Lapham 2005:140). However, there is a change in
the type of mortuary goods associated with gender. During the earlier-occupied
Crab Orchard site, young men were primarily interred with marine shell; during
the later-occupied Trigg site, these burial goods expanded to include items such
as “marine shell, copper, toolkits, carnivore teeth and claw pendants, smoking
pipes, ceramic vessels, carnivore tools and toolkits” (Lapham 2005:136). Interest-
ingly, this diversity is found only among older male burials at the earlier site. She
interpreted the presence of the diverse array of nonlocal goods as an indicator
of status; however, the specific nature of that status changed. For the older men
at the earlier site, it represented ritual and spiritual connections. When younger
men were able to access these goods, it indicated a change in the way status was
attained and in what it symbolized. It provided, in Lapham’s words (2005:140), “a
new route of social mobility.” She also noted that the young men did not keep all
the nonlocal goods they obtained. Adult female and child burials contained some
nonlocal items, interpreted as the young men sharing with female kin and then
passed on to children. Through this specific sharing behavior, “young men may
have sought to strike a balance in their behavior that did not blatantly challenge
existing systems of authority but that still allowed them to gain greater social
standing, and even power, within their communities” (Lapham 2005:137).
Marcoux (2010) examined changes in the settlement pattern of late seven-
teenth- and early eighteenth-century Cherokee at the Townsend site in east Ten-
nessee (see Figure 15-1). First, an examination of the posthole patterns at this site
suggested that, unlike during the earlier Mississippian period, buildings were
repaired rather than entirely rebuilt and that the duration of Mississippian houses
was twice that of later historic Cherokee houses (Marcoux 2010:134–136). This
change in settlement strategy, where less energy was used to maintain houses and
where houses were occupied for usually only ten years, was interpreted by Marcoux
(2010:137) as “the disintegration of the physical house as a material ‘anchor’ for the
social group.” Over time, townhouses may have provided the role of providing a
stable identify for the social group, as the social entity of “Cherokee” became the
accepted social identity for this region. Marcoux interpreted the earlier Townsend
Creek site household organization as a response to Indian slave-raid attacks.
Rodning (2009, 2011b) has presented a comprehensive overview of Cherokee
council houses, based on his extensive research, as well as research of Riggs (2008)
and Schroedl (1998, 2000, 2009). Multiple historic documentary sources describe
the houses themselves and their uses (Table 15-2). They tended to be built on
high places in the center of towns, often next to plazas; could accommodate large
numbers of people; and were larger than non–council houses, according to some
reports. At least four accounts record public events occurring in council houses
and adjacent plazas, and these events could include public speaking, singing,
and dancing.
Compared to prehistoric craft-production areas, the documentary and ar-
chaeological research Rodning (2011a, b) compiled did not show evidence for craft
production. There is also little evidence for exchange. Rather, the documentary
record indicates a public use for these houses, which included “venues for diplo-
matic events, town councils, dances, feasts, and other activities that were part of
public life in Cherokee towns” (Rodning 2009:651). They were large, were located
close to the plaza, and multiple visiting European and colonial American digni-
taries met with council leaders in them. Rodning (2009:652) argued that council
houses were closely tied to town identity, that they were “symbolic manifestations
of towns,” and that “building and rebuilding Cherokee townhouses represented
the cycle of death and renewal of those towns.”
Discussion
There is a change in the organization of production of goods between

the prehistoric Mississippian and historic native periods, which reflects changes
in how status was attained and power was distributed throughout each society.
This change in status was also reflected in changes in settlement patterns, both
at the household and village levels.
During the Middle Mississippian period, the time that all three prehistoric
structures discussed here were used, prestige-goods exchange networks widened
in the larger Mississippian cultural sphere (Marcoux 2007; Welch 1991; Wilson
2001). King (2003) argued that specifically in the Southern Appalachian region,
this access to prestige-goods networks was a key factor in a change in leadership
style that occurred at this time. Access to prestige-goods networks, however, is a
tenuous way to secure power because relationships can change rapidly. A more
certain way to increase power is to produce goods for exchange. All three prehis-
toric structures contained evidence of craft production, and their location near
the mound gave chiefs control over the quantity and quality of goods produced.
It is likely that such a location indicates the ruling elite were the producers, using
craft production as another strategy for increasing chiefly power.
Historic native economies, however, were different as a result of the collapse
of Southeastern chiefdoms and the advent of the deer trade. Harmon (1986) noted
that the Lower Cherokee towns, found at the foothills of the southern Appala-
chian near the headwaters of the Savannah River, were the first in the region to
enter trade relations with the British of South Carolina (and likely Virginia; see
Bowne 2009; Meyers 2009; Shefveland 2010). The towns’ location, between Charles
Town and Upper Cherokee settlements found farther north in eastern Tennessee,
396 M. Meyers
Table 15-2. Descriptions of Cherokee Townhouses
Visitor/Account Date Description

Alexander Longe 1710–1724 Townhouse built on a “high place where their
temples is builded (sic) quite round with and
is supported with great pillars of wood, a
round hearth in the middle” “fire never goes
out” (Corkran 1969:12)
Colonel George Chicken 1714–1715; Two townhouses in one town represented

1725 two towns resettled together for defensive
purposes (Williams 1928:99)
Sir Alexander Cumming 1730 Met with leaders in townhouse, and event
included dancing, chanting, and fasting
(Randolph 1973:121; Williams 1928:124–125)
James Adair 1740s–1750s Built on hilltops; differed in dimensions and

their placement relative to other structures
(Williams 1930:453)
Reverend William Richardson 1758 Could accommodate 400 to 500 people; roof-
support posts (Williams 1931:133)
Lieutenant Henry Timberlake 1761–1762 Public event on large plaza next to townhouse;
flags flown on log posts placed beside
townhouse (symbolizing war/peace)
(Randolph 1973:149–150)
William Bartram 1775 Built on earthen mound; accommodates

several hundred people; participated in large
gathering of townspeople as part of ritual
preparation for ballgame, including public
speaking, singing, dancing, and town-elder
talk (Waselkov and Braund 1995:76–77; 84–85)
Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orleans 1797 Different sections of benches reserved for

members of different clans (visited town
of Toqua) (Schroedl 1978; Sturtevant 1978;
Williams 1928)
J. P. Evans 1835 Circular public structures used for councils

and dances; plazas formed of level ground
beside these structures; benches surrounding
central area (Evans 1979:13; Schroedl 1986:221)
allowed the Lower Creeks to act as middlemen in this exchange. During this time,
they traded deerskins for European goods. Harmon (1986) argued that the natives
used goods not to mimic European lifestyle but to maintain and improve native
lifestyles. For example, glass was used to make projectile points, as it created
technologically superior and cheap points as compared to earlier rock materials.
Other studies (Gremillion 1995) provided additional evidence that most native
groups incorporated rather than acculturated European goods. Both Hahn (2002)
and Harmon (1986) argued that by incorporating European goods into existing
lifestyles, these so-called exotic luxuries quickly became necessities. The Cherokee
became dependent on European traders for these goods.
One key difference is that the historic deerskin trade was accessible to more
individuals as compared to the elite-controlled prehistoric trade. Households, as
Lapham (2005) showed, were able to work together successfully and engage di-
rectly with Europeans via trade. Therefore, elite control of craft production was no
longer restricted to one structure or area; rather, control of production during the
historic period was located in multiple residences. Elite control of craft production
was closely allied with exchange of goods prehistorically; when control of craft
production was no longer tied to elites and one central structure, neither was ex-
change tied to elite control and a central structure. That is, individual households
could both control production and control exchange of that production. Indeed,
individual households were able to hunt deer, process deerskins, and exchange
deerskins directly with Europeans without elite oversight.
In addition to the deerskin trade, other factors affected the settlement of
historic households. The real threat of Indian slave raiding led to decreased oc-
cupation span and decreased maintenance of historic houses. Over time, this
contributed to the use of council houses as identity markers for historic towns,
as Marcoux (2010) and Rodning (2009) demonstrated. Both of these changes could
have added to a dispersement of power across households rather than concentrated
in elite control. Individual households had the ability, as shown in Lapham’s (2005)
study, to be in direct control of the deerskin trade, thereby increasing young male
power; however, that power was shared rather than concentrated. Council houses
were constructed to serve as public rather than elite structures, filling the varied
feasting, hosting, and other sociopolitical needs of the community. Craft produc-
tion does not play a role in council houses because it is done at the household
level and village wide and because new social structures do not necessitate nor
allow for elites to control it.
Summary and Conclusions
In this chapter I have presented evidence for the changing role of craft
production in prehistoric and historic Southeastern cultures. During the prehis-
toric period, craft production was under the control of elites and added to elite
power. However, it also increased tension between elites and nonelites. During
the historic period, craft production, now primarily in the form of deerskin pro-
curement, and exchange, again, that of deerskins, were not controlled by elites.
398 M. Meyers
Instead, individual households could and did own production and exchange of
deerskins. Over time, a community structure, the council house, became im-
portant to defining community identity. It may also have served a purpose of
emphasizing community over individuals, decreasing the ability of individuals
to increase power on any scale greater than the household.
In the context of cultural collapse and resiliency, the example presented here
shows that craft production was important throughout great social change, but the
way it was important changed to fit the needs of the community. During the Mis-
sissippian period, differences in status were present. At some sites, like Cahokia,
these differences were both great and reinforced by members of the community
(Pauketat 1994); at other sites, these differences were less apparent and were mini-
mized or masked by the elite (Blitz 1993a). Many Mississippian studies suggested
the masking of hierarchy was more prevalent than the blatant reinforcement of it;
masking of tensions caused by hierarchy is seen in other cultures (Mills 2004). In
the Mississippian Southeast, chiefs could use different strategies to both increase
power and mask that power, thereby minimizing tensions within the community.
During the historic period, after a period of great population loss and coalescence
(Kowalewski 2006), there is a change in economic and political strategies within
historic Cherokee communities. Instead of a focus on creating and exchanging
craft goods overseen by elites, there is a focus on adapting to a new economy that
favors individual producers of deerskin hides. Deerskin-hide production becomes
a full-time household endeavor, and one result is that many more individuals had
access to exchange than they did during the prehistoric period. Of course, what
is exchanged changes as well, and European items like glass, beads, and metal
became valued objects.
On the one hand, we can view this as a collapse of Mississippian political
economy, but perhaps it should be viewed as a change in native political economy.
Instead of emphasizing aggrandizing strategies and chiefly power, community
identity was emphasized through the construction and use of council houses,
which also served to dampen individual aggrandizing efforts. Individuals could
and did seek higher status, but this status appears to have been limited to the
household level. Native groups were undergoing multiple threats to their lifeways,
including a significant decrease in deerskins by the early eighteenth century and
forced removal by the early nineteenth century. That is, it is unknown if this
power would have remained limited at the household level. Even so, the political
context changes over time, from one that emphasized elites trying to attain and
maintain power without alienating their constituents, to one in which power can
be attained by nonelite individuals.
What is present in this example is the way cultures use one type of eco-
nomic strategy—craft production—to fit their needs over time. Specifically, the
role of craft production in power acquisition and maintenance demonstrated here
shows how cultures accommodate the tension between those with power and
those without. Southeastern cultures underwent tremendous cultural change in
a relatively short period, yet both before and after contact, craft production was
used by individuals to increase status. Different circumstances allowed status to
either be limited by the household or extend beyond the household. Looking at
these tensions playing out over time contributes to a greater understanding of

how complex societies adjudicate tensions inherent in status differences. Cultural
resiliency is identifiable through the negotiation of that tension.
Acknowledgments
The Carter Robinson excavations were supported by the National

Geographic Society, Sigma Xi, the Smithsonian Institution, and the University of
Kentucky. Ramie Gougeon generously shared his time and knowledge about the
Little Egypt site. Chris Pool is acknowledged for helpful comments about craft
specialization and craft production. Ronald “Sonny” Faulseit was a delight to
work with at every stage of this project, and I thank him for his support of this
work. All errors within are mine.
Note
1. The issue of elite control of production at Mississippian sites has been ad-
dressed in depth as one important factor in identifying the complexity of chief-
doms here. Some, like Muller (1997), interpreted the evidence to indicate a less
complex and decentralized form of leadership present, while others interpreted
it otherwise (O’Brien 1989; Pauketat 2005).
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V. Postcollapse Resilience
and Reorganization
16. Crafting a Response to Collapse:
Ceramic and Textile Production
in the Wake of Tiwanaku
State Breakdown
Nicola Sharratt
Abstract: Trade and production were particularly important for the diaspora
communities of the Tiwanaku state in the South Central Andes. The estab-
lishment of distant Tiwanaku enclaves was motivated in part by economic
demands, and these communities, located far from the Tiwanaku capital in
the altiplano, mediated and reaffirmed their ties to the state center through
the movement and production of goods. This chapter examines how crafting
activities were impacted by the violent and drawn out collapse of the state
that began around a.d. 1000. Focusing on recent excavations at a village es-
tablished by refugees fleeing the destruction of Tiwanaku state–sponsored
towns in the Moquegua Valley, this chapter explores how changes in the
political superstructure and in resource procurement affected the produc-
tion and circulation of ceramics and textiles in postcollapse communities.
Drawing on both stylistic and chemical analyses, this chapter suggests that
despite radical shifts in the wider political and economic environment, post-
collapse ceramicists and weavers found dynamic ways to reproduce earlier
material forms and that craft goods were simultaneously media through
which to reassert the rejection of elite authority and a powerful means of
reaffirming cultural identity.

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
407
408 N. Sharratt
Craft Production in Archaeology
Debates on the relationship between sociopolitical organization and

the production and circulation of goods have produced a series of definitions and
models to characterize the degree to which craft production is embedded in politi-
cal systems and controlled by elites (Brumfiel and Earle 1987; Costin and Hagstrum
1995; DeMarrais et al. 1996; Earle and Ericson 1977; Feinman 1999; Feinman and
Nicholas 2000; Janusek 1999; Oka and Kusimba 2008; Parkinson and Galaty 2009;
Peregrine 1991; Sinopli 1988). Yet, these discussions have also demonstrated the
impossibility of universally applying one straightforward correlation between
degree of political complexity and the organization of production to the past
(Feinman 1999). Further, comparative analyses of different materials reveal that
even within one political entity, the relationship between politics and production
frequently varies from craft to craft (Sinopli 1988).
This variation, as well as the importance of addressing not only the economic
and political dimensions of crafting but also the ways in which craft production is
central to the assertion, maintenance and negotiation of identities and affiliations
has received considerable attention in the context of state level societies (Costin
and Wright 1998; Feinman 1999; Janusek 2002, 2004a).
Craft Production and Collapse

When it comes to the political collapse of ancient states, concern with
the macroscale economic implications for production and exchange is evident in
two oft-cited consequences of state collapse: that state collapse is accompanied by
the disappearance of traditional exchange routes and a breakdown in regional
economic systems and that the disintegration of state authority results in a ces-
sation of craft-specialist manufacture (Renfrew 1979; Schwartz and Nichols 2006;
Tainter 1988). This chapter takes these two cross-cultural assertions as points of
departure for examining the production and circulation of craft goods before
and after the collapse of the Tiwanaku state in the South Central Andes circa
a.d. 1000.
Following a brief introduction to the Tiwanaku state, one of the earliest ex-
pansive states in the Prehispanic Andes, and to current understandings of the
collapse of Tiwanaku political authority, craft production in the aftermath of state
breakdown is considered. Pottery and woven cloth were both economically and
ideologically significant media in the Tiwanaku realm and the Prehispanic Andes
more generally. However, the context of their production and consumption dif-
fered, and as such, they represent an interesting comparison for examining the
effects of political collapse on the manufacture of different media.
Excavations undertaken between 2006 and 2012 at Tumilaca la Chimba, a
village established in the wake of Tiwanaku state collapse in southern Peru, have
produced a large corpus of ceramic data and a smaller sample of textiles. This
chapter compares stylistic and chemical analyses of these craft goods from Tumi-
laca la Chimba, as well as excavation data for their production, with ceramics and
textiles dating to the height of the Tiwanaku state. This comparison indicates that
some of the generalizations about production and exchange in the wake of political
Crafting a Response to Collapse 409
breakdown hold fast in the Tiwanaku case. Craft producers and consumers at Tu-
milaca la Chimba do appear to have faced changes in resource procurement and a
decline in the availability of imported goods, and by some measures, standards of
potting and weaving were diminished. The wider economic changes brought about
by political collapse had impacts on ceramics, which were traditionally produced
in large-scale workshops, and on textiles, which were made in domestic contexts.
However, craft goods are also a result of choices made by their producers.
These choices are certainly constrained by circumstance, but they involve deci-
sions about the messages materials should send (Costin and Wright 1998). If we
adopt the perspective advocated by Costin (1998b) and others in which “artisans
are not unthinking fabricators” (Costin 1998b:5) and attribute a degree of strategic
decision making to the potters and weavers who made the sherds and threads
under discussion, it becomes evident that craft producers in the postcollapse com-
munity at Tumilaca la Chimba found ways to reproduce material forms in spite of
changing circumstances brought about by the breakdown of the Tiwanaku state.
Yet, craft producers also discarded certain decorative elements, particularly those
most closely associated with elite authority. As such, craft goods in this collapse
context were simultaneously a powerful means of affirming cultural identity and
a medium through which to reassert the rejection of state ideology.
The Tiwanaku
The Tiwanaku emerged dominant among a number of competing poli-

ties in the harsh, cold, high-altitude environment of the Lake Titicaca basin circa
a.d. 500 in an area called the altiplano (Bauer and Stanish 2001; Janusek 2008;
Kolata 1993; Stanish 2003). Interpretations of the Tiwanaku state vary consider-
ably (Albarracin-Jordan 1996; Kolata 1993; McAndrews et al. 1997; Squier 1877), but
scholars now largely concur that Tiwanaku elites utilized long-standing Andean
concepts of reciprocity and social organization to develop a powerful and hier-
archical state (Goldstein 2005; Janusek 2004a, 2004b; Kolata 2003; Stanish 2003).
By a.d. 800, the state capital, also called Tiwanaku, situated nearly 4,000 m above
sea level, was a major urban center that was both the focus of a far-reaching ide-
ology and home to thousands of residents (Couture 2003; Couture and Sampeck
2003; Janusek 2003; Vranich 1999, 2001, 2006). State emergence and consolidation
were accompanied by the incorporation of communities in the Titicaca region and
the establishment of a four-tiered settlement hierarchy (Albarracin-Jordan 1996;
Janusek and Kolata 2003; Stanish 2002, 2003; Stanish et al. 2005). Over time, the
Tiwanaku state exerted increasing cultural, political, and economic influence over
the South Central Andes, and pockets of Tiwanaku presence are evident across
the region (Figure 16-1) (Blom et al. 1998; Goldstein 1989b, 1993b, 2005; Knudson
et al. 2004; Kolata 1993; Torres-Rouff 2008). The nature of Tiwanaku influence in
these pockets varies. In some, ties were mediated and consolidated with local elites
(Goldstein 1995; Oakland 1992; Stovel 2001; Torres and Conklin 1995). In others,
migrants from the Tiwanaku state center established colonies where they repli-
cated heartland practices and maintained close connections with the homeland.
This second approach is most clearly evident in the Moquegua Valley.
410 N. Sharratt
Figure 16-1. Tiwanaku provinces.
The Moquegua Valley

Located approximately 300 km from the Tiwanaku capital, the Mo-
quegua Valley offered economic advantages to the Tiwanaku state. With irriga-
tion, the valley is highly productive, and ideologically important crops that do
not grow in the Tiwanaku heartland thrive in Moquegua. Most notable of these
is maize, the fundamental ingredient used in the production of chicha, a corn
beer that was served in political and ritual feasts in vase-shaped ceramic vessels
called keros. Following an initial incursion by Tiwanaku pastoralists between a.d.
525 and 700, the warm, temperate Moquegua Valley was colonized by a second
wave of migrants circa a.d. 725, who established long-lasting settlements in an
area known as the middle valley (Goldstein 1985, 1989a, 1989b, 1993a, 1993b, 2000,
2005). That the inhabitants of these settlements included immigrants from the
Tiwanaku heartland is confirmed by strontium isotope data as well as by analy-
ses of nonmetric dental and cranial traits (Blom 1999; Knudson and Price 2007;
Knudson et al. 2004; Sutter 2000).
Production and circulation were at the heart of the Tiwanaku community
in the Moquegua Valley. For three centuries following the establishment of the
colonial seat, these immigrants and their descendants supplied the Tiwanaku
state center with agricultural produce and replicated the cultural traditions of
the homeland, building similar houses and religious structures to those in the
altiplano (Goldstein 1989a, 1989b, 1993b; Goldstein and Palacios 2012; Owen 2005).
Replication extended to craft goods. Polychrome ceramics recovered from Mo-
quegua Valley sites were crafted in traditional Tiwanaku forms, decorated with
motifs including trophy heads, pumas, and the Staff God. The maintenance of
homeland crafting traditions was such that many ceramics found at Tiwanaku
towns in Moquegua are visually indistinguishable from contemporaneous pottery

excavated in the state heartland (Goldstein 2005).
State Collapse
Around a.d. 1000 the Tiwanaku state began a prolonged process of
political fragmentation that was punctuated by violent episodes (Bermann et al.
1989; Graffam 1992; Janusek 2005, 2008; Kolata and Ortloff 2003; Owen 2005). The
collapse is variously attributed to drought (Kolata and Ortloff 2003), the actions of
competing polities (Williams 2002), and internal factionalism (Goldstein 2005; Ja-
nusek 2005, 2008). Political breakdown affected the capital, the hinterland, and the
colonies. At the site of Tiwanaku, large-scale construction ceased, the monumental
and residential core were largely abandoned, and elite complexes were razed to
the ground (Couture and Sampeck 2003; Janusek 2004a). In the state heartland,
there was a population decline, an increasingly dispersed settlement pattern, and
a rise in the number of small hamlets and villages (Albarracin-Jordan 1996; Bandy
2001; Bermann 1994; Janusek and Kolata 2003; Stanish 2003).
In the Moquegua Valley, political collapse was marked by similar processes.
Violent destruction was wrought on symbols of state authority and religious ideol-
ogy. In state towns, monumental architecture was attacked and torn down, elite
burials were ransacked, and idols were smashed (Goldstein 1993b, 2005). The
corporate storage facilities used to house agricultural products for the Tiwanaku
heartland were deliberately destroyed as elite authority and obligations to the
center were vehemently rejected. Populations fled Tiwanaku towns in the middle
valley and established new, smaller, often defensibly situated settlements along
the coast and up-valley from the colony’s traditional territory (Owen 2005).
Tumilaca la Chimba
Tumilaca la Chimba is one of the small villages established in the wake

of Tiwanaku state collapse in the Moquegua Valley circa a.d. 1000. Located on a
bluff overlooking the Rio Tumilaca, the site is considerably smaller than the Ti-
wanaku state–period towns in Moquegua and is organized into residential areas
and four spatially discrete cemeteries (Figure 16-2). A later occupation dating to
the Late Intermediate period (termed LIP on Figure 16-2) partially superimposes
the postcollapse structures at the site. Since 2006, four seasons of excavation in
both funerary and domestic contexts dating to the earlier postcollapse occupation
at Tumilaca la Chimba have examined the impact of collapse on daily life and
ritual practice (Sharratt 2010, 2011a, 2011b, 2012; Sharratt et al. 2012; Williams 2008).
Radiocarbon dates derived from this research indicate that these contexts date to
approximately a.d. 950–1150 (Sharratt 2011a). These dates, as well as nonmetric
dental analyses of excavated human remains, which demonstrate a biological re-
lationship with the populations that had occupied Tiwanaku towns in the middle
valley, support the hypothesis that Tumilaca la Chimba was inhabited by refugees
fleeing those towns during state collapse (Sharratt 2011a; Sutter and Sharratt 2010).
412 N. Sharratt
Figure 16-2. Tumilaca la Chimba.
Excavations at Tumilaca la Chimba have produced a large amount of pottery

and a smaller sample of textiles. In the following, the ceramic and textile data
from Tumilaca la Chimba are compared with those from state-period sites in the
Moquegua Valley. Tiwanaku is used to refer to sites and materials dating to the
height of the Tiwanaku-state occupation in the Moquegua Valley (a.d. 725–1000).
Postcollapse is used to refer to sites and materials dating to the phase immediately
following the collapse of state authority there (post–a.d. 1000).
Ceramics
During the height of Tiwanaku-state authority, ceramic production was
undertaken in workshop contexts. Evidence from the heartland sites of Tiwanaku
and Lukurmata does not fit well into models of either attached or independent
specialization. Instead, pottery was manufactured by specialists but within do-
mestic contexts, leading some scholars to argue for an intermediate category of
“embedded specialization” (Janusek 1999; Rivera 2003). In the Moquegua Valley,
no ceramic workshop has yet been identified, but given that Tiwanaku heartland
concepts of social organization were overwhelmingly replicated in Moquegua, it
seems plausible that a similar model of specialized production within the context
of extended-family organization operated.
Certainly, analyses of state-period ceramic materials from Moquegua indicate
considerable standardization in production. The most extensive analysis of Tiwan-
aku ceramic material in the Moquegua Valley has been undertaken by P. Goldstein
(1985, 1989b, 2005). Ceramic vessels from Tiwanaku sites in Moquegua were crafted
in a number of forms, including keros, tazones (flaring-sided bowls), one-handled
pitchers, and ollas (cooking and storage vessels) (Figure 16-3). Vessels cluster into
particular ranges of size and volume and were produced in forms that are easy to
stack for storage and transport. Standardization extends to decorative repertoires
(Figure 16-4). Fine-ware was typically red-slipped with polychrome decoration
in blocky geometric motifs, as well as anthropomorphic and zoomorphic images,
particularly birds, felines, and camelids. For Goldstein, this standardization in
form and decoration is suggestive of ceramic workshops that were “divided into
separate forming and firing operations” (Goldstein 2005:224).
The standardized shapes and motifs produced in the Moquegua Valley also
served as a means through which affiliation with the Tiwanaku heartland was as-
serted and reaffirmed. Ceramic forms and iconography replicated heartland styles.
Notably, decorative canons include depictions of the Staff God, an image closely
associated with Tiwanaku elite ideology and portrayed on a range of Tiwanaku
media, including stone sculpture and textiles (Figure 16-5).
Compositional analyses of a small sample of ceramic material from Mo-
quegua reveal that this connection to the wider Tiwanaku sphere was materialized
not only through the production of ceramic vessels in Moquegua but also through
the import of nonlocal vessels. Forty-five ceramic sherds from Chen Chen, the ma-
jor Tiwanaku-state administrative center in the Moquegua Valley, were analyzed
using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS)
(Sharratt et al. 2015). The derived compositional data were compared with an ex-
isting database on the chemical composition of Moquegua Valley clays (Sharratt
et al. 2009). This comparison found that of the 45 sherds, four were crafted from
nonlocal clays, supporting the assertion, previously made on the basis of stylistic
analysis (Goldstein 2005), that ceramic products as well as pottery styles were
brought into the Moquegua Valley during the state period, albeit it on a small
scale. Notably, these four sherds do not constitute a single chemical group and
likely represent imports from multiple locales (Sharratt et al. 2015).
Thus, during the height of Tiwanaku political authority in Moquegua, ceramic
production was highly standardized and specialized. The importation of vessels
was a consequence of the colony’s membership of the wider Tiwanaku economy,
but local production of ceramic vessels was itself a means for reifying cultural
affinity with the state center and political allegiance to heartland elite ideology.
Postcollapse ceramics are described as essentially lower-quality versions of
state-period Moquegua pottery, with less control over firing and with the use
of coarse tempers (Goldstein 1989b). Comparison of ceramics from Tumilaca la
Chimba with those from the Tiwanaku-state town of Chen Chen, largely sup-
ports these generalizations about changes in ceramics after state collapse (Sharratt
2011a). Pottery at Tumilaca la Chimba was produced using a greater variety of
414 N. Sharratt
Figure 16-3. Tiwanaku kero with feline iconography, recovered from a grave
at Chen Chen.
Figure 16-4. Repeated geometric pattern on two keros recovered from different
graves at Chen Chen.
Figure 16-5. Sun Gate depicting the Staff God, Tiwanaku, Bolivia.
paste types, surface treatments are more hurried, vessel sizes and volumes rep-
resent a greater range, and fewer colors were utilized in decoration than at Chen
Chen (Figure 16-6). Iconographic repertoires include both the maintenance and
rejection of Tiwanaku motifs. In postcollapse assemblages, there is an increasing
prevalence of geometric motifs relative to anthropomorphized imagery (Goldstein
1989b). Although many motifs were maintained albeit in a slightly more variable
manner, others are absent from postcollapse-phase assemblages, most notably
the Staff God, which has not been identified on a single postcollapse ceramic,
either at Tumilaca la Chimba or other collapse-phase sites (Bermann et al. 1989;
Goldstein 1985).
The context of production remains uncertain, however, as no clear evidence
for pottery production has been identified at Tumilaca la Chimba (or at the smaller-
scale excavations undertaken at other collapse-phase sites), although there is evi-
dence for the use of pigments on the patio of one residence. Ongoing analysis
of artifacts excavated will better elucidate the context of ceramic production at
Tumilaca la Chimba. However, the greater internal variation in collapse-phase as-
semblages, in regard to form, decoration, slip color, and surface treatment, coupled
with imprecise execution, have been taken as evidence for a shift from workshop
to domestic production (Bawden 1989; Bermann et al. 1989).
Not only were they of lesser quality but it is also likely that postcollapse
ceramic assemblages were overwhelmingly locally produced. Forty-nine sherds
from Tumilaca la Chimba were analyzed using LA-ICP-MS, and as with the Chen
Chen material, the derived compositional data were compared with the existing
chemical database on local clays. All but one analyzed sherd could be attributed
to locally available raw materials (Sharratt et al. 2015). Portable X-ray fluorescence
416 N. Sharratt
Figure 16-6. Kero recovered from a grave at Tumilaca la Chimba.
(XRF) analyses of a larger sample of sherds also indicated that the vast majority
of ceramic material at Tumilaca la Chimba was produced with locally availably
raw materials (Sharratt 2011a). Interestingly, although potters at Chen Chen and
Tumilaca la Chimba used clays that fall into the same two chemical groups, the
chemical data from Tumilaca la Chimba are more diverse than that at Chen Chen.
Although this might suggest lesser standardization in paste recipes, it could also
be explained by the presence of more heterogeneous clays in the upper valley
where Tumilaca la Chimba is located (Sharratt et al. 2015).
In summary, comparison of pottery from before and after state collapse meets
with expectations based on generalizations summarized above concerning craft
production and circulation in the wake of state collapse. Although ceramic imports
are not entirely absent from the assemblage at Tumilaca la Chimba, the proportion
of nonlocal sherds is reduced from that evident in the state-period assemblage
at Chen Chen. Further, although forms and decorative repertoires were largely
maintained in local production following the collapse of the state, pottery was
less standardized and declined in quality. Notably, particular images, those most
closely associated with iconography and elite ideology at the state center, are
absent from postcollapse assemblages.
Textiles
Textiles offer a comparative insight into craft production before and
after Tiwanaku state collapse in the Moquegua Valley. Andean textiles, both
archaeological and ethnographic, are noted for their distinctive styles, elabo-
rate decorative repertoires, and the technical skill employed in their production
(Adelson and Tracht 1983; Anton 1987; Bergh 2012; Boytner 2002; Costin 1998a;
D’Harcourt 1962; Dransart and Wolfe 2011; Femenias 1991; Gheller 2005; Heckman
2006; Paul 1990; Phipps 2004; Rowe 1995, 1996; Rowe and Cohen 2002; Webster
and Drooker 2000). In the Tiwanaku state, as in other contexts, textiles played an
important role in mediating social relations and in asserting identities and ethnic
affiliations (Cassman 2000; Oakland 1992, 2000). Unfortunately, environmental
conditions mean that few textiles have survived from the Tiwanaku-state center.
There is, however, abundant cloth from Tiwanaku settlements in the arid areas
of southern Peru and northern Chile, including in the Moquegua Valley (Plunger
and Goldstein 2008; Oakland 1992). Nonetheless, textiles have thus far been little
incorporated into discussions about Tiwanaku craft production and circulation.
In the Moquegua Valley, textiles were produced in domestic contexts. In
excavations at Tiwanaku state–period sites in the middle valley, Goldstein (2005)
found evidence that most households produced textiles. Unspun cotton, camelid
fiber, cactus spine needles, ceramic and wooden spindle whorls, and weaving
tools were recovered in nearly all excavated state-period households. Contrary to
other craft goods, there is no existing evidence for textile production in workshops,
although textile workshops are known for both earlier and later Andean societies
(Costin 1998a; Gheller 2005).
Excavations at Tumilaca la Chimba demonstrate that after the breakdown of
the state, spinning and weaving continued to be undertaken in domestic contexts.
Of the five domestic structures and associated patios thus far excavated, evidence
for textile production has been identified in at least three in the form of ceramic and
wooden spindle whorls (Figure 16-7), cactus-spine needles, and ruquis, a tool used
to select threads during weaving that was usually carved from camelid bone in
the Prehispanic Andes. As mentioned, detailed laboratory analyses of all materials
excavated in 2012 is ongoing, and more evidence for textile production in domestic
contexts is anticipated. Weaving implements were typically found discarded or
lost in the exterior patio spaces associated with residential structures, where most
domestic activities took place, but in one case, textile-production paraphernalia
were found neatly stored in a storage bin inside a house.
Given that the context of production did not change substantially, perhaps
it might be expected that spinning and weaving would not have undergone the
changes seen in ceramic production. The analysis of threads and cloth from Ti-
wanaku state–period and postcollapse contexts, however, reveals economizing
of labor and materials, as well as changing concepts of what constituted socially
acceptable cloth in ritual contexts.
The following discussion draws on analysis of textiles excavated from burials
at Tumilaca la Chimba and at Chen Chen. Although elaborate tapestry tunics and
structured, four-pointed hats are known for the Tiwanaku, the textiles discussed
418 N. Sharratt
Figure 16-7. Ceramic spindle whorl in situ on the surface of a domestic patio,
Tumilaca la Chimba.
here are far less spectacular. The analyzed textiles are for the most part undeco-
rated, although occasionally dyed stripes and embellished selvages are evident
in the state-period sample.
Using a coding system previously utilized in the Moquegua Valley (Clark
1993), data were collected on the materials used (cotton or camelid fiber), the
dimensions of the fragments, the likely textile forms from which they came, and
designs and colors. Additionally, the type of weave and the thread count for warps
(the first set of threads used in weaving) and wefts (the second set of threads,
which are interlaced into the warp, perpendicular to the warp threads, in order
to create a structure) were recorded. Finally, spinning was analyzed by measur-
ing the width of threads, counting the number of spins per cm, and determining
the direction of the spin. Spins are either Z or S direction (depending on which
direction a thread is spun, it creates the appearance of a Z or an S in the finished
thread). Typically, Andean threads are spun in one direction, and then two spun
threads are twisted together (plied) to produce a stronger thread. The most com-
mon pattern in southern Andean textiles is ZS.
Compared with pottery, the samples from each site are small, and their selec-
tion was not systematic but was determined by the availability of data, a result of
preservation and of excavation protocols. Further, although where possible, all of
the above data were recorded for each textile, laboratory analysis was hindered by
the fragmentary nature of the textiles. In some cases, loose threads were present
in graves, and these were included in the analysis of spinning and/or plying but
not weaving. Similarly, some textiles whose weave could be analyzed could not
be included in the study of spinning and/or plying. Many of the textiles from
Chen Chen were still wrapped around mummified human remains (Figure 16-8).
In these cases, it was impossible to remove a single thread without damaging the
specimen. In total, 65 fragments were analyzed in some form from Chen Chen.
Tumilaca la Chimba is located at a higher altitude, and there is greater water run-
off through archaeological contexts than at Chen Chen. Consequently, conditions
there are not as favorable toward textile preservation as at Chen Chen, and only
29 textile fragments were analyzed from Tumilaca la Chimba.
All specimens from Chen Chen were camelid fiber, either alpaca or llama.
Although cotton textiles have been recovered from Tiwanaku domestic contexts
in Moquegua (Goldstein 2005), they have never been found in state-period burials.
Goldstein (2005) attributes this to the cultural value attributed to different textile
materials, with alpaca fiber conceptually associated with the highlands and the
Titicaca basin, where camelids thrive.
The postcollapse-period textile funerary sample does, however, include cot-
ton. Six of the 29 analyzed specimens were cotton, and the presence of cotton in
graves is further supported by analyses of macrobotanical samples (Goldstein
2010). Thus, at Tumilaca la Chimba, cotton was considered an appropriate shroud
for the dead. However, cotton was only recovered from the graves of infants,
children, or adolescents. Older individuals were still wrapped only in textiles
woven from camelid fiber.
The impact of state collapse on herding is unclear. Although camelids are
native to higher-altitude regions of the Andes, their presence on the coast has a
long history (Thornton et al. 2011; Wheeler et al. 1995). Faunal remains recovered
from burials and from domestic contexts at Tumilaca la Chimba demonstrate that
the community had access to llamas and alpacas (Figure 16-9). Yet, in funerary
practice, at least, there is perhaps evidence for reduced access to camelid fiber or
at least of conservation of supplies, with the use of cotton for younger individuals.
Economy is evident also in the types of textile buried with the dead in the
postcollapse period. Mummified individuals from tombs at Chen Chen reveal
that during the height of the Tiwanaku state, the dead in the Moquegua Valley
were buried wrapped in two textiles. First, a finely woven shawl was wrapped
around the corpse, and over this was wrapped a blanket. Blankets were more
thickly spun and woven than shawls.
For the Tiwanaku state–period sample, the form of 53 textile specimens could
be determined: 33 were shawls, and 20 were blankets. In the postcollapse-phase
sample from Tumilaca la Chimba, finely woven shawls were evident in the sample,
but no blankets were identified. Although textiles continued to be an integral part
of funerary practices at Tumilaca la Chimba, the dead were now afforded only
one textile, a shawl, rather than the greater investment of a shawl and a blanket
at Chen Chen.
Analyses of plying (when two spun threads are twisted together) indicate
lower investment in labor as well as conservation of materials. Only shawls were
420 N. Sharratt
Figure 16-8. Mummified subadult wrapped in a multicolored woolen textile

and held in position by a braided fiber rope, excavated in Chen Chen.
Figure 16-9. Feet of a juvenile camelid interred with an adult male human
at Tumilaca la Chimba.
compared from the two sites, given that blankets from Chen Chen are consider-
ably more thickly spun and woven, and their inclusion would distort spin and
weave counts. Threads at Tumilaca la Chimba are thicker than those at Chen Chen.
Chen Chen warp threads have a mean thickness of 7.00 mm; Tumilaca la Chimba
warp threads have a mean thickness of 9.58 mm. This difference is statistically
significant at the .05 level. On average, fewer plies were in postcollapse threads.
Chen Chen warp threads have a mean 14.68 plies per thread, and Tumilaca la
Chimba threads have a mean 13.30 plies per thread. The thinner a thread and
the more tightly it is plied are in part consequences of the amount of time spent
working on producing the thread. Additionally, several threads in the Tumilaca
la Chimba were identified as “semi-torcido” (semi-twisted) by modern weavers
in the Moquegua Valley who continue to spin by hand and weave on back-strap
looms (Ysidora Yony Nina Jorge and Carmen Jorge Flores, personal communication
2008). These modern threads are finely spun but only loosely plied, and modern
weavers use semi-torcido threads only in the weft of warp-faced weaves, as they
will be less visible. This reduces the time and effort required to produce a work-
able thread. No semi-torcido threads were identified in the Tiwanaku state–period
sample from Chen Chen. Arguably then, less time and energy were being invested
in spinning and plying at Tumilaca la Chimba.
However, weaving presents a more complicated picture. Again, the higher
the thread count, the more investment in labor and materials has gone into a
textile. Thread counts from the warps and wefts of shawls at Chen Chen and
Tumilaca la Chimba give contradictory impressions. Warp counts did not change
in a statistically significant way. Chen Chen warps had a mean thread count of
13.48 per cm; Tumilaca la Chimba warp had a mean thread count of 13.38 per
cm, but weft counts did change. Chen Chen weft had a mean thread count of
6.00 per cm; Tumilaca la Chimba weft had a mean thread count of 7.88 per cm,
actually increasing in thread count in the postcollapse-phase sample. These data
suggest that there was little change in investment in materials in the first stage
of weaving (the creation of the warp) but an increased investment in the second
stage (the incorporation of the weft). This can perhaps be explained in terms of
the type of weave being produced. In the Chen Chen sample, 90 percent of the
textile samples for which weave type could be determined were woven in a tight,
warp-faced pattern, in which only the warp is visible. In the Tumilaca la Chimba
sample, warp-faced and plain weaves (in which the warp and weft threads are
both visible in a checked pattern) were almost evenly represented.
Finally, there is considerably less investment in decorative practices in post-
collapse textiles. Undyed, brown cloth woven from camelid fiber was used most
frequently at both Chen Chen and Tumilaca la Chimba. However, in the Chen
Chen sample, a total of 26 specimens had between one and four additional colors
(some of these were natural fiber colors; some were dyed blues, greens, yellows,
or reds) (Figure 16-10). Several examples of elaborated textiles were recovered, in-
cluding with the use of woven-edge bindings. In the Tumilaca la Chimba sample,
only two specimens had additional colors (one and two additional colors). There
were no examples of elaborate, woven-edge bindings or other embellishments
on textiles.
422 N. Sharratt
Figure 16-10. Fragment of a striped woolen shawl recovered from a grave at

Chen Chen.
The expansion of the Tiwanaku state was in part motivated by the

need to access resources not available in the altiplano heartland, and the circula-
tion of craft goods as well as the replication of heartland crafting traditions was
important in maintaining ties of identity and affiliation between the state center
and its colony in the Moquegua Valley.
Craft production and the circulation of goods are frequently cited as compo-
nents of cultural systems that are impacted by political collapse (Renfrew 1979;
Schwartz and Nichols 2006; Tainter 1988). The ceramic and textile data discussed
here speak to the impacts of Tiwanaku political fragmentation. Although one
nonlocal ceramic sherd was identified from Tumilaca la Chimba, the postcollapse-
phase community in Moquegua no longer had as extensive or as varied access
to the regional exchange networks that furnished the state-period colony with
ceramic imports. The shift from highly specialized, standardized, workshop pro-
duction is apparent in pottery, which while mimicking state-period forms was
more variable and hurriedly produced. Although the context of textile produc-
tion was unaltered, changing access to resources and raw materials resulted in a
necessary economizing of camelid fiber in the postcollapse phase.
Yet, the recovered materials also offer insight into the ways in which craft
producers ensured resilience in material goods. In the case of textiles, the inclusion
of cotton in burials at Tumilaca la Chimba represents a decision to incorporate
a raw material that earlier was culturally unacceptable in graves, a decision that
enabled all individuals to receive funerary apparel that looked Tiwanaku even
if it did not feel Tiwanaku and that perhaps over time led to shifts in the social
value attributed different fabrics.
Where textiles reveal an attempt to maintain tradition, ceramic iconography
indicates the ways in which craft producers used their material products as media
for responding to the new sociopolitical environment. In choosing to maintain
certain images and decorative repertoires, potters at Tumilaca la Chimba used
crafting as a way of asserting their Tiwanaku ancestry, but in leaving out particular
motifs, they also repeatedly chose not to materialize images associated with state
elites and in so doing asserted their waning association with the center.
Arguably, these differences in the choices craft producers made about main-
tenance and change lie in the context of production and consumption. As ceramic
production shifted from organized, specialized workshops to smaller locales no
longer under the auspices of state authority, choices about what ceramics should
represent were loosened. Further, decorated ceramic vessels, objects used in shared
feasting, were visible manifestations of political allegiance. As such, they acted as
a vehicle for rejecting state ideology. In contrast, textiles were a highly personal
item, one interred in death, a moment when adherence to ancestry was particularly
salient. In sum then, state fragmentation did indeed negatively affect the circula-
tion of goods, and postcollapse ceramics and textiles are of a lower quality, but in
the aftermath of political fragmentation, craft producers made choices about what
aspects of traditional Tiwanaku material traditions to maintain and which to reject.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Ronald K. Faulseit for organizing the conference Be-

yond Collapse at the Center for Archaeological Investigations at Southern Illinois
University Carbondale in March 2013 and for inviting me to contribute to this
volume. Fieldwork at Tumilaca la Chimba was supported by the National Science
Foundation (DDIG 0937303), the National Geographic Society (9096-12), Fulbright
IIE, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Curtiss T. and Mary G. Brennan Foundation. Ad-
ditional support was provided by the Graduate College and the Department of
Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago as well as by the Women’s
Board and the Department of Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural His-
tory. Excavations at Tumilaca la Chimba were conducted with permission from
the Ministerio de Cultura del Perú, Lima (RDN 1208/INC awarded to Patrick Ryan
Williams and Maria Elena Rojas Chavez in 2006–2007; RDN 1350/INC awarded to
P. R. Williams and M. Lizárraga Ibáñez in 2010; RDN 301-2012 awarded to D. Nash
and S. Chacaltana Cortez in 2012). Particular thanks are due P. Ryan Williams.
Romulo Pari Flores and Bruce Owen facilitated study of the Chen Chen ceramic
and textile samples. Susan DeFrance identified the faunal remains from Tumilaca
la Chimba. David Goldstein and Rodrigo Castro Matallana analyzed the macro-
botanical samples from Tumilaca la Chimba. Mark Golitko was instrumental in
the interpretation of LA-ICP-MS data on ceramic material from both sites. Laure
Dussubieux provided invaluable assistance in the Elemental Analysis Facility at
the Field Museum, Chicago.
424 N. Sharratt
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17. Collapse, Regeneration, and the
Origins of Tula and the Toltec State
J. Heath Anderson, Dan M. Healan,

and Robert H. Cobean
Abstract: The collapse of the Middle Classic Teotihuacan state between a.d. 550
and 650 was felt throughout Mesoamerica but particularly in Central Mexico,
much of which had been under its direct control. This included southwestern
Hidalgo, the location of a highly structured regional settlement system ap-
parently tied to Teotihuacan that suffered large-scale abandonment with the
latter’s demise. Subsequently, however, the region experienced a resurgence
that culminated in the rise of Tula and the Toltec state, which came to dominate
much of Central Mexico during the later Early Postclassic period. The focus of
this paper is the time period during which the regeneration of complex soci-
ety in the Tula region following the collapse of Teotihuacan occurred, which
corresponds to the Epiclassic period (ca. a.d. 550–900) in Central Mexico. In-
formation obtained from regional survey and excavation over the past several
decades indicates that the unified Teotihuacan-controlled settlement system in
the Tula region was succeeded by a system composed of numerous localized,
largely independent, and probably competitive polities of nonlocal origin as-
sociated with the Coyotlatelco ceramic complex. More recent excavation and
analysis and chronometric dating suggest that regeneration began with the
consolidation of this fractious political landscape into a small regional state
that subsequently grew into the Early Postclassic Toltec state based at Tula. We
discuss the nature of these events and their implications for understanding
the nature of Tula and the Toltec state in particular and their relevance to the
topic of regeneration of complex societies in general.

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
431
432 J. H. Anderson, D. M. Healan, and R. H. Cobean
Over twenty years ago, Marcus (1992) observed that the development
of expansionist states in Central Mexico followed a cyclical pattern characterized
by three distinct “pulses” associated with Teotihuacan, Tula, and Tenochtitlán.
Central Mexico presents a sequence of three cases of state formation bracketing two
examples of collapse and regeneration. Because these cases occurred in historical se-
quence, they constitute an excellent opportunity to explore the relative importance
of historical contingencies and systemic processes for producing cyclical change.
In her original consideration, Marcus (1992:392) argued that early states like
that associated with Teotihuacan probably arose in the context of competition
among prestate societies, whereas subsequent collapse and regeneration would
be “case specific.” More recently, Bronson (2006) provided a heuristic typological
scheme to organize investigation of regeneration. Rather than recapitulating the
distinction between “pristine” and “secondary” state formation that long domi-
nated the anthropological literature, Bronson’s scheme focuses on information
transfer to distinguish among three distinct “patterns” of regeneration: “false”
regeneration, “stimulus” regeneration, and “template” regeneration (Bronson
2006:137). While the first pattern refers to development of a complex society with
no historical connection to previous development, his stimulus and template re-
generation patterns are directly relevant to the pulses that interested Marcus. In
the case of template regeneration, complex society is reconstituted in the aftermath
of a collapse such that “the revival process adheres closely to a fully understood,
well-recorded model” (Bronson 2006:140). Such faithful intergenerational informa-
tion transfer usually implies a fully developed writing system, such as that found
in Bronson’s example par excellence, the regeneration of the Song dynasty (a.d.
960–1279) in the form of Ming society (a.d. 1368–1644).
More germane to the Central Mexican cases is Bronson’s stimulus regenera-
tion, which is the reconstitution of the main features of government and society
based on the “stimulus of diachronic hearsay,” based on “hazy historical memories
that may or may not be accurate,” in which would-be leaders make the “central-
ization of power more palatable by wrapping it in the mantle of a glorious past”
(Bronson 2006:138). Rather than a faithful copy of an earlier set of social, political,
economic, and ideological arrangements, stimulus regeneration is characterized
by a good deal of improvisation on dimly remembered past customs and creative
recombination of exotic cultural features.
In this chapter, we examine Bronson’s idea of stimulus regeneration, using the
case of Tula and the Toltec state. Tula occupies a key position in Central Mexican
prehistory that is particularly relevant to questions of collapse and regeneration
generally and Bronson’s stimulus regeneration specifically because it developed
in the aftermath of the Teotihuacan collapse, and its fame reverberated in the state
ideology of the Aztec empire. Although scholars suspect that a writing system
might have been used at Teotihuacan (Cabrera 1995; Headrick 2007:25–26; Taube
2000, 2003), there is currently no evidence that information about the particulars
of its system of government were encoded in written records that played a part
in the formation of the Toltec state. We therefore present the case of Tula as a case
example of stimulus regeneration that goes beyond the typological category to ex-
amine how historical contingencies and systemic processes operated to reconstitute
Collapse, Regeneration, and Origins 433
complex society in the form of the Toltec state. Our central argument is that this
development involved welding together disparate political entities by means of two
syncretisms, one subsistence-based and the other ideological, that resulted in the
formation of a large and diverse urban-based state in a relatively marginal setting.
We begin with a brief consideration of what is known about a time period called
the Epiclassic, a poorly understood period that has been recognized as a time of pro-
found political, economic, and ideological upheaval throughout Central Mexico and
is central to understanding regeneration of complex society in the Tula region. We
continue with basic information about the physical setting of Tula that is germane
to agro-ecological factors that likely played an important role in the same process.
Next, we review the sequence of settlement pattern changes and cultural de-
velopments that constitute the collapse-and-regeneration process in the Tula region,
beginning with the precollapse Chingú phase. Our description of postcollapse de-
velopments is organized into four moments: the collapse of Chingú-phase society,
initial reoccupation of the Tula region during the La Mesa phase, the construction
of the first post-Chingú monumental civic-ceremonial center at Tula Chico, and
the formation of the expansionist Toltec state. We then revisit key portions of the
sequence to offer hypotheses concerning the historical and systemic processes that
could have generated the patterns we see in the archaeological record.
Finally, we offer suggestions for future research, focusing on strategies for
gathering the empirical information necessary to evaluate our hypotheses. In our
view, this last step is the most important. It is informed by our conviction that the
consideration of a diverse set of perspectives is vital to conducting anthropologi-
cally informed archaeological research but not its ultimate goal. Whenever pos-
sible, perspectives on the past should be exposed to empirical tests that eliminate
erroneous ideas, leaving only those that conform closest to empirical observation.
Producing reliable information for individual case studies like Tula is primary for
unpacking heuristic typological frameworks and improving comparisons among
case examples. This in turn can enrich our understanding of the relative impor-
tance of historical contingency and recurrent, systemic processes in the collapse
and regeneration of complex societies.
The Epiclassic in Central Mexico
In Central Mexico, one of the main research foci in terms of societal

collapse centers on the period following the decline of Teotihuacan. Located in
the northeastern Basin of Mexico (Figure 17-1), it is the earliest example of a large,
urban community in Mesoamerican prehistory and was likely the center of an
expansionist state or empire (Bernal 1966; Cowgill 2008:970; Smith and Montiel
2001). Within the metropolis itself, the definitive disintegration of the Classic
period polity is visible in a drastically reduced population; intense, selective burn-
ing episodes associated with civic-ceremonial buildings; and indications that the
Epiclassic population included a substantial proportion of immigrants, indicated
by marked differences in material culture and the use of space. The decline in
population has been estimated at over 35 percent, from 125,000 inhabitants at its
Figure 17-1. Locations of sites and regions discussed in the text. 1, Tula;
2, Teotihuacan; 3, Xochicalco; 4, Cacaxtla; 5, Cholula; 6, Cantona; 7, El Tajin;
8, El Pital; 9, Alta Vista; 10, La Quemada; A, Ucareo obsidian source area;
B, Pachuca obsidian source area.
height to perhaps 80,000 or fewer during subsequent phases (Diehl 1989). This
much-diminished population built atop the abandoned living spaces of earlier
periods, constructing walls through the center of former plazas and patios and
depositing their refuse in areas that had earlier been residential or sacred spaces
(Cabrera 1996). Present amongst this refuse in large amounts was a distinctive
red-on-brown or buff painted ware that is also found elsewhere in the basin and
in the Tula region called Coyotlatelco, which we discuss below.
Scholars have traditionally referred to this period as the Epiclassic, a term
originally proposed by Jiménez Moreno (1959, 1966), who defined it as beginning
with Teotihuacan’s decline and ending with the rise of the Toltec state. Drawing
on ethnohistoric and archaeological evidence, scholars have long understood it to
be a period of intense upheaval characterized by interregional migration, intense
warfare, and reorganization of political and economic relationships throughout
Central Mexico and perhaps extending into other parts of Mesoamerica (Diehl
and Berlo 1989). These processes are generally understood as symptomatic of
local struggles for matériel, labor, and political power coincident with, and in
some cases possibly facilitated by the retraction of, Teotihuacan’s political and
economic influence from the panregional stage. New centers of political power and
population emerged outside the Basin of Mexico in Morelos, the Puebla-Tlaxcala
Valley, and the Gulf Coast, while centers that had flourished contemporaneously
with Teotihuacan experienced hiatus or abandonment. Coincident with these
developments and almost certainly linked with them in ways that are only imper-
fectly understood was the interregional spread of the cult of the feathered serpent,
which had originally debuted as a symbol of state power and perhaps sacred war
at Teotihuacan and likely spread in part through warfare, trade, pilgrimage, and
migration (Ringle et al. 1998).
Scholars unanimously associate Coyotlatelco ceramics with the Epiclassic
in the Basin of Mexico (Rattray 1966) and the Tula region (Mastache et al. 2002).
Questions concerning where, when, and how Coyotlatelco ceramics originated
have absorbed a great deal of academic attention, arguably to the detriment of
attention to other dimensions of Epiclassic material culture (Solar 2006). The
scholarly discourse concerning the nature and significance of Coyotlatelco ma-
terial culture is often and somewhat inaccurately characterized as a dichotomy
involving those who favor a nonlocal vs. a local origin, although there appears
to be an emerging middle ground (e.g., Beekman and Christensen 2003; Fournier
2006:438–439; Gaxiola 2006; López et al. 2006; Manzanilla 2005:269; Sugiura 2006)
that sees Coyotlatelco as a “fusion,” “hybridization,” or “syncretism” of the preex-
isting Teotihuacan ceramic tradition with a nonlocal tradition possibly introduced
by migrating populations (Healan 2012:80–81). As most of these authors note, the
eastern Bajío is the most likely region of origin given its proximity (see Figure
17-1) and evidence of a long-lived and widespread red-on-brown or buff tradition
(Hernandez and Healan 2000).
To the south of the Basin of Mexico in the Amatzinac Valley of eastern More-
los, Classic period communities that had emerged in irrigable zones and grown
in size and importance, possibly because they were a source of cotton for Teoti-
huacan, were abandoned during the Epiclassic (see Figure 17-1) (Hirth 1978; Hirth
and Angulo 1981). Western Morelos, which had been sparsely populated during
Teotihuacan’s apogee, saw the emergence of the site of Xochicalco, which likely
dominated most of western Morelos during this time (Hirth 2000a, 2000b). To the
east in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley, after centuries of growth and development,
the venerable site of Cholula appears to have experienced a poorly understood
hiatus, characterized by the cessation of monumental construction projects and
the establishment of a new political ideology linked to the center of Cacaxtla to
the north (Plunket and Uruñuela 2005:103). Cacaxtla appears to have superseded
Cholula as the preeminent seat of political power during this time (García Cook
2001), a development that has been linked to in-migrating populations from the
Gulf Coast, known in ethnohistoric sources as the Olmeca-Xicallanca (Plunket
and Uruñuela 2001; Ringle et al. 1998).
To the east, the highland site of Cantona and the coastal lowland site of El
Tajín likewise emerged after the decline of Teotihuacan (see Figure 17-1). Posi-
tioned at the interface between the highlands and the Gulf Coast, Cantona reached
its maximum population from a.d. 600 to 900, after having been only sparsely
occupied in previous centuries (García Cook 2001), although its Classic period
population may have been larger. El Tajín on the Gulf Coast lowlands experienced
rapid population growth and vigorous monumental construction at least as early
as a.d. 800 (Brüggeman 1993) and may have begun even earlier, coincident with
the abandonment of nearby El Pital (Wilkerson 2001a, 2001b), which may have
been a Teotihuacan-affiliated outpost in the early Classic period (Evans 2008:366).

Whatever Teotihuacan’s relationship to the latter site, both Cantona and El Tajín
were relatively minor settlements during Teotihuacan’s apogee, only to emerge
as important centers in the centuries after its decline.
To the north, the important sites of Alta Vista and La Quemada were likewise
founded in areas that were not densely inhabited during the Classic period, only
to become important concentrations of population and political power after Teo-
tihuacan’s decline (see Figure 17-1). Nelson (1997) reported that La Quemada was
likely founded in the early sixth century and abandoned by the beginning of the
tenth century (a.d. 500–900), whereas Alta Vista was founded somewhat earlier
in the fifth century a.d. (Kelley and Kelley 2001). In addition to being excellent
examples of the novel political centers that emerged during the Epiclassic, some
of the architectural forms present at these two sites, as we discuss below, may
also provide clues to the ethnic identities of groups who were instrumental in the
regeneration of complex society in the Tula region. Both sites contained colonnaded
halls, which would later become prominent features of Toltec civic-ceremonial
architecture, and Alta Vista included the earliest example of a tzompantli, or skull
rack (Kelley 1978), which would feature prominently in the main plaza of the
Toltec capital of Tula Grande and later in Aztec iconography.
As in the Basin of Mexico, one of the most important indicators for the onset
of the Epiclassic period in the Tula region is the appearance of Coyotlatelco ce-
ramics. Unlike the basin, however, settlements containing these ceramics do not
directly overlie Classic period sites, indicating a dramatic settlement shift after
the end of Teotihuacan dominance in the region, discussed below. First, however,
we turn to a brief review of Tula’s physical and ecological setting.
Physical and Ecological Setting of Tula
Tula is located in the Central Mexican highlands immediately north of

the Basin of Mexico (see Figure 17-1). The surrounding region consists of two phys-
iographic zones: volcanic uplands formed from intrusive and extrusive Tertiary
events and bottomlands formed from clastic material and sediments associated
with the Rio Tula and other, smaller streams (Figure 17-2). These soils are generally
not very deep, and approximately 50 percent are poor soils with severe limitations
to cultivation, mostly occurring in the uplands. The best farmland is in the bot-
tomlands, although even there rooting depth is frequently a limiting factor. Tula’s
temperature and rainfall regimes and its limited soils make the area a decidedly
risky place to pursue maize farming. It has been classified as dry steppe with
limited annual rainfall and a substantial frost risk in the late dry season (Garcia
1966; Mastache et al. 2002). Present-day vegetation in the Tula area is xerophytic
and dominated by brush species, such as mesquite (Prosopis laevigata) and huizache
(Acacia farnesiana), numerous cactus and succulent species including nopal (Opuntia
spp.), garambullo (Myrtillocactus geometrizans), and viznaga (Ferocactus spp.), all
of which provide edible fruits; and maguey, whose potable sap is an important
industry in the region today and since at least late Prehispanic times. In sum, the
Figure 17-2. Classic (Chingú phase, a.d. 1–550) settlement in the Tula region.
The Río Tula runs from south to north near the centerline of the map.
Tula region would have presented serious challenges to Prehispanic maize farm-
ers. Nevertheless, this marginal landscape supported two expansionist states, the
first tied to Teotihuacan and the second as the epicenter of the Toltec state.
Before Collapse: Classic Period Chingú-Phase

Settlement
The settlement history in the Tula region is characterized by the sudden

appearance of substantial settlement around the time of Christ, not a slow buildup
of population through in-migration and natural increase. There is scant evidence
that Formative period populations sparsely occupied the area before the time of
Christ, but the first substantial occupation of the Tula region occurred during the
Chingú phase (ca. a.d. 1–550) (Figure 17-3). The site of Chingú was the head of a
three-tiered settlement hierarchy, with most settlement located on the bottomland
(see Figure 17-2). In addition to the suddenness and magnitude of the Chingú-phase
settlement, several lines of evidence suggest that Chingú functioned as an admin-
istrative center for Teotihuacan and, indeed, that Teotihuacan colonized the region
outright. Most ceramics from Chingú-phase sites are virtually indistinguishable
from those used at Teotihuacan for most of its history. Teotihuacan and Chingú
also share the same 15 to 17 degree, east-of-north orientation for civic-ceremonial
construction (Díaz 1980), indicating strong similarities in the ideology and architec-
tural grammar that informed the layout of administrative and religious facilities.
Patterns in site location with respect to agricultural and other resources,
coupled with physical evidence of raw-material exchange with Teotihuacan, fur-
ther support the idea that Teotihuacan directly colonized the Tula region. The
largest sites, comprising Chingú and three smaller Tier 1 settlements, are adjacent
to water resources and the best agricultural land (see Figure 17-2). A number of
Chingú-phase sites are situated along two irrigation canals that are at least as old
as the Colonial period (Mastache and Crespo 1974), and given the evidence for
the importance of irrigation at Teotihuacan (Nichols 1987; Sanders et al. 1979), it is
possible that water management underpinned its colonization of the Tula region.
Chingú itself is located near the end of a large Colonial period canal, which could
date to Chingú times (see Hirth and Angulo 1981 for a similar situation in Classic
period Morelos). Many of the midsize Tier 2 sites are located in the limestone-rich
southern uplands. The rich limestone deposits are thought to have been exploited
as sources of slaked lime for construction and household use for local consumption
and export, as was recently confirmed though trace-element analysis of lime plas-
ter at Teotihuacan (Barba et al. 2009). It thus appears that Teotihuacan’s interest in
accessing raw materials available in the Tula region led to landscape modification
and site location that facilitated a sizeable population that outstripped anything
that had previously been present.
Chingú-Phase Site Abandonment and La Mesa–Phase

Settlement
Chingú reached its maximum extent around the end of the Tlamim-
ilolpa phase at Teotihuacan (ca. a.d. 350). Although ceramics for later Teotihuacan
phases are present, their reduced distribution suggests Chingú was already un-
dergoing abandonment. By the middle of the sixth century, the regional settle-
ment pattern underwent drastic changes indeed. Coyotlatelco ceramics from the
subsequent Epiclassic (a.d. 550–900) occupation in the region are absent at Chingú
and most other Chingú-phase sites in the Tula region, suggesting a “wholesale
discontinuity between Classic and Epiclassic settlement systems, perhaps reflect-
ing the breakup of the Teotihuacán political system” (Healan 2012:76).
The earliest Coyotlatelco sites in the region are situated on hilltops and slopes
(Figure 17-4) and correspond to the La Mesa phase (a.d. 550–650); bottomland sites
Figure 17-3. Concordance of ceramic chronologies used at Tula, in the Tula

region, in the Basin of Mexico, and at Teotihuacán, along with period names
used in Central Mexico. (After Healan 2012:Figure 4.) Portions of the Basin
of Mexico and Teotihuacán chronologies have been removed.
appear to have been settled later. The complementary distribution of Chingú- and
La Mesa–phase sites might indicate temporal overlap between the two settlement
systems (Mastache et al. 2002). To date, the sites of La Mesa and Cerro Magoni are
the only two of the nine La Mesa–phase sites that have been extensively excavated.
The earliest Coyotlatelco sites in the Tula region characteristically exhibit a lithic
assemblage dominated by obsidian from the Ucareo source (see Figure 17-1) lo-
cated along the southeastern periphery of the Bajío region (Healan 1997:Table 1).
Figure 17-4. Epiclassic (La Mesa, Prado, and Corral phases, a.d. 550–900)
settlement in the Tula region.
La Mesa, the most extensively excavated of the two, covers approximately 1

km2 and includes three distinct areas of civic-ceremonial architecture surrounded
by terraces containing both rectangular and circular structures (Figure 17-5), with
abundant burials beneath the floors of the latter. La Mesa does not appear to have
had a high degree of planning, and its relatively simple stratigraphy led Mastache
and Cobean (1989) to suggest a relatively brief period of occupation, although
four of five radiocarbon dates obtained a span of a period of over 300 years (Hea-
lan 2012:Figure 20.6a–d). Survey revealed the settlement was surrounded by ter-
races along the hilltop and slopes, although thin soil and low rainfall would have
made traditional cultivation quite difficult. The La Mesa–phase lithic assemblage
Figure 17-5. La Mesa site plan. (After Mastache and Cobean 1989:Figure 2.)
includes basalt and other lithic implements that Jackson (1990) suggested were
used in maguey exploitation, including fiber extraction and preparing sap-col-
lection cavities. For these reasons, Mastache et al. (2002:67) suggested that the
terraces surrounding the La Mesa settlement were mainly planted with maguey
and, perhaps, other, fruit-producing cactus.
Recent investigations at Cerro Magoni, the most extensive La Mesa–phase
site, have revealed a civic-ceremonial precinct just over 2 ha in size surrounded
by terraces that were at least partially residential in function (Figure 17-6). Unlike
La Mesa, Magoni’s civic-ceremonial precinct is unified and exhibits evidence of a
greater degree of planning. Four of its largest mounds are arranged along an axis
oriented roughly 15 to 17 degrees east of north, the orientation of the earlier sites
of Chingú and Teotihuacan. Excavation revealed at least five construction stages
with abundant Coyotlatelco ceramics, as well as pottery identical to Xajay ceram-
ics characteristic of the Bajío region (see Figure 17-1). The last two construction
stages contain a restricted range of Tollan-phase (a.d. 900–1150) types, suggesting
that the site’s occupation spanned the entire Epiclassic and was abandoned as
the Toltec state was waxing. Like La Mesa, abundant burials were found beneath
living surfaces on Magoni’s terraces, some of which include basalt artifacts that
likewise suggest the processing of maguey for fiber and sap.
The preferred hilltop location may reflect the unrest that characterized Epi-
classic Central Mexico and made defense a priority, despite the distance from
productive farmland and water. The presence of Xajay ceramics adds additional
support to the premise that La Mesa–phase settlements were populated predomi-
nantly by migrants from the Bajío. If so, the common practice of hilltop site location
Figure 17-6. Topographic map of Cerro Magoni civic-ceremonial precinct. East-

of-north orientation is suggested by the alignment of Structures 3, 4, 7, and 9.
in northwest Mexico suggests these incoming populations were accustomed to

subsisting in marginal landscapes, which we discuss below.
Ceramics collected from all nine La Mesa–phase sites exhibit notable differ-
ences in form and decoration, including unique types that constitute at least 20
percent of the ceramics at each site, and other differences are seen in site layout,
architectural characteristics, and lithic assemblages (Martinez 2009; Mastache
et al. 2002:69; Rees 1990). Mastache and Cobean (1990) interpret La Mesa–phase
settlement as a series of largely independent polities rather than a single inte-
grated system, a pattern reminiscent of the Tezoyuca-phase hilltop centers and
Figure 17-7. Location and internal layout of the Epiclassic site of Tula Chico
(right) and the later Tollan-phase Tula Grande (left), showing columned halls
(A) encountered in excavation. (After Mastache et al. 2002:Figure 5.3.)
surrounding settlements on the periphery of the Teotihuacan Valley during the

Terminal Formative period (Sanders et al. 1979:104–105).
Initial (Corral Phase) Settlement at Tula
At some point at or near the end of the La Mesa phase, the initial
Coyotlatelco (Corral phase) settlement of Tula was established, which included
the construction of a monumental civic-ceremonial center called Tula Chico atop
a bluff overlooking the Río Tula and, on the other side, the site of Cerro Magoni
(see Figure 17-4). Tula Chico, whose name comes from Matos (1974), is so named
because of the striking similarity between the content and arrangement of its
architecture and that of Tula Grande, the larger civic-ceremonial center of the
Early Postclassic, Tollan-phase city (Figure 17-7).
Two observations suggest that Corral-phase Tula became the preeminent
political capital of the region. First, the scale and complexity of Tula Chico’s civic-
ceremonial architecture and sculpture easily outclass anything at the La Mesa–
phase sites. This distinction perhaps reflects a larger available pool of labor, which
presumably included the extensive network of dispersed Coyotlatelco bottomland
sites (see Figure 17-4). Second, Corral-phase Tula exhibits notable differences in
material inventory that set it apart from the La Mesa–phase sites, including, for
example, considerably greater amounts of obsidian, which suggests Corral-phase
Tula enjoyed greater access to this raw material (but see the discussion of Cerro
Magoni below). Tula Chico also exhibits a distinctive and elaborate service ware
not found anywhere else in the immediate area. Termed the Prado complex, its
ties to sites in the eastern Bajío (Hernández and Healan 2000) suggest Tula Chico
might have been occupied by a nonlocal class of elite individuals (Cobean 1990:45).
At present, the precise chronological relationship between Corral-phase Tula
and the La Mesa–phase hilltop sites is unclear, although some temporal overlap
is likely. While most La Mesa–phase sites are believed to have been abandoned
prior to or during the early part of the Corral phase, Cerro Magoni, as noted, ap-
pears to have been occupied during the entire Epiclassic period. Finally, the extent
of Corral-phase settlement at Tula is not known since most of it lies beneath the
Early Postclassic, Tollan-phase city.
Rise of Tula and the Toltec State
The emergence of the Toltec state in the Tollan phase involved events
at three distinct spatial scales. At the local level, Tula experienced considerable
growth culminating in a city of 16 km2 incorporating a diverse topography of up-
lands, river bottoms, and marshland, whose monumental center was relocated to
Tula Grande (Figure 17-8). This apparently followed the destruction and burning of
Tula Chico, although continuity in ceramics and other traits suggests that largely
internal processes may have been involved. Tula Chico remained abandoned and
in ruins even as it became surrounded by the Tollan-phase city.
Although similar in plan to Tula Chico, Tula Grande is larger and exhibits
the same east-of-north orientation as the Cerro Magoni monumental center and,
previously, Chingú and Teotihuacan (see Figure 17-7). Tula Grande’s two principal
pyramids are similar in size and situated in comparable positions to the Pyramids
of the Sun and Moon at Teotihuacan (Mastache and Cobean 2000). A common
architectural feature at Tula Grande consists of large buildings with two or more
prominent columned halls, each with a centrally located, unroofed sunken patio
or atrium (Mastache and Cobean 2000; see Figure 17-7, A). Excavations in the late
1960s uncovered a tzompantli on the western flank of the plaza (Matos 1972).
At the regional level, Tula’s hinterland clearly extended beyond the approxi-
mately 17 km radius covered in Mastache’s (1996) intensive survey. Tollan-phase
ceramics are common in the Valle del Mezquital to the northeast and northwest
and are common at sites throughout most of the Basin of Mexico (Crider 2011;
Nichols and Charlton 1997; Parsons 2008; Parsons et al. 1982; Sanders and Santley
1983; Tovalín 1998). The east-west extent of Tula’s hinterland probably included the
Pachuca obsidian source area, the upper Teotihuacan Valley to the east, and Jilote-
pec and the Acambay Valley (Folan 1981; Hernandez and Healan 2000) to the west.
At the panregional level, Tula’s hegemony clearly extended to the north and
west well beyond its hinterland, given the discovery of sites in Querétaro, Guana-
juato, and San Luís Potosí with Tollan-phase ceramics and architectural features,
including Atlantean-style colossal sculpture (Bey 1986; Brambila 2001; Braniff
1972, 1992; Crespo 1976, 1991; Flores and Crespo 1988). Evidence of interaction
with eastern and southern Mesoamerica includes numerous architectural and
sculptural elements shared with Chichén Itzá and the recent discovery of sites in
El Salvador with a ceramic complex that includes the principal forms, decorative
Figure 17-8. Early Postclassic (Tollan phase, a.d. 900–1150) settlement in

the Tula region.
modes, and technological characteristics of Tollan-phase pottery, which according

to Fowler (2011) indicates direct ties that may have included colonization by Tula.
Explaining Collapse and Regeneration in the Tula Region
The events outlined above can be considered stages in a process of

regeneration that occurred in the Tula region during the Epiclassic and Postclas-
sic. We offer below a reexamination of each of these stages in terms of specific
factors that may have been involved in their realization. These are presented as
alternative but not necessarily mutually exclusive hypotheses.
During the Chingú phase, the Tula region, compared to previously sparse
populations, experienced a remarkable population increase, which may have
been made possible by systems of irrigation that converted marginal terrain into
productive land (see above). Conversely, it seems reasonable to assume that the
retraction of Teotihuacan’s influence in the region and the consequent breakdown
of its managerial interests would have negatively impacted the operation of ir-
rigation systems, including the inability to coordinate water distribution, canal
maintenance, and other logistical matters. The widespread abandonment at the
end of the Chingú phase might therefore reflect the inability to continue support-
ing a population of that size without full-scale irrigation.
The appearance of La Mesa–phase settlements on hilltops that precluded
direct access to water and arable land raises many questions, not the least of which
is how they were able to not only survive but apparently thrive in the wake of the
widespread abandonment of bottomland settlements that characterized the end
of the Chingú phase. As noted, their most likely place of origin appears to have
been the dry Bajío region to the northwest, which would suggest that they were
well adapted to arid habitats. Based on the numerous unifacial artifacts similar
in form to modern maguey-processing tools, we suspect that this arid adaptation
included a subsistence strategy focused on cactus and succulents that included
maguey flesh and sap consumption as supplements to whatever was obtained
from any maize and other seed-based cultivation (e.g., amaranth). This was to
become a major component of the highly successful Tollan-phase adaptation to
the region, as discussed below.
Differences in site structure and material inventory, including diagnostic
ceramics, suggest differences among the various La Mesa–phase sites that may
reflect different points of origin from within the larger Bajío region. These dif-
ferences may also reflect the process of ethnogenesis in which each community
sought to establish a separate identity from its neighbors. Moreover, differences
in basic items, such as lithic raw material and Coyotlatelco ceramics, likewise in-
dicate a rather low degree of social interaction among these hilltop communities,
suggesting a fractious and perhaps bellicose political landscape, out of which the
Toltec state emerged.
Tula Chico’s civic-ceremonial architecture and sculpture surpassed anything
seen at the La Mesa–phase sites, which we believe signals its rise to prominence
through consolidation of the fractious landscape by various means that may in-
clude one or more of the following.
Exploitation and consolidation of bottomland cultivation. During the Corral phase,
Tula’s central location gave it easy access to and perhaps control over much of the
dispersed settlement population and the relatively productive bottomland soils
with which they were associated. This could have provided both surplus food to
support the rulership of Tula Chico and labor for its monumental constructions.
Which came first, i.e., whether Corral-phase Tula gained control of preexisting
bottomland populations or initiated their settlement, cannot be determined, al-
though these need not be mutually exclusive.
Importation of complex sociopolitical structure. Rather than starting small and
evolving over time, the Tula Chico monumental complex appears to have been a
large and ambitious undertaking from the beginning. Moreover, the distinctive
and elaborate Bajío-affiliated service ware (the Prado complex) associated with
the earliest construction phases is not found anywhere else in the immediate
region. Recall that Cobean (1990:45) inferred that this restricted distribution of
Prado service wares indicates restriction of its use to the most elite members of
Tula Chico society. If that inference is accurate, then the association of the scale
of architecture with restricted-use service wares might indicate the importation
of a ranked, stratified sociopolitical structure from outside the region, complete
with an established elite, who marshaled the labor and matériel necessary for the
construction of Tula Chico’s civic-ceremonial architecture.
Corral-phase Tula as a conquest state. Consolidation through warfare is a com-
mon political strategy, for which some evidence exists in the form of military-
themed sculpture at Tula Chico, including depictions of reclining, armed warriors
nearly identical to those associated with Tollan-phase Tula Grande (Mastache et
al. 2009). However, no evidence of intentional destruction or burning has been
noted at La Mesa–phase sites, including the monumental structures excavated
at La Mesa.
Corral-phase Tula as a “disembedded capital.” Alternatively, political consolida-
tion may have involved a confederation, following the model originally proposed
by Blanton et al. (1982) for the development of Monte Albán during the Formative
period. This would suggest that Corral-phase Tula was multiethnic or at least
composed of factions associated with the previous La Mesa–phase polities. There
are some hints that Tula Chico’s civic-ceremonial space included buildings compa-
rable to Tula Grande’s columned halls (see Figure 17-7, A), which Healan (2012:101)
argued were gathering places for groups typical of corporate political strategies
in which power is shared by different groups or sectors of society (Blanton et al.
1996; Feinman 2001).
This final stage of regeneration, the rise of Tula Grande and the Toltec state,
is perhaps the most problematic, due in large part to the lack of temporal control
over the timing and duration of its components. This in turn is due principally
to the current paucity of radiocarbon dates and a ceramic sequence whose un-
interrupted succession of overlapping waxing and waning types complicates
the definition of concise, clearly bounded ceramic phases. These chronological
problems obscure the precise timing of events like the destruction of Tula Chico,
the construction of Tula Grande, and the abandonment of Cerro Magoni, while
making other events like the growth of post-Corral Tula appear more rapid than
they probably were.
Nevertheless, the overall population size and spatial extent of the Tollan-
phase polity are known with some confidence, both of which outstrip the dimen-
sions of any earlier settlement or group of settlements. This went hand in hand
with a profound transformation in sociopolitical organization and the concentra-
tion and magnitude of political power at Tula Grande, which was almost certainly
projected far beyond the immediate Tula region through conquest and tribute
extraction. We offer two ideas concerning the agroecological underpinnings of
these transformations and the political process by which power was consolidated
and projected.
Success of combined irrigation and arid land cultivation. In addition to the esti-
mated 60,000 inhabitants of the Tollan-phase city, an equal number is believed to
have inhabited the surrounding region, a total population that probably surpassed
that of the preceding Chingú-phase settlement system by a large margin. We sug-

gest this expanded population was made possible by an innovative subsistence
strategy that involved, on the one hand, revival of the regional irrigation system
that we suggest had been initiated during Chingú-phase times and, on the other,
the cactus-based cultivation that we believe characterized the La Mesa–phase
hilltop settlements. This is precisely the argument made by Parsons and Darling
(2000:82) that “the expansion of Mesoamerican civilization into the drier highland
regions of central and north-central Mexico depended upon the full integration
of seed-based cultivation and maguey-based agricultural production.” Critical
features of this strategy include not only the high caloric and nutrient levels of
maguey sap and flesh but also the adaptability of maguey cultivation to mar-
ginal soils and climates, as well as year-round availability that make maguey a
near-perfect complement to seed-based cultivation in this region. An agricultural
system that featured interplanting of maguey and seed crops and the schedul-
ing of maguey sap and/or leaf harvesting around the more seasonal regime of
seed-crop cultivation “could have doubled the annual caloric yield of a typical
tierra fría plot” (Parsons and Parsons 1990:345). Following the strategy suggested
by these authors, agricultural plots in Tula’s bottomlands would have included
interplanted seed crops and maguey, with maguey becoming the predominant
cultigen in more marginal, peripheral lands.
Political/ideological consolidation. This hypothesis posits that the destruction
and/or abandonment of Tula Chico and the abandonment of Cerro Magoni both
occurred immediately prior to the construction of Tula Grande and the growth
of the Tollan-phase city, thus representing the consolidation of two adjacent
and presumably competing polities that would account for at least part of the
population increase reflected in Tula’s subsequent growth. Topographic mapping
carried out as part of the Cerro Magoni project in 2012 revealed that the spatial
extent of its civic-ceremonial core appears to be roughly the same size as Tula
Chico’s. Excavations associated with the same project revealed that, like Tula
Chico, Cerro Magoni’s most abundant lithic raw material was obsidian, sug-
gesting that the inhabitants’ access to this resource was on par with that of Tula
Chico. Thus, it appears that Cerro Magoni might have been more similar to Tula
Chico in terms of population and power than the other, smaller La Mesa–phase
hilltop sites. In looking for evidence of the fusion of two former peer polities, we
note Tula Grande’s location is in an area roughly equidistant from both former
centers, perhaps reflecting a politically neutral decision. Arguably a less ambigu-
ous example of political fusion is the fact that Tula Grande exhibits much of the
layout of Tula Chico but with the approximately 15 to 17 degree east-of-north
spatial orientation of the Cerro Magoni monumental center, which was also the
orientation of Teotihuacan and Chingú centuries earlier. We noted above the
columned halls that form a prominent part of Tula Grande, which may have
been gathering places for corporate polities in which power is shared by differ-
ent sectors of society. This arrangement is strikingly similar to collective modes
of sociopolitical organization hypothesized for Teotihuacan (e.g., Pasztory 1993),
which could in turn signal that Bronson’s (2006:138–139) “stimulus regeneration”
was in operation in the Toltec case.
There are further architectural indications that stimulus regeneration was at

least partially responsible for the formation of the Toltec state. The spatial orienta-
tion shared by Tula Grande and the Cerro Magoni center is also that of Teotihuacan,
and we note other aspects of Tula Grande that recall that former city, including the
placement of its two principal pyramids and the adosado (attached forestructure)
attached to Pyramid C (Mastache and Cobean 2000). Sculpture from Tula Grande
likewise includes common artistic themes from Teotihuacan, including prominent
depictions of feathered serpent/Quetzalcoatl imagery and individuals with Tlaloc/
Storm god attributes. To this mix was added procession scenes, Atlanteans, depic-
tions of reclining warriors or other individuals, and other art and architectural
forms largely unique to Tula, at least some of which first appeared at Tula Chico.
We suggest the ideological complex embodied at Tula Grande is a syncretism of
two broad, local and nonlocal traditions. At its core are various elements common
to Central Mexico and other parts of Mesoamerica, some of whose origins go back
to Teotihuacan or even earlier, including the very concept of a city called Tula or
Tollan, while others, such as the prominence of Quetzalcoatl, may represent more
recent but widely shared ideology (Ringle et al. 1998). Other elements, including
columned halls, skull racks, and certain modes of monumental architecture, may
have originated to the northwest (Hers 1989; Hers and Braniff 1998), a legacy of
the La Mesa–phase peoples. The east-of-north orientation of Tula Grande and the
prominent display of feathered serpent iconography echo the old order of Teoti-
huacan domination of the local area through its administrative center of Chingú.
We suggest that the integration of these features with Bajío-derived traditions
was inspired by the “stimulus of diachronic hearsay” to make “the centralization
of power more palatable by wrapping it in the mantle of a glorious past,” to use
Bronson’s description of stimulus regeneration (Bronson 2006:138).
Other Possible Hypotheses

Certainly, the pervasive militaristic themes in the public art of Tula
Grande anticipate Aztec accounts of the Toltecs as fierce warriors, whose craft
presumably facilitated state expansion and may have been the means by which
Tula acquired control of the Basin of Mexico and other parts of its outer hinterland.
Evidence of extensive, long-distance trade is evident in the quantity and variety
of exotica at Tula, including widespread consumption of plumbate pottery from
Guatemala (Healan 1989:208–209) and the recovery of Central American poly-
chrome pottery from at least two nonelite households (Diehl et al. 1974). Evidence
of Tula-based production includes obsidian workshops, principally from the Pa-
chuca source that Tula may have controlled, although these may have produced
mostly for local consumption.
Directions for Future Research
We close with a series of suggestions for future research designed

to evaluate the hypotheses we presented. Before discussing each suggestion,
however, it is important to underscore what we consider to be the most impor-

tant task for future scholars: the archaeology of the Tula region must have more
chronological and culture historical information if it is to shed light on the events
and processes that led to the formation of the Toltec state. Only with better con-
trol over absolute chronology and culture sequence can we begin to offer sound
explanations of this important development in Central Mexican prehistory and
to put it in global context.
Did a syncretism of subsistence ecology combining cactus-based arid eco-
logical adaptations from the northwest with reactivated seed-based irrigation
agriculture provide the productive basis for the emergence of the Toltec state? We
suggest two ways to evaluate this idea. First, increased reliance on pulque should
be visible in the chemical residues of jars used for the collection and fermentation
of maguey sap. With a large enough sample from the Chingú, Corral, and Tollan
phases, we should detect a significant increase in the percentage of vessels with
evidence of contact with maguey sap. Second, paleoethnobotanical samples should
reveal more nopal fruit seeds if La Mesa–phase peoples used these fruits more
intensively, either through direct consumption or as an infusion to flavor pulque,
as is commonly practiced today.
Were Cerro Magoni and Tula Chico political peers? Arguments based on
complexity of sculptural traditions and layout of civic-ceremonial precincts are
acceptable places to begin, but volumetric assessments of labor investment in
civic-ceremonial architecture would be an improvement. Also necessary is the
difficult task of investigating the limits of the residential population that ac-
companied the ceremonial centers of Tula Chico and Cerro Magoni. In the case
of Magoni, this could be done through pedestrian survey by global positioning
system (GPS) and selective excavation to determine the location, density, and
function of the terraces that descend from the ceremonial center on the sum-
mit. Tula Chico, on the other hand, presents a thornier problem because of the
considerable Tollan-phase overburden that now covers the remains of Corral-
phase residences. A substantial investment in a large-scale, excavation-oriented
sampling program to investigate the density and extent of Epiclassic residential
architecture would be sufficient to determine the character of settlement and
population at Tula Chico.
What was the ideological program that galvanized Epiclassic populations and
facilitated the unification of the disparate political and social factions of Corral-
phase Tula into the Toltec state? Ultimately, this question can be investigated
by uncovering the kinds of facilities built for elites to accommodate the kind of
politicking that would have attended the competition that resulted in political
unification. The sculptural elements used to decorate the façades and interiors of
these buildings have already revealed information about the similarities between
Tula Chico and Tula Grande. If there is as much difference in the content and
execution of sculpture adorning public buildings and elite residences as there
is in the service wares present at Cerro Magoni and Tula Chico, it could reveal
much concerning the ways in which elites were presenting and differentiating
themselves both from commoners in their own polities and their political rivals
in other communities.
Conclusions
The primary goal of this chapter was to introduce Tula as a particu-

larly valuable case study for the investigation of the phenomenon of collapse
and regeneration of complex societies. Its position as the second development of
complex society in a sequence of three “pulses” (Marcus 1992), beginning with
Teotihuacan and ending with the Aztec empire, makes it a particularly apt case
for investigation of the historical contingencies and systemic processes that pro-
duce such cyclical pulses. We reviewed the Epiclassic as a crucial time period for
the study of regeneration of complex society in Mesoamerica, occurring after the
decline of the expansionist state associated with Teotihuacan and characterized
by widespread readjustment of economic and political relationships along with
regional population movement. We then summarized the material culture and
settlement pattern sequences in the Tula region, beginning with the wholesale
shift in settlement patterns at the end of the Chingú phase, continuing through
the apparently fractious political landscape comprised of competing Epiclassic
polities, and ending with the centralization of population and political power at
Tula Grande, the capital of the Toltec state. Finally, we proposed several hypoth-
eses relevant to different aspects of processes underlying the patterns visible in
the archaeological record.
The relative importance of unique historic events and general processes in
producing the patterns we see in the historical and archaeological records is a
question that continues to be of perennial importance in the study of human
behavior. Like Marcus (1992), we tend to see the recurrent nature of collapse and
regeneration in Central Mexico, indeed in Mesoamerica more broadly, as a strong
indication that these phenomena are at least partially explicable as the outcomes
of general processes. This disposition is further informed by the observation that
Mesoamerica constitutes just one among many examples of collapse and regen-
eration globally, as the other contributions to this volume demonstrate. Since the
collapse-and-regeneration dynamic repeats through time and space, one of the
jobs of anthropological archaeologists should be to investigate the existence and
operation of systemic processes that produce common features in these recur-
rent phenomena. Bronson’s (2006) scheme provides a useful descriptive category
(stimulus regeneration) for the Toltec case within which more specific questions
can be asked about how the “hazy historical memories” of the Teotihuacan-dom-
inated past combined with the customs of in-migrating groups to result in the
regeneration of complex society.
This is not to undervalue the importance of identifying and describing histori-
cally contingent events and sequences in the study of collapse and regeneration
specifically and indeed the appropriateness of integrating them into anthropologi-
cal archaeology in general. Discerning the elements that are unique to a particular
case example is an integral part of any enterprise that seeks to generate richer
understanding of the deeply complicated ways individuals and groups manipulate
material resources, social relationships, and ideological frameworks in specific
instances and on multiple scales. It is not clear a priori and should never be as-
sumed that the features of a given case example that are not shared with other
cases are necessarily unimportant for explaining what causes phenomena like
collapse and regeneration.
In the case of the formation of the Toltec state, for example, we suggested
above that an innovative agro-ecological syncretism combining cactus-focused
subsistence and irrigation-based, seed-focused agriculture with arid land cactus-
focused subsistence was crucial for the concentration of population into the Toltec
urban core and therefore consolidation of political power. It is by no means clear
that any other cases of collapse and regeneration necessarily involved such a novel
transformation of basic subsistence practices. If it is demonstrated in future studies
that this syncretism did indeed take place at the beginning of the Tollan phase, per-
haps using the lines of inquiry we suggest above, and if it is further demonstrated
that this is unique to the Tula case, we will nevertheless have generated a more
nuanced understanding of the Tula case. More important, we will have identified
an element that, although crucial for a specific case, may be wholly unimport-
ant for explaining the phenomenon of regeneration on a general, global scale of
analysis. Therefore, far from being antithetical to one another, the investigation
and identification of particularistic and/or unique and general and/or recurrent
elements for a number of case examples can lead to a rich, holistic understanding
of how complex societies collapse and regenerate that situates nuanced description
of particular cases within the comparative study of recurrent, systemic processes.
What is certain is that the Tula region provides an excellent opportunity for
the comparative, holistic study of collapse and regeneration of complex society.
We believe strongly that the quality of that enterprise is directly related to the
reliability of the information generated through empirical research, which in turn
can be realized through the clear articulation of hypotheses about the past that
can be evaluated with patterns in material remains. We submit our work here as
a step toward continuing that process.
Acknowledgments
Funding for the 2012 field season at Cerro Magoni and laboratory
analysis was provided by the National Science Foundation. Special thanks to the
Insituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), the Comunidad de Nantzha,
the local population of Tula, Hidalgo, for their participation in field work, Emily
Kate for her assistance with the proposal process, and Jorge García Sánchez, Carol
Vázquez Cibrián, Fermín Rafael Sánchez Aldama, Anahí Vázquez Callejas, and
Eira Atenea Mendoza Rosas for their service as project archaeologists.
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18. Reconsidering Collapse:
Identity, Ideology, and Postcollapse
Settlement in the Argolid
Katie Lantzas
Abstract: In this paper, I discuss the ideology and socioeconomic practices of the
communities in the Argolid during approximately 1200 b.c. through 900 b.c.,
which is the period following the “collapse” of the Mycenaean palatial centers.
A thorough examination of mortuary practices, the built environment, ceramic
material, and metal objects demonstrates that during this transitional period,
an ideological shift took place alongside complex socioeconomic developments.
An analysis of the material evidence does not indicate poverty and dis-
organization as has been previously argued. Rather, it illustrates the active
formation of a new ideology and socioeconomic practices that privileged the
individual and the domestic unit over the larger, corporate group.
My analyses of the mortuary evidence and built environment demon-
strate that, following the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial administration, the
remaining communities maintained and developed practices that promoted
the individual or the domestic unit. Analyses of specific examples from the
ceramic material and metal objects dating to this period are used to discuss
specific activities, such as production and exchange. Evidence from this data
illustrates that these activities had, in all probability, taken place outside the
direct control of the Mycenaean palatial administration and continued without
substantial interruption throughout this period.
These appraisals of the material culture dating from the Late Helladic
IIIB 2 through Early Geometric period reexamine the period known as the
“Dark Ages” and attempt to reconstruct the ideology and socioeconomic prac-
tices of Iron Age communities in the Argolid, rather than simply presenting
a catalogue of archaeological remains.

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
459
460 K. Lantzas
The aim of this chapter is not only to present an updated review of ar-
chaeological evidence comprising the built environment, mortuary contexts, ceramic
material, and metal objects from the Argolid dating to the Late Helladic IIIB 2 through
the Early Geometric periods but also to attempt a synthesis of material combined
with a new theoretical approach that explains changes in the material record as evi-
dence for the active formation of a new ideology and set of socioeconomic practices.
The Greek Iron Age, approximately 1200 to 900 b.c.e., is chronologically brack-
eted by the Late Bronze Age and the Geometric period and falls between the col-
lapse of the Mycenaean palatial centers and the beginnings of the city-state (Table
18-1). Since the Greek Iron Age lacked the perceived social complexity of the Bronze
Age palatial centers and their intrinsic material symbols, such as writing, figural
art, and monumental architecture, and as there was little sign of the development
of the city-state structure, both prehistorians and Classical archaeologists have
paid little attention to this period. It has been the case that, as stated by Tainter
(1999:988), “[p]ost-collapse societies are to many scholars an annoying interlude,
their study a chore necessary to understand the renaissance that follows.”
Rather than consider this period and material from a comparative perspective
and hope that a restricted geographical perspective would allow for more-specific
conclusions, I approach the built environment, mortuary contexts, ceramic mate-
rial, and metal objects from the period of 1200 to 900 b.c.e. in the Argolid (Figure
18-1) as evidence for the active development of a new ideology and socioeconomic
practices that better served the communities that weathered the transition away
from the Mycenaean palatial center.
Background
The Argolid is considered the heartland of the Mycenaean world, and,

for better or worse, it is one of the most excavated and researched regions in
Greece. This is due in large part to the presence of several Mycenaean palatial
centers, namely, Mycenae, Tiryns, and Midea, and several additional large settle-
ments, namely, Argos, Asine, and Prosymna.
At the end of the Late Helladic IIIB period (ca. 1200 b.c.e.), a number of events
occurred that destabilized the established socioeconomic organization. No single
event caused the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial centers. The effects of both
natural disasters and social unrest occurring within a very short period of time on
the highly centralized and specialized economic structure of the palatial centers
triggered a critical systems collapse (Maggidis 2009:397; Deger-Jalkotzy 1996:716).
While there is still some debate about the terminology for the period in which
these disturbances took place, a destruction horizon toward the end of the Late
Helladic IIIB 1 is apparent at the citadels of Mycenae and Tiryns.
Following the destabilizing events that occurred in the Argolid during this
period, writing, specialty crafts, and monumental architecture were considered to
have been “lost,” and there appears to have been no attempt to recover them. I argue
that this suggests a loss of the need for these aspects of material culture and a rejec-
tion of the Mycenaean palatial centers and what they symbolized (cf. Sherratt 2001).
Reconsidering Collapse 461
Table 18-1. Chronological Divisions of Greek Prehistory
Date b.c. Phase Historical Periodization
1200 Late Helladic IIIC Postpalatial The end of

Early Aegean
1150 prehistory
1150 LH IIIC Developed
1100 LH IIIC Advanced

Submycenaean
1100 LH IIIC Late
1075
1075 Submycenaean
1050
1050 Early Protogeometric D

A
975
R
K
975 Middle PG I
950 A R
G O
E N
950 Late PG
900 A
G
900 Early Geometric E
800 The beginning

of Greek history
Source: Lantzas 2012:11.
The absence of the symbols of Mycenaean palatial culture does not mean
that life at the lower levels of social hierarchy was impoverished, disorganized,
or culturally backward. It was the palatial elite and their infrastructure that were
most directly affected. As we will see from an analysis of the archaeological
evidence, life in the lower strata of Mycenaean society seems to have been less
directly impacted. This leads to the suggestion that changes in the ideology and
socioeconomic practices of the core unit of society occurred more gradually, rather
than drastically or abruptly.
462 K. Lantzas
Figure 18-1. Map of the Argolid showing sites inhabited during the Late
Bronze Age through the Iron Age. (Lantzas 2012:3.)
Analysis
An ideology is a set of beliefs that form the background and structur-

ing principles of human behavior. It is not consciously formed all at once but is
the product of repeated actions. Through everyday, unconscious actions, people
confront their present circumstances. In doing so, they create a set of recognizable
actions and physical objects in order to cope with the problems of living (Bourdieu
1977:77–79; Jenkins 1992:69–71; Gosden 1994:34–35).
During times of socioeconomic and political stability, such as the LH IIIA
through B2 periods, individual and collective actions are focused on the main-
tenance and perpetuation of the established ideology. These actions create an
identifiable and continuous material culture. In times of instability or stress, such
as the Late Helladic IIIC, the ideology is likely to be questioned, challenged, or

renegotiated (Jenkins 2004:6–7).
The relative homogeneity and stability in Mycenaean palatial material culture
is indicative of the acceptance, maintenance, and perpetuation of an ideology in
which the corporate group and hierarchy were paramount. The socioeconomic and
ritual practices that comprised this ideology functioned to reinforce and support
the palatial administration. While the palatial administration functioned, there
was no need to question their practices or ideology. However, during periods of
instability and subsequent perceived “collapse,” individuals would have ques-
tioned the effectiveness of the previous package.
It appears that after the disturbances that took place during LH IIIB2 and
LH IIIC periods, communities living under the palatial administration began to
question and reject the ideology and socioeconomic practices that supported the
larger, corporate group rather than the individual. The eventual failure of the pa-
latial package necessitated the establishment of new practices and a new ideology
that better represented postpalatial communities. It is possible to understand how
communities responded to the failure of the palatial administration, a formative
process apparent from careful examination of four categories of material evidence:
the built environment, mortuary contexts, ceramic material, and metal objects.
These particular categories were chosen for analysis because they occur uninter-
rupted from the Late Bronze through Iron Age. These categories are not directly
associated with palatial or later ideology but are ubiquitous aspects of material
responses to the conditions presented that demonstrate a response specific to the
time and place in which they were created.
Built Environment
The goals of an analysis of the built environment are to show the lo-
cations of sites in use throughout the Late Bronze through Iron Age, to discuss
what types of activities were taking place there, if possible, and to use evidence
from the built environment to suggest the organization and structure of Iron
Age communities. Although many sites remained in the same location prior to,
during, and after the collapse of the palatial administration, as evidenced by
continuity in the use and location of mortuary contexts, this event triggered the
need for socioeconomic reorganization and the creation or modification of the
built environment to suit those new structures and practices.
The two main categories of evidence are evidence from surface survey proj-
ects, which demonstrates the presence of sites in areas that have not been the focus
of intensive excavation, and evidence from built structures with their contents or
furnishings, which can be used to determine the function of a space. A number of
Late Bronze through Iron Age sites have been identified by the Southern Argolid
Survey Project (1995) and the Berbati-Limnes Survey (1996) (Figure 18-2). Only two
sites, Pyrgouthi and FS 202, appear to have been first established after the collapse
of the palatial administration. Pyrgouthi, which was originally identified during
the Berbati-Limnes Survey, seems to have been a substantial settlement located in
the Berbati Valley. Although original assessment of the surface remains suggested
464 K. Lantzas
Figure 18-2. Map of sites identified through surface survey or rescue excava-
tions. (Lantzas 2012:22.)
Figure 18-3. Map of sites identified with evidence for continued occupation
or reoccupation during Iron Age. (Lantzas 2012:23.)
that the much-later Hellenistic period was the main period of occupation and the
best-preserved phase, subsequent excavation determined that this was actually
the Late Antique period. However, excavations also revealed habitation phases
dating to the Late Helladic IIIC to Early Roman periods (Penttinen 2005:12–14).
Only three sites, Kandia, Iria, and FS 20, have evidence for continuity through-
out this period. Excavation on the hill of Iria revealed Late Helladic buildings and
a cistern, which was filled with debris. Close inspection of the ceramic material
from the cistern revealed a quantity of burnt LH IIIC sherds, and it appears that
the building was destroyed by fire at the beginning of this period (Hope and
Dickinson 1979:50). The remainder of the sites that were identified during rescue
excavation or surface survey seems to have been abandoned during the final
phases of the Late Helladic IIIB 2 or into the middle of the Late Helladic IIIC
period. It also seems, though, that many of these sites, particularly Kazarma,
Berbati, Sambariza Magoula, FS 20, FS 43, FS 306, and Ermioni were reoccupied
later in this period (Figure 18-3).
The decrease in the number of settlement sites in the Argolid coincides with
the collapse of the palatial centers. However, this does not necessarily represent
depopulation but is perhaps evidence for settlement nucleation. The settlement
pattern provides a general overview of when and where activities were taking
place. For more detail about the nature of these activities, it is necessary to focus
specifically on trends from the excavated and published material from Argos,
Asine, Midea, Mycenae, and Tiryns (Figure 18-4).
During the Late Helladic IIIB 2 period, the megara, or throne rooms, at My-
cenae and Tiryns were abandoned and replaced by other large-scale administra-
tive buildings, the House of Columns and Building T, respectively. At Midea, an
attempt was made to renovate the megaron after the destruction that took place
during this period. During reconstruction and renovation at these sites, which
occurred after the LH IIIB 2 earthquake, large communal hearths were deliberately
excluded from the new building plans. This is a significant departure from the
typical Mycenaean palatial architectural features. The fixed monumental hearth
in the center of the megaron surrounded by four columns was one of the most
characteristic features of Mycenaean palatial architecture, and there had been
striking uniformity in the location, construction, and design of hearths at Myce-
nae, Tiryns, and Pylos (Tournavitou 1999:833). At Pylos and Tiryns, the core of the
hearth was clay; at Mycenae, the core was constructed of stone. In all cases, an outer
layer of fine plaster was applied, decorated, and frequently renewed (Tournavitou
1999:833). Through its uniformity of design, central location, and associated ritual
activities, the large central hearth came to represent the core of the Mycenaean
palatial administration and reinforced the corporate-group ideology.
Following the dissolution of the palatial administration, the large central
hearth and four columns were no longer included in the reconstruction and reno-
vation of buildings at Midea, Tiryns, and Mycenae. Instead, hearths were small
circular structures, and there is the possibility that metal braziers were also used
as portable hearths (Tournavitou 1999:833). Walberg (1995:89) suggests that the
absence of a large central hearth and four columns may have been due to the re-
placement of the flat roof by a pitched roof, which may have been more resistant to
466 K. Lantzas
Figure 18-4. Map of major sites in the Argolid. (Lantzas 2012:54.)
damage. However, there is little evidence to support the argument that a pitched
roof was more resistant to earthquake damage (Walberg 1995:89–90). Instead,
when considered with the proliferation of smaller hearths and the possibility of
portable hearths, it seems that the removal of the hearth and four columns had
a more symbolic meaning.
Another feature of the Late Bronze through Iron Age built environment is the
replication of buildings or rooms with specific functions. The built environment
at Tiryns and Asine provides details to support the argument that the palatial
ideology was replaced by a new set of beliefs and practices that privileged and
supported the individual and the domestic unit. During the Late Helladic IIIB
period, domestic structures at Tiryns were large, two-story buildings that left
little room for courtyards where other activities could take place. In subsequent
periods, houses became smaller and courtyards more frequent. Industrial, cult,
and storage areas were interspersed with or located in domestic buildings. A
similar pattern of small houses surrounded by storage and cult areas is apparent at
Asine as well. House G, which may have been the dwelling of an elite household,
demonstrates the general pattern of smaller subsidiary rooms, possibly used for
storage, grouped around a larger, central room. Multiple areas for storage and re-
ligious activity replaced the palatial center as the focus of activity. These changes
give the sense that more activities were organized and undertaken by individual
household units rather than members of a social hierarchy.
It is also important to consider the reasons why communities remained in and
around the remains of the former palatial centers. This choice was influenced by
both practical and symbolic factors. The continued habitation or reuse of former
palatial sites, particularly Tiryns, was not only part of a deliberate plan to appro-
priate previous ideologies or practices through an association with the physical
remains but was also dictated by practical factors. Completely abandoning the
areas around the former palatial centers would have been both risky and costly
in terms of finding new locations to settle and constructing new dwellings.
Therefore, although it is possible that communities remained in the same
areas because they wanted to maintain an association with their immediate past,
a number of practical factors, such as access to arable land and water and the un-
certainty and cost of moving, must also be considered when discussing the choice
made by domestic units to remain in the same area (Khatchadourian 2007:56).
Whatever the rationale behind the choice to remain, the physical remains of the
former palatial centers were a highly visible point in the landscape, which would
have been recognized and interpreted by the remaining communities.
The renovation of specific administrative, industrial, and cult areas during
LH IIIC indicates that these communities were already beginning to establish a
new ideology and socioeconomic practices that suited their new situation. In-
stead of the existence of one large corporate group, as represented by the palatial
centers, which influenced or administered socioeconomic and ritual activities,
many domestic units were involved in these activities. In subsequent generations,
architectural forms changed further with the reintroduction of apsidal buildings.
The built environment at Asine and Tiryns, where there were multiple rooms
or buildings of the same function and industrial, domestic, ritual, and storage
areas, was located within proximity to or even within the same building. This
indicates that individual household units were more directly involved in these
activities.
The main points that arise from an examination of the Late Bronze through
Iron Age built environment are: although the palatial administration ceased to
function, the actual sites of the palatial centers remained as a focal point of ac-
tivity; instead of the existence of a single location for socioeconomic and ritual
practices, represented by the palatial centers, a number of locations within Iron
Age sites served these functions.
468 K. Lantzas
Mortuary Contexts
As my brief discussion of the built environment demonstrates, architec-
tural remains from the Iron Age are generally scarce and fragmentary. Analysis of
Iron Age Greece has rested heavily on evidence from mortuary contexts. Voutsaki
(1998:41–42), with specific reference to the Argolid, views mortuary practices as
being integral in creating and reinforcing social realities. Building on this argu-
ment, I suggest that the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial centers presented an
opportunity for the establishment of new ideologies and forms of socioeconomic
organization by communities no longer subsumed within a palace-dominated
system and that the mortuary arena was an ideal venue for the remaining and
subsequent communities to develop and negotiate newly established practices.
First, I present a general overview of mortuary contexts from the Argolid and
then discuss specific trends apparent in the excavated data, which originate from
many of the sites I have previously introduced (Figure 18-5). The location and con-
centration of LH IIIB 2 through Early Geometric mortuary contexts have been repre-
sented and mapped on a geographic information system (GIS). Individual mortuary
contexts, regardless of the number of occupants, have been counted as one unit.
Each cumulative mortuary context (specifically, chamber tombs, tholoi, and
tumuli) has also been counted as one unit, regardless of the number of occupants.
This is intended to prevent the skewing of specific periods. Counting each cumu-
lative mortuary context as a single unit also prevents confusion when comparing
the distribution of mortuary contexts throughout the Argolid and, later, discussing
the number of chamber tombs as opposed to vessel inhumations.
A detailed examination of the mortuary evidence from the sites of Prosymna,
Dendra and Midea, Mycenae, Tiryns and Profitis Ilias, Asine, and Argos indicates
a shift away from the importance of the collective and toward the individual, a
conclusion that is supported by a number of specific features, such as the rise in
the number of individual mortuary contexts and practices that promoted and
preserved individuality in death.
The rise in the importance of the individual, as opposed to the collective, is at-
tested to by the increasing number of individual mortuary contexts, the increasing
use of vessel inhumations, and the reintroduction of cremation. This ideological
change would have affected and been apparent in socioeconomic practices and
organization as well.
The increase in the number of individual inhumations as opposed to cumula-
tive inhumations has traditionally been viewed from two opposing standpoints.
Snodgrass (2000:145–147, 153) argued that the increasing use of cist graves was
indicative of a new intrusive culture, while Desborough (1972:266) argued that
the use of cist and pit graves was a revival of Middle Helladic mortuary practices
that had been suppressed by the Mycenaean palatial culture. However, cist and
pit inhumations were also in use during the Bronze Age. Therefore, it is reason-
able to assume communities throughout the Late Helladic periods were familiar
with this type of individual mortuary context and that a new population was not
essential for the spread of individual inhumation in these forms. An analysis by
discrete chronological periods, as presented in Figure 18-6, clearly demonstrates
the transition from cumulative to individual mortuary contexts during this period.
Figure 18-5. Map of the concentrations of mortuary contexts dating to the

study period. (Lantzas 2012:44.)
The transition from cumulative to individual mortuary contexts is one ex-

ample of a fundamental ideological shift that supported and was supported by
the social, political, and economic organization of Iron Age communities. Before
presenting more-detailed material evidence, it is necessary to insist that artificial
boundaries are not placed between the Late Bronze and Iron Age. Instead, the
Late Bronze and Iron Age communities should be considered as part of a social
continuum. Through this approach, it is possible to discuss developments in the
material record, including the mortuary evidence, as a continuing renegotiation
of ideologies and practices in response to changing conditions rather than a series
of sudden and disjointed changes (Wright 2008a:145).
Chamber tombs became relatively widespread throughout the Argolid by the
Late Helladic III period and became a feature of the palatial ideology in which the
470 K. Lantzas
Figure 18-6. Comparison of individual and cumulative mortuary contexts in

the Argolid dating to the LH IIIB 2 period through Early Geometric period.
(Lantzas 2012:66.)
corporate-group identity was more important than that of individuals (Wright

2008a:149; Wright 2008b:238). While some kin groups continued to inhume their
dead in chamber tombs until the Late Helladic IIIC Late period (see Figure 18-6),
very few chamber tombs were constructed in the Late Helladic IIIC period, and
no new chamber tombs were constructed after the Late Helladic IIIC period. I
argue that this is due in part to the association of chamber tombs with the pala-
tial ideology. Figure 18-7 and Table 18-2 illustrate that by LH IIIC M, the chamber
tombs closest to and at Mycenae had fallen out of use and that chamber tombs
farther away from this palatial center remained in use much longer. It is clear from
an examination of the types of mortuary contexts in use during the Bronze Age
through Iron Age transition and the overall quantity and distribution of chamber
tombs that this particular form of cumulative mortuary context was associated
with the palatial ideology.
After the collapse of the palatial centers, communities, in general, no longer
associated with chamber-tomb inhumation. The latest examples, which have been
dated to LH IIIC Late, can be explained in two ways. First, Argos and Asine, due
to their locations, may not have reacted as strongly against the collapse of the
palatial centers as sites such as Profitis Ilias and Prosymna, which were directly
associated with the palatial centers. It is also possible that if lineage groups used
the same chamber tombs for an extended period of time, then the individuals
that chose to inhume their deceased in these mortuary contexts did so because
of filial rather than sociopolitical associations.
Figure 18-7. Map demonstrating the chronologically latest inhumations

within chamber tombs relevant to this study. (Lantzas 2012:68.)
Another implication arising from my detailed analysis of chamber tombs in

the Argolid with evidence for use after the collapse of the palatial administra-
tion is that if chamber tombs did, in fact, contain kin groups, then there is direct
continuity of population at Mycenae, Tiryns, Asine, and Argos before, during,
and subsequent to the collapse of the palatial system.
While the number of cumulative inhumation contexts decreased, the num-
ber of individual mortuary contexts increased. A particularly interesting case is
that of the increase in vessel inhumations. In this type of individual mortuary
context, which was used for both adults and children, the body of the deceased
was placed within a storage vessel and interred in a pit. Like cist and pit inhuma-
tions, this particular type of individual mortuary context has antecedents in the
472 K. Lantzas
Table 18-2. Dates for the Construction and Final Inhumation in Chamber
Tombs Relevant to This Study
Location Number Construction Date Final Inhumation

Prosymna XIX; XXVI; IX; XXII; XV; X LH IIIA 2 LH IIIB 2
Prosymna XXXIII LH IIIA 1 LH IIIB 2
Prosymna XXVIII; III; VI LH IIA LH IIIB 2
Asine I, 2; I, 5 LH IIIA 1 LH IIIC
Asine I, 4 LH IIIC LH IIIC
Mycenae 502 LH III LH IIIC
Mycenae B LH IIIC LH IIIC
Prof. Ilias XVI LH IIIC LH IIIC
Prof. Ilias VIII; VI; XV LH IIIA LH IIIC
Prof. Ilias VII LH II LH IIIC
Kokla — LH IIIA 2 LH IIIC
Prosymna XX LH IIIB LH IIIC E
Mycenae P-I LH IIIA 2 LH IIIC E
Mycenae G-III LH IIIA 1 LH IIIC M
Asine I, 6 LH IIIA 2 LH IIIC M
Asine I, 7 LH IIIA 2 LH IIIC M
Mycenae 532 LH II LH IIIC M
Prof. Ilias V LH IIIB 2 LH IIIC M
Argos XIV LH IIIA 2 LH IIIC L
Argos XVII LH IIIB LH IIIC L
Argos XX LH IIIC LH IIIC L
Argos XVIII LH IIIC LH IIIC L
Asine I, 1 LH IIB LH IIIC L
Middle Helladic period, during which a number of pithos burials were carried
out (Boyd 2002:69). Figure 18-8 illustrates the relative quantities of vessel inhuma-
tions discovered at Mycenae, Argos, and Tiryns. No vessel inhumations from this
period have been discovered at Asine or Prosymna. The community that used
Prosymna as a cemetery during the Late Bronze Age used chamber tombs exclu-
sively, and perhaps the lack of vessel inhumations is due to the fact that this area
was abandoned for a time. At Asine, however, the community tended to utilize
other forms of single-inhumation burials. Perhaps, this particular community
maintained a preference for inhumation within cist and pit graves prior to and
throughout the Late Bronze Age.
Figure 18-8. Locations and quantities of vessel inhumations. (Lantzas 2012:70.)
The earliest vessel inhumation in this study is a Late Helladic IIIC Early ves-
sel inhumation from Mycenae. Vessel inhumations became increasingly common
throughout the Bronze Age through Iron Age transition, particularly during the
Protogeometric period, as illustrated by Figure 18-9. Vessel inhumations have
been discovered individually or included in groups with other types of mortuary
contexts, particularly in locations throughout the modern city of Argos.
I suggest that during the Late Helladic IIIC period, this type of mortuary
context is an example of the ideological shift away from the palatial identity to one
focusing on the individual and, in cases where it occurred alongside other contexts,
also preserved the individuality of the deceased as the use of a pithos or other
storage jar would have increased the memorability of the funeral. Inhumation in
ceramic vessels, particularly when discovered in proximity to other individual
474 K. Lantzas
Figure 18-9. Comparison of quantities of chamber tombs and vessel inhuma-

tions over time. (Lantzas 2012:71.)
mortuary contexts or within a cumulative context, preserved individuality even

after death. The use of storage vessels also functioned as an act of wealth disposal
through which the household could gain social status.
Individual-inhumation burials in cists and pits and vessel inhumations were
not unknown before the Iron Age, but when considered against the disappear-
ance of cumulative mortuary contexts, there is a strong case for arguing that the
increasing use of individual mortuary contexts is a sign of changes in ideology
rather than fashion or in amounts of wealth available for expenditure mainly in
the mortuary arena.
Ceramic Material and Metal Objects

While the architectural material and mortuary evidence demonstrate
changing sociopolitical and ideological realities, the evidence provided by an
analysis of ceramic material and metal objects demonstrates that production and
consumption patterns remained relatively unchanged. This suggests that the
production of ceramics and metal objects was probably already taking place at
the level of the domestic unit or small-to-medium–scale workshop and that the
palatial centers were relatively little more than eager consumers. The reliance
on ceramic material and metal objects from mortuary contexts and the lack of
stratified settlement deposits, as well as (in the case of pottery) the postexcavation
selection of decorated fine wares and diagnostic shapes, have contributed to the
differential sampling, recording, and publication of both these categories of evi-
dence. Therefore, my analysis is based on a fragmentary and problematic record.
This makes the results of any quantitative or statistical analysis uninformative

at best. However, these difficulties should not deter critical examination of this
material; rather, they inform and encourage new approaches.
Table 18-3 illustrates the occurrence of ceramic shapes throughout the Late
Helladic IIIB 2 through Early Geometric periods. I have chosen to include only
examples that have been definitively identified. Certain shapes, such as tripod
cooking pots and jugs, dippers, and ladles, are underrepresented in the overall
body of ceramic material dating to the study period. This is due to their lack of
inclusion in mortuary contexts and the general lack of postexcavation focus on
coarse wares. Table 8-3 also illustrates that the disappearance of certain shapes,
such as the kylix and stirrup jar, does not indicate a loss of technical skill because
these shapes were replaced by other vessels that fulfilled the same function.
In order to discuss variability in the ceramic repertoire throughout the Late
Bronze Age through Iron Age transition in more detail, it is necessary to select
deposits of ceramic material from similar contexts. Unfortunately, securely dated,
stratified deposits from domestic contexts are lacking throughout this period. An
analysis using this limited body of material would further be hampered by the
differences in collecting, recording, and publishing ceramic material. However,
it is possible to use ceramic material from mortuary contexts for more-detailed
analysis. Clearly, some shapes or functions will be underrepresented because
they were considered inappropriate for deliberate deposition in mortuary con-
texts, but it is possible to discuss the presence or absence of particular shapes
and infer from this what shapes were in production and circulation throughout
this period.
Table 18-4 illustrates ceramic assemblages from chamber tombs at Mycenae
and Prosymna (Wace 1932; Shelton 2000). It is clear from this table that drinking
and pouring vessels dominate the assemblages, as is the case with ceramic material
from mortuary contexts of later date. Table 18-5 illustrates ceramic assemblages
from chamber tombs at Mycenae and Prosymna that were in use throughout the
periods of palatial instability. It is important to stress again that the kin groups
that used these cumulative mortuary contexts did so throughout the socioeco-
nomic and political disturbances and the subsequent ideological shift that began
after the collapse of the palatial administration. Table 18-6 illustrates ceramic as-
semblages from strictly postpalatial and Iron Age mortuary contexts from Argos,
Asine, Tiryns, and Mycenae.
It is clear that vessels used in the act of consumption are the predominant
functional category in all periods. It is also clear that the repertoire of potters
remained relatively unchanged throughout the transition from palatial to post-
palatial. However, a closer analysis of specific shapes indicates that shapes as-
sociated with the palatial administration became less popular during subsequent
periods and reinforces the continuity in ceramic repertoire between periods of
palatial stability and instability. Forty-four percent of palatial mortuary contexts
contained kylikes, and 66 percent contained stirrup jars; similarly, 38 percent of
mortuary contexts from periods of palatial instability contained kylikes, and 63
percent contained stirrup jars. However, none of the postpalatial mortuary con-
texts contained kylikes, and only 14 percent contained stirrup jars.
476 K. Lantzas
Table 18-3. Demonstration of the Presence or Absence of Specific Ceramic

Shapes throughout the Study Period
Shape Function LH IIIB 2 LH IIIC PG EG

Brazier Cooking – – + –
Cauldron Cooking – – + –
Cooking pot/jar Cooking + + + –
Cooking stand Cooking – – + –
Cover/lid Accessory + + + –
Dipper/ladle Accessory + – + +
Bird vase Pouring – – + –
Jug Pouring + + + +
Askos Pouring + + + –
Hydria Pouring + + + +
Oinochoe Pouring – + + +
Kylix Drinking + + – –
Cup Drinking + + + +
Goblet Drinking + – – +
Mug Drinking + + + –
Deep bowl/skyphos Drinking + + + +
Kantharos Drinking – – + +
Krater Drinking + + + +
Plate Eating + + + +
Saucer Eating – – + –
Bowl Eating + + + +
Kalathos Eating – + + –
Basin Storage + + + –
Pyxis Storage – + + +
Stirrup jar Storage + + – –
Pithos Storage + + + +
Alabastron Storage + + – –
Amphora Storage + + + +
Amphoriskos Storage + + + –
Aryballos Storage + + + +
Jar Storage + + + –
Larnax Storage – – + +
Kernos Storage – – + –
Lekythos Storage – – + –
Feeding bottle Unknown – – + –

Table 18-4. Ceramic Assemblages from Palatial Mortuary Contexts at

Mycenae and Prosymna
Mortuary Context Date Assemblage
Mycenae
ChT G-I LH IIIA–LH IIIB 2 stirrup jars; 1 jar
ChT G-II LH IIIA 2–LH IIIB 1 2 stirrup jars; 1 bowl; 2 kraters; 4 jugs; 1 cup
ChT G-IV LH IIIA 2 2 alabastra; 2 stirrup jars
ChT PE-I LH IIIA 2 1 stirrup jar
ChT KN/V-II LH IIIA 2–LH IIIB 1 4 kylikes; 2 jugs; 1 krater; 1 jar; 2 stirrup jars
ChT P-II LH IIIA 1 1 alabastron
ChT 513 LH III 1 amphora; 1 jug
ChT 514 LH III 1 kylix
ChT 520 LH III 7 kylikes; 5 amphorae; 4 jugs; 3 cups; 2 shallow
bowls; 1 alabastron; 1 stirrup jar
ChT 525 LH III 3 jugs; 2 amphorae; 2 kylikes; 1 deep bowl/
krater; 1 stirrup jar
ChT P-III LH IIIA 1 2 alabastra
Prosymna
ChT XXXIII LH IIIA 1–LH IIIB 2 9 kylikes; 5 stirrup jars; 11 cups; 6 jugs; 3
goblets; 2 bowls; 2 alabastra; 1 askos; 1 shallow
bowl; 1 feeding bottle; 1 deep bowl; 1 pyxis
with lid; 1 piriform jar
ChT XIX LH IIIA 2–LH IIIB 2 4 stirrup jars; 1 amphora; 1 piriform jar; 1 jug;
1 alabastron
ChT XXVI LH IIIA 2–LH IIIB 2 11 cups; 4 stirrup jars; 4 jugs; 2 alabastra; 2
goblets; 1 jar; 1 piriform jar; 1 shallow bowl; 1
feeding bottle
ChT IX LH IIIA 2–LH IIIB 2 1 jug
ChT XXII LH IIIA 2–LH IIIB 2 6 feeding bottles; 4 stirrup jars; 2 piriform jars;
1 jug; 1 askos; 1 kylix
ChT XV LH IIIA 2–LH IIIB 2 1 deep bowl; 1 shallow bowl; 1 piriform jar; 1
jug; 1 cup; 1 kylix
ChT X LH IIIA 2–LH IIIB 2 4 stirrup jars; 2 jugs; 2 bowls; 1 kylix; 1 jar; 1
cup; 1 alabastron

478 K. Lantzas
Table 18-5. Ceramic Assemblages from Mortuary Contexts Dating to the

Period of Palatial Instability
Mycenae
ChT G-III LH IIIA 2–LH IIIC M 3 stirrup jars; 1 bowl; 2 kraters; 1 amphora
ChT P-I LH IIIA 2–LH IIIC E 1 mug; 2 rhyta; 2 kraters; 7 stirrup jars; 1 bowl; 1
deep bowl; 3 basins; 1 cup; 1 kylix; 1 kalathos; 1
hydria; 1 jar
ChT Tomb 532 LH II–LH IIIC M 5 jugs; 1 alabastron; 3 goblets; 3 cups; 1 jar; 1
stirrup jar; 1 feeding bottle; 1 kylix
ChT Tomb 502 LH III–LH IIIC 1 amphora; 1 feeding bottle; 6 kylikes; 2 incense
burners; 2 cups; 1 jug; 1 deep bowl; 1 stirrup jar;
1 possible larnax
Prosymna
ChT XX LH IIIB–LH IIIC E 2 stirrup jars; 1 alabastron; 1 cup
I argue that the decline in and eventual disappearance of kylikes and stirrup
jars, ceramic shapes that were linked directly with the palatial administration,
further demonstrates the shift away from the palatial ideology. Kylikes were used
in elite, ritual, and other contexts presumably for the consumption of wine, and
stirrup jars were used as containers for oil, both perfumed and unscented. The
ritual consumption of wine and the production and trade in oil were three activi-
ties directly associated with the palatial administration.
There are three main types of kylix: the rounded kylix, the carinated kylix,
which is the most popular unpainted form, and the conical shaped kylix, which
is the least common form (Mountjoy 2001:81, 84). Over time, kylikes eventually
became one of the standard drinking vessels for feasts and ritual activities and
in these contexts may have acquired a symbolic meaning. The kylix came to
symbolize palatial largesse, the ability of the palatial elite to mobilize and re-
distribute goods in feasting contexts. During the LH IIIB 2 and LH IIIC periods,
the varieties of kylix in use, their varied quality, and decoration suggest that
this particular shape was being widely produced outside the control of a single,
standardizing authority. Perhaps, this demonstrates that the palatial connota-
tions of this shape were weakening or becoming less important. It is possible
that lower levels in the palatial hierarchy were attempting to use the kylix and
its symbolic meaning for their own purposes. The deep bowl replaced the kylix
during LH IIIC. Both this change and the wide variety in form and decoration
of the deep bowl demonstrate a rejection of the palatial ideology and formation
of new practices and material culture that reflected and supported the ideology
and socioeconomic organization.
Table 18-6. Ceramic Assemblages from Iron Age Mortuary Contexts
Argos
O. Papalexopoulou cist LPG 1 jug; 1 oinochoe
Asine
197009 PG 1 spouted jug/possible feeding bottle
1970-10 PG 1 lekythos; 1 jug
1970-14 PG 1 jug; 1 skyphos; 1 oinochoe
1970-15 PG 2 jugs; 2 skyphoi; 1 oinochoe
1970-6 PG 1 jug
Mycenae
G 23 EG 1 amphora; 1 lekythos
G 603 EG 3 pyxides; 2 oinochoi; 1 miniature oinochoe; 1
amphora; 1 cup; 1 goblet
G 607 EG 4 skyphoi; 2 amphoriskoi; 0 cups; 1 lid; 4 pyxides;
1 aryballos; 1 oinochoe; 2 miniature trefoil-lipped
oinochoi
Tiryns
1907/09, 3 PG 1 amphora
1926, 9 cists LPG 1 amphora; 1 pithos; 1 skyphos
1957 XIIIa EPG 1 jug
1957 XIIIb LH IIIC L 1 stirrup jar; 1 oinochoe; 1 jug
1957 XXVIII EPG 1 stirrup jar
Like the kylix, the stirrup jar is a highly distinctive vessel shape and is also
easily identifiable in the archaeological record because of the presence of specific
morphological features. During the Late Helladic IIIB, four types of small stirrup
jar were in use: the piriform, rounded, squat, and conical varieties (Mountjoy
2001:42, 71, 80). The small versions were frequently deposited in tombs as con-
tainers for oil, perhaps perfumed oil or possibly oil specifically associated with
funerary rites, while the larger forms were used as storage and transport vessels
for liquids and were rarely deposited in mortuary contexts.
Stirrup jars came in many forms, and like the kylix, there was considerable
variation in style, fabric, and decoration. The most basic system of classification for
the stirrup jar is based on ware. There is a large coarse-ware variety (FS 164) and a
fine-ware type (FS 165–185). The choice of fabric may reflect the context in which
480 K. Lantzas
the vessel was used and its specific function. Large coarse-ware stirrup jars have
been found in storage or redistributive contexts, such as those discovered in the
House of the Oil Merchant, and they were used to transport bulk quantities of oil.
During the Late Helladic IIIC Early phase, there was considerable continuity
in the vessel shapes being produced by potters. However, three of the four types
of stirrup jar, the conical form, squat form, and piriform shapes, were apparently
discontinued. The disappearance of three of the four forms as noted by Mountjoy
(2001:90), the decline in the number of fine-ware jars being produced, and the
increased number of Mycenaean imitations produced in Cyprus and the Levant
all reflect the unsettled conditions of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries b.c.e.
(van Wijngaarden 2002:261–262).
The imitation of the stirrup jar in local fabrics suggests that there was cur-
rency in this shape. It is possible that local imitations began to compete with and
replace the Aegean stirrup jars, which would have unbalanced Mycenaean palatial
involvement in long-distance trade. The reduction in the number of forms being
produced, the widespread variations in standard, and the increase in imitations
are also indicative of the dissolution of palatial influence on ceramic production
and the contraction of international trade.
With the decline in international exchange at the end of the Late Bronze Age,
it appears that the stirrup jar, particularly the larger forms of the vessel, may
have lost its connection with palatial economic activity. The smaller forms were
still deposited in mortuary contexts, in keeping with their association with the
individual as suggested by Cook (1981:167). However, the smaller shapes, which
were perhaps for personal use and prevalent in mortuary contexts, also eventually
disappeared from the potters’ repertoire. Perhaps, any symbolic meaning inher-
ent in this shape no longer held currency or perhaps its various functions were
subsumed by the aryballos and lekythos, particular vessel shapes that held oil or,
in the case of the former, perfumed oil (Leonard et al. 1993:105; Mountjoy 2001:114).
This discussion demonstrates that no single functional category of ceramic
material was discontinued. Furthermore, the loss of particular shapes, such as
the stirrup jar or kylix, is not indicative of a lack of skill. Rather, other shapes that
fulfilled the same functions, such as the lekythos and deep bowl, replaced them.
It is evident that there existed a continuous ceramic tradition in terms of the func-
tions of shapes that were produced, morphological development, and production
technology from the Late Bronze through the Iron Age (Crielaard 1999:49). The
ceramic material also indicates a sustained level of basic domestic and small-to-
medium–scale workshop activity at many preexisting sites.
In my analysis of ceramic material, I demonstrated how little changed during
this period. I attributed this stability, in large part, to preexisting, extrapalatial pro-
duction and exchange. Following the collapse of the palatial administration, the
same production technologies were used, the vessels that were produced fulfilled
the same functions, even though there were changes in the ceramic repertoire,
and ceramic material continued to be circulated, used in domestic contexts, and
deposited as containers for appropriate mortuary offerings.
I treat metal objects much the same way. For this analysis, I have used the
same mortuary contexts presented in my discussion of ceramic material. It is clear
from the preceding tables that the same types of objects were deposited in mortu-
ary contexts throughout all periods of this study, and that in periods previously
characterized as impoverished, there were well-equipped mortuary contexts, such
as 1957 XXVIII from Tiryns and G 603 at Mycenae.
The types of materials in use and types of objects being manufactured and
consumed remained consistent throughout the Late Bronze through Iron Age.
The variety in objects and metals used also contradicts the assumptions that this
was an impoverished period and that the technical skills needed to produce these
objects were lacking (Kayafa 2006:215).
In an examination of Late Helladic III through Early Geometric metal objects,
Kayafa (2006:214) characterized LH III metal artifacts as being predominantly cop-
per-based and that lead was frequently used as well. She then examined published
chemical data from samples taken from objects from the House of the Tripod Tomb,
the Poros Wall Hoard, LH III chamber tombs excavated by Tsountas, and various
objects from Mycenae and Tiryns. From a review of the chemical data, Kayafa con-
cluded that tin-bronze was the predominant alloy (Kayafa 2006:216). Although her
later assemblages come from outside the Argolid (Nichoria, Kastri, and Lefkandi)
because assemblages of metal objects from later periods are lacking, Kayafa’s study
still provides a useful basis for comparison. During this period, tin-bronze was
also the predominant alloy (Kayafa 2006:226). This continuity suggests stability in
both access to raw materials and technology. Kayafa’s conclusions (2006) contrast
with the previously dominant bronze-shortage theory (Snodgrass 2000:237–39),
which argued that the increasing reliance on iron was due to the disruption of
long-distance trade routes and the collapse of the palaces around 1200 b.c.e. Kayafa
demonstrates that the low and variable tin content from the Iron Age examples
could have been caused by the practice of recycling bronze objects. These results
suggest that access to tin was perhaps restricted in some way but that this was not
the prime motivation for the eventual replacement of bronze by iron.
A basic analysis of the material record demonstrates that jewelry and tools
were the mostly frequently identified functional categories. This is most likely due
to the fact that metal objects were most frequently recovered from mortuary con-
texts and utilitarian hoards. The limited nature of contexts also means that some
items, such as metal vessels, are probably underrepresented in the archaeological
record. Other factors contributing to the general lack of metal objects in the ar-
chaeological record are the practice of recycling, as attested to by Linear B evidence,
and the fact that the collapse of the palatial administration would have restricted
access to certain raw materials. Like ceramic material, the continuity in shapes
and functions suggests that production of metal items was already taking place
outside of palatial regulation, and their frequent deposition in mortuary contexts
demonstrates that this period was not so impoverished as previously assumed.
Summary and Conclusions
Prior to and during the Late Helladic IIIB 2, a number of destabilizing

events occurred in the Argolid. These events created an environment in which
482 K. Lantzas
communities living around the palatial centers could question the established
ideology and socioeconomic practices.
At this time and throughout the Late Helladic IIIC period, communities re-
mained clustered around the palatial centers. However, instead of attempting to
rebuild that which had been lost, they began developing a new ideology and prac-
tices that privileged the welfare and development of individuals and individual
domestic units. The ideological shift away from the corporate group is exceptionally
clear in changes in the evidence from the built environment and mortuary contexts.
Evidence from the built environment demonstrates that storage, ritual, and
industrial spaces were located in proximity to or within domestic spaces. This
suggests that household units took closer control of these activities and were
engaged in self-sufficient practices. The central location for these activities (the
palatial center) was replaced by a number of different locations for these activities,
which further demonstrates the ideological shift away from the large corporate
group. It appears that during the Late Helladic IIIC period, there was very lim-
ited architectural activity on the citadels of Mycenae, Tiryns, and Midea and that
by the end of this period, Midea had been abandoned. However, the settlement
outside of Tiryns expanded at this time, suggesting an increase in population.
The increasing importance of the individual and the role of the domestic unit
in everyday activities is exceptionally clear at Tiryns and Asine, where several
large buildings either with or surrounded by areas for religious practices, stor-
age, or production were discovered. This type of architectural plan indicates that
rather than a single entity (the palatial center) regulating these activities, one or
several domestic units were directly involved in these socioeconomic practices.
The disappearance of cumulative burials and the increase in individual in-
humations also suggest that increasing emphasis was now being placed on the
individual or the domestic unit rather than the corporate group. Later, particu-
larly during the Proto- and Early Geometric periods, inhumations within ceramic
vessels continued this trend by adding memorability to the funeral through con-
spicuous disposal.
Throughout this period, craftsmen, particularly potters and smiths, contin-
ued to produce the same repertoire of shapes in the same materials as were in
circulation during the Late Bronze Age. This suggests that very little technologi-
cal skill was lost and that the basic needs of the communities remained the same
throughout. It also reinforces the logical assumption that production of these items
took place either outside the control of the palatial administration (as is probably
the case with ceramic material) or with minimal involvement (as is probably the
case with metal objects).
In subsequent periods, further variations indicate the continual development
of this ideology and construction of socioeconomic structures that best served
these communities. During the Protogeometric period, the rise in the importance
of the individual continued, and, with the passage of time, the nature of activity
at the palatial centers changed. While a community continued to inhabit the area
around Tiryns, it appears the palatial remains at Mycenae were used as a loca-
tion for burials, although new developments from ongoing excavations in what
has come to be known as the Lower Town may yet reveal an Iron Age settlement.
During the Protogeometric period, mortuary evidence and evidence from the
built environment indicate that Argos and Asine became prominent settlement
locations. Perhaps, this is due in part to their distance from a palatial center, or
maybe as the connection to the remains of the palatial centers diminished over
time, individuals felt less of a connection to the landscape, as demonstrated by
the abandonment of chamber tombs, and decided to settle elsewhere.
By the Early Geometric period, these domestic units were well established
and in turn supported and were reinforced by the ideology and practices that
privileged the individual. Therefore, communities were engaging with this ideol-
ogy and set of socioeconomic practices and viewing the remains of the Mycenaean
palatial centers as remnants of a glorious past, as evidenced by early examples of
hero or ancestor worship at Argos and potentially at Midea.
Scholars have long sought explanations for the collapse of the Mycenaean
palatial centers and the development of the city-state, and, certainly, some of the
reasons for these developments are not archaeologically recoverable. We might
never have the answers to these questions. However, that should not prohibit us
from, at the very least, engaging in the broader, ongoing debates about societal
collapse, the role of environmental changes, and individual resilience. How dif-
ferent would our understanding of this transitional period be if the focus had not
been on the perceived abandonment of the palatial centers?
Acknowledgments
I thank Ronald K. “Sonny” Faulseit for organizing such an interesting

and valuable conference and for our constructive discussion of this paper. I also
thank John Bennet, Chris Mee, and Jane Rempel for having read and commented
on earlier versions of this paper as it appeared in my dissertation.
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19. A Tale of Two Cities:
Continuity and Change
following the Moche Collapse in
the Jequetepeque Valley, Peru
Kari A. Zobler and Richard C. Sutter
Abstract: During the environmentally influenced demise of the Moche of

Peru (a.d. 200–800), new archaeological and bioarchaeological data provide
evidence that sites chose differential responses of resilience, including forg-
ing new political alliances, expanding economic production, and adopting
new religious practices. Biodistance analysis shows that adjacent, highland
Cajamarca peoples arrived in the Jequetepeque Valley and interbred with lo-
cal inhabitants interred at San José de Moro during both the Late Moche (a.d.
650–800) and subsequent Transitional (~a.d. 800–900) periods. Culturally,
local ceramicists at San José de Moro reflected this influence by experiment-
ing with hybrid vessels that blended local Moche forms and designs with
highland ones. By contrast, recent excavations at the site of Talambo—located
at the lower neck of the Jequetepeque Valley—indicate that the changes de-
tected at San José de Moro and other sites in the valley were not uniform.
Specifically, almost no evidence for adjacent highland influence was found
at Talambo. Instead, investigation of independent craft production at Ta-
lambo indicates that local artisans thrived during the transition from the
Late Moche through Lambayeque (~a.d. 800–1100) periods with minimal
stylistic hybridization. We suggest that unlike changes noted elsewhere in
the Jequetepeque Valley, the population at Talambo was able to moderate
external influence and remain economically independent during a period
of political and environmental instability.

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
486
A Tale of Two Cities 487
Societal collapse has long been a preoccupation of anthropologists as a

natural outgrowth of an interest in complexity. An examination of societal regen-
eration (or lack thereof) after collapse has more recently emerged, accompanied by
the realization that sociopolitical collapse does not necessarily entail depopulation,
nor is it essentially expressed uniformly across a region. The interrelated socio-
political processes of complexity, collapse, and regeneration encompass all pos-
sible amalgamations, fragmentations, and reconfigurations of a society. Although
variety in cause and expression is dependent on unique historical contingencies,
variation is not infinite (Kolata 2006). A body of theory has recently emerged that
is concerned with tracking such processes and comparing them cross-culturally
for identifiable patterns (Railey and Reycraft 2008; Redman 2005; Schwartz and
Nichols 2006).
Given the importance of collapse in understanding societal change, the re-
cent literature has focused on the identification of occurrences that accompany
collapse and whether a causal link may be identified. What has emerged is an
enumeration of internal processes, wherein societies destroy themselves from
within long before they meet pressures from without; external factors, which
may catalyze societal destabilization and often prefigure collapse; or a host of
interrelated variables. In his opening chapter of the edited volume After Collapse:
The Regeneration of Complex Societies, Schwartz (2006) identifies a number of fac-
tors that may occur following the collapse of complex societies and how those
factors may influence subsequent regeneration and resilience. Among them, he
discusses political fragmentation, ethnogenesis, climate, rural resilience, survival
of preexisting institutions, external societies, climate enhancement, and retention
of precollapse economic activities and traditions. Thus, collapse occurs through
a variety of mechanisms, wherein sociopolitical fragmentation and the relative
rapidity in which this occurs are the only common features (Railey and Reycraft
2008; Tainter 1988; Yoffee and Cowgill 1988).
The precollapse historic trajectory of a society’s sociopolitical configura-
tion offers predictive value in the matter of postcollapse regenerative processes.
Kolata (2006) argues that the nature of a precollapse society’s governing strat-
egy—i.e., whether it was subjugation with sovereignty or indirect hegemony
without sovereignty—will greatly influence the nature of regeneration. Thus,
although collapse pressures may be broadly expressed, such as in the case
of climate change, they may influence subgroups within a society differently.
In some instances, these pressures may even benefit subaltern or marginal
populations who have invested in a more diversified or otherwise resilient
subsistence economy (Cooper 2006; Danti 2010). Thus, emergent strategies of
regeneration and transformation will correspond with the nature of precollapse
hegemony as well as newly afforded opportunities in a highly dynamic politi-
cal environment, redefining social relationships, hierarchies, and identities in
the process.
The focus of our chapter is to understand the diverse regenerative pro-
cesses following the demise of the Moche (a.d. 200–800) within the Jequetepeque
Valley on the north coast of Peru. We suggest that the varied regenerative re-
sponses observed during the subsequent Transitional period (a.d. 800–900) in the
488 K. A. Zobler and R. C. Sutter
Jequetepeque Valley are a result of the unique nature of sociopolitical develop-

ments during the Middle and Late Moche era as well as external influences in the
valley during a period of environmental degradation. In addition to providing
a backdrop of the preceding Moche period and its decline, we highlight survey
results for the Jequetepeque as well as our own recent bioarchaeological and
excavation data for the valley. Thus, we aim to examine the historically situated
processes of the Moche collapse and illuminate the variability in subsequent
societal regenerations.
Jequetepeque in the Era of Los Mochicas del Norte
The Moche (a.d. 200–800) were a number of complex societies with a

shared ideology characterized by a mixed agropastoral and maritime economy
that represented either nascent states or shifting alliances among competing com-
plex polities (Castillo 2000b; Castillo and Quilter 2010; Castillo and Uceda 2008;
Swenson 2014) within the lower coastal valleys of northern Peru between the Piura
and Huarmey valleys (Figure 19-1). Although Moche political organization was
regionally varied, there is a general consensus that there were at least two areas
of Moche influence—one in the north and one in the south—that were separated
between the Jequetepeque and Chicama valleys.
Numerous scholars suggest that within the northern Moche sphere, the
Jequetepeque Valley underwent a unique sequence of developments (Castillo
2010; Castillo and Uceda 2008) (Figure 19-2). Settlement in lower Jequetepeque
during the Early Moche period was primarily focused along the banks of the
river, where seasonal flooding provided an abundant array of plant and ani-
mal life, and residents had access to riverine and coastal resources. Although
limited canal irrigation in the valley may have been built as early as the Prece-
ramic (Stackelbeck 2008), the first significant construction of irrigation systems
began in the Middle Moche period (a.d. 500–650) (Castillo 2010; Eling 1987:454).
Settlement expanded with the greater agricultural productivity afforded by
the canals, first in the immediate vicinity of the river and then to the southern
portion of the valley with a single canal system. Finally, the north sector of the
valley up to the Chamán River was extensively settled and irrigated through
a series of four canals (Chafán, Guadalupe, Chepén, and Talambo), each with
an independent intake in the valley neck (Castillo 2010; Castillo et al. 2008;
Eling 1987).
The ideological repertoire depicted on ceramics in this early period, cen-
tered at the site of Dos Cabezas in the lower valley, followed stylistic trends
consistent with those of the southern Moche sphere. The ceramic sequence
in Jequetepeque was temporally more elastic than in the southern valleys,
however, with Early Moche motifs employed in Jequetepeque long after they
had fallen out of fashion in Chicama-Moche (see Figure 19-2). Contemporane-
ous burials at the ritual center of San José de Moro reflect the stylistic con-
servatism at Dos Cabezas in their grave goods (Makowski 2000; Rosas 2010)
(Figure 19-3).
Figure 19-1. Map of selected Moche-era archaeological sites on the north

coast of Peru.
Figure 19-2. Traditional central Andean chronology and comparative ceramic

chronologies for the northern and southern spheres of Moche influence. (After
Castillo 2010:Figure 2.)
Late Moche Settlement in Jequetepeque

The Late Moche period (a.d. 650–800) is associated with the environmen-
tally influenced reorganization of much of what the Middle Moche had achieved,
including settlement shifts inland near the uptakes of irrigation canals. Within the
Jequetepeque Valley, the LMP was characterized by political decentralization and
shifting alliances among competitive polities that emerged along divisions in the
extant irrigation systems (Castillo 2010; Castillo et al. 2008; Swenson 2004). At this
time, most of the southern Jequetepeque Valley settlements were abandoned or only
intermittently occupied due to dune encroachment (Dillehay, Kolata, and Moseley
2004; Dillehay et al. 2009; Eling 1987; Hecker and Hecker 1982), and there was a
simultaneous proliferation of hinterland settlements, each with its own highly var-
ied, localized ritual platforms and feasting wares (Castillo 2000a, 2003, 2007, 2009,
2010; Dillehay, Kolata, and Moseley 2004; Dillehay et al. 2009; Hecker and Hecker
1995:78; Johnson 2011; Swenson 2004:726, 732–727; 2007). In some instances, these
settlements—typified by multiple fortifications and piles of sling stones—were
located at distances of up to 3 km from associated unfortified farming hamlets
Figure 19-3. Map of selected Moche-era archaeological sites in the Jequete-

peque Valley, Peru. (After Rosas 2010:Figure 5.17.)
and water sources, leading Swenson (2004, 2007) to suggest that the fortified sites
represent hinterland refuges from internecine warfare and where local feasting,
ancestor worship, and other Moche rituals occurred during the LMP. The site of
Talambo, nestled below the peak of Cerro Sulivan, was one such settlement.
Talambo is located on an alluvial plain (Talambo Oeste) and adjacent hillside
(Talambo Este) on the north bank of the lower neck of the Jequetepeque Valley.
The site consists of successively built monumental structures (including three
huaca mounds [a sacred place or material in the Andes, often used to refer to
monumental adobe pyramids or platforms on the north coast of Peru], a rectan-
gular enclosure, and numerous outbuildings) and hillside domestic settlements
and ritual platforms. The first significant occupation at Talambo dates to the Late
Moche period and continues through the Moche collapse and subsequent Tran-
sitional and Late Intermediate periods (a.d. 1000–1476) (Eling 1987; Keatinge and
Conrad 1983; Swenson 2004; Zobler 2014, 2016a, 2016b).
The Talambo Canal, which is one of four canals that irrigate the northern
sector of the valley, flows immediately adjacent to the site. The site’s location near
the river uptake for all of the north-bank canals made it ideal for water manage-
ment during the Moche and post-Moche eras. The canal flows northward toward
the Pampa de Colorado, irrigating settlements along the way through a series of
secondary canals. The Serrano Canal (built during the LMP) was the first of these
secondary constructions, which brought water to the settlement of Cerro Chepén
and indirectly to nearby settlements like San José de Moro.1
Throughout this period of local variation in rural Jequetepeque, influence
from the unfortified ceremonial site of San José de Moro seems to have escalated.
Whereas once it was a middling settlement among similar Middle Moche sites, in
the LMP it became the main cultic center of the priestess, the valley’s primary funer-
ary locus, and the producer of unique fineline ceramics with motifs highlighting
these emergent cultic and mortuary specialties. Fineline depictions of earlier (i.e.,
Early and Middle Moche) male deities dramatically decreased in frequency during
the LMP, while depictions of elite females associated with the recurring “Sacrifice
Theme” predominated. Funerary offerings associated with elite female burials in
the LMP at San José de Moro indicate that a lineage of priestesses played an impor-
tant role in Moche mortuary feasting and sacrificial traditions (Castillo 2001, 2006).
Throughout the Moche era, there is relatively little evidence for substantial
extralocal contacts and exchange. Regional ceremonial centers thrived amidst
numerous smaller, fortified hinterland settlements. At Talambo, residents focused
on small-scale craft production, rural ritual, and water management. Significantly,
feasting wares and platforms were found throughout LMP hinterland sites, such
as Cerro Catalina, Charcape, San Idelfonso, Cerro Falco, and Talambo (among
others); however, Late Moche fineline wares (produced at San José de Moro) were
rare (Swenson 2004, although see Johnson 2011, who reports 35 LMP fineline
sherds from Charcape).
San José de Moro is an extralocal aberration where the exotic wares included
as funerary offerings in the tombs of the LMP priestesses are unparalleled in the
north-coast region (Castillo 2000a:149–150, 2001; Castillo and Uceda 2008). Elite
female chamber tombs contained hundreds of grave offerings, including a new
style of exquisite Moche fineline wares and imported fine wares predominantly
from the central coastal Nievería, adjacent highland Cajamarca Floral Cursive, and
southern highland Wari traditions (although there are also wares from Atarco,
Pativilca, and Chachapoyas) (Castillo 2000a:149–150, 2001). Other exotic objects,
such as lapis lazuli from northern Chile and worked Spondylus shells from coastal
Ecuador, were also included as elite grave offerings. As the Moche world collapsed,
the emergent foreign influence at San José de Moro intensified.
Collapse, Regeneration, and Resilience
The subsequent Transitional/Early Intermediate period (a.d. 800–900)

on the north coast is associated with Moche political collapse, although settlement
patterns in the Jequetepeque hinterland remained predominantly unaffected.
San José de Moro: Ritual Networks, New Neighbors

By the Late Moche period, San José de Moro’s preeminence as a ritual
center was manifest. Exotic wares continued to be included in elite tombs during
the Early Transitional, with stylistic hybridization becoming increasingly appar-
ent as local ceramics blended traditional fineline motifs with foreign (predomi-
nantly highland) forms and designs. In addition to complex funerary rituals that
centered on the priestess, unique fineline ceramics were produced and exported
along socioeconomic networks to other centers in the valley in an arrangement
that favored certain sites over others.
The rapid changes evident at San José de Moro were indicative of societal
transformations across the valley. Although initially rejected as having played a
role in the Late Moche’s demise (Castillo and Uceda 2008; Dillehay 2001), recent
excavations at Cerro Chepén reveal a clear highland Cajamarca presence in the
Jequetepeque Valley (Cusicanqui and Caramanica 2011; Rosas 2007, 2010). Encircled
by a 5.5 m high, 2 m thick fortification wall with only three entrances, multiple tow-
ers, and parapets in direct association with caches of sling stones, the monumental
sector at Cerro Chepén sits 250 m above the valley floor and consists of eight
buildings that were constructed in accordance with the adjacent sierra architec-
tural tradition. These structures include a “palace” and a highly visible associated
feasting platform that overlooks much of the northern bank of the valley. Recent
excavations indicate a predominance of Cajamarca Floral Cursive fine wares, with
lower frequencies of Wari-Huamanga- and domestic-style wares, in addition to
local Late Moche and Transitional period wares (Cusicanqui and Caramanica 2011;
Rosas 2010). The presence of Late Moche fineline vessels recovered from structures
within the monumental core indicates that it was contemporaneous with the Late
Moche domestic structures and feasting platforms located immediately outside
of the core’s fortification, as well as nearby San José de Moro.
Dentally derived biodistance results previously reported by Sutter and Cas-
tillo (2015) suggest that extensive gene flow existed among north-coast populations
through the Middle Moche period (Figure 19-4).2 Population-structure analyses
of burials at San José de Moro, however, indicate that there was a breakdown of
genetic isolation accompanied by substantial external gene flow into the valley
during the Late Moche period. Extralocal gene flow increased during the subse-
quent Transitional period. The increased extralocal gene flow into the region closely
corresponds with the appearance of exotic wares from the Central Coast (i.e.,
Nievería) and highlands (i.e., Cajamarca, Chachapoyas, Wari) at San José de Moro.
Additional evidence of Cajamarca influence in Jequetepeque includes the
presence of Floral Cursive fine wares from other large ceremonial Late Moche
sites in the valley, including Huaca Colorada within the Cañoncillo archaeologi-
cal complex (Eling 1987:456, 461; Swenson and Warner 2012). Significantly, recent
surveys (Cusicanqui and Barrazueta 2010; Dillehay et al. 2009; Ruiz 2004; Swenson
2004) indicate that Cajamarca fine wares are predominantly absent from other
Late Moche hinterland sites. Talambo is one such hinterland site, where recently
completed excavations provide an alternate view of the Late Moche and Transi-
tional periods beyond the scope of Cajamarca.
Figure 19-4. Multidimensional scaling of the unbiased distance values as

determined from R-matrix analysis for twelve prehistoric north-coast skeletal
samples. The biased phenotypic FST for the twelve prehistoric skeletal samples is
.018 (se = .003); the unbiased phenotypic FST is .03 (se = .004). Both the biased
and unbiased FST values differ significantly from 0 (p < .05). Relative sample
heterozygosity (rii values from the R-matrix) is represented by each sample’s
point size. The unbiased biodistance and FST results indicate that prior to the
Late Moche period, extensive gene flow existed among north-coast populations
up through the Middle Moche period, suggesting that they formed a relatively
coherent breeding population. Following the Middle Moche period, the un-
biased R-matrix and biodistance results indicate that genetic differentiation
increased due to significant levels of extralocal gene flow into the Jequetepeque
Valley during the Late Moche and Transitional periods.
Talambo: Hinterland Strategies of Endurance

Talambo’s privileged access to water resources enabled residents to
materially invest in their community and endure the political and environmental
instability that characterized the Late Moche period without significant extralocal
influences (Zobler 2016a, 2016b). Extensive excavation and mapping at Talambo
by Zobler in 2012 and 2013 revealed that Late Moche and Transitional settlement
was located in the southern portion of the site, immediately east of the princi-
pal huaca mound and adjacent Moche (and subsequent Chimú) cemeteries. The
earliest buildings (excavated in two domestic contexts dated to the Late Moche
period) were made of quincha (cane and mud) and likely formed the initial do-
mestic occupation associated with the construction of the Talambo Canal. One
such quincha structure (Building B) contained evidence for craft production of
quartz beads, evidenced by finished beads, partially finished bead blanks, and
raw quartz. Additional LM occupation on the nearby hillside (Talambo Este),
which included multiple small feasting platforms, is consistent with a broader
pattern of hinterland settlement noted at other sites in the coastal valley (Swenson
2004:403–404, 2007, 2014).
Occupation at Talambo continued through the Moche collapse. Building B
was remodeled and expanded during the Transitional period into a multiroomed
structure of adobe bricks with a low stone footing. Quartz-bead production con-
tinued at Building B, alongside domestic by-products and cooking refuse (Zobler
2014, 2016a). Although low-status, ephemeral building materials characterized
the earliest structures at Talambo, architectural investment beginning in the Late
Moche period (including two huaca mounds and a cemetery) and continuing
with the remodeled Building B in the Transitional period indicates a long-term
community investment at the site.
Although settlement at Talambo thrived during the Late Moche and Transi-
tional periods, residents appear to have been marginal to San José de Moro ritual
and exchange networks. In contrast to many of the other sites of similar importance
that are contemporaneous with Talambo (i.e., San José de Moro, Huaca Colorada,
Cerro Chepén, and Ventanillas), no Late Moche fineline or Cajamarca sherds were
found in excavated contexts (and only minimal remains from surface collection),
while other material evidence for ceremonial activities undertaken at Talambo
abound (Zobler 2014). There are numerous examples of face-neck jars (both of the
bas-relief and sculpted-relief type), including the so-called King of Assyria, which
is often associated with Late Moche ritual contexts (Castillo 2000a; Castillo et al.
2008:11; Hecker and Hecker 1995:46, 89–90; Swenson 2004:407; Ubbelohde-Doering
1967:24, 63). Similarly, the hybridized Transitional period wares that were so preva-
lent at San José de Moro were also absent. Given the extensive amount of materials
recovered from Talambo, we do not think that the absence of exotic wares is due
to underrepresentation. Furthermore, given Talambo’s relative importance as a
ritual and water-management center both prior to and following the demise of the
Moche, the paucity of Cajamarca wares at the site requires further consideration.
Discussion
At first glance, it appears that the processes of regeneration and re-

silience following the Moche’s demise are both varied and paradoxical in the Je-
quetepeque Valley. On the one hand, both the Late Moche and Transitional peri-
ods at San José de Moro are characterized by unprecedented evidence for exotic
sumptuary grave offerings and experimentation by local ceramicists who were
inspired by nonlocal wares and produced vessels that blended local with nonlocal
forms and decorations. On the other hand, we have Talambo, which appears to
be characterized by both cultural and economic conservatism in relative isolation
from the apparent influx of Cajamarca peoples and their descendants from the
adjacent sierra. At Talambo, local artisans apparently thrived during the transition
from the Late Moche to Transitional periods with minimal evidence for stylistic
hybridization. Although no other Moche period site is known to exhibit the same
levels of external influence as San José de Moro (Castillo and Uceda 2008) and Cerro
Chepén (Rosas 2010), other large important settlements within the Jequetepeque
Valley also show clear signs of a Cajamarca presence during the Late Moche and
Transitional periods, thereby making Talambo appear atypical for a site of its size
and economic importance. Tentatively, we suggest that the reasons for this appar-
ent paradox are multifaceted and have occurred, in part, due to unique historical
contingencies before and during the Moche’s collapse in the Jequetepeque Valley.
Numerous scholars have recognized the impact of extended periods of
drought in catalyzing the social unrest and political decentralization that oc-
curred throughout the north coast in the Late Moche period (Castillo and Uceda
2008; Dillehay 2001; Dillehay, Kolata, and Moseley 2004; Dillehay, Kolata, and Pino
2004; Shimada et al. 1991; although see Billman and Huckleberry 2008). Within the
Jequetepeque Valley, political decentralization and reconfiguration occurred along
preexisting irrigation systems, likely mirroring the agricultural and canal mainte-
nance boundaries of political and/or kinship groups (Netherly 1984). Independent
surveys and analyses of Late Moche settlements undertaken by Swenson (2004)
and the San José de Moro Archaeological Project (Castillo et al. 2008; Cusicanqui
and Barrazueta 2010; Ruiz 2004) have identified covarying differences of feasting
wares and fortified hinterland settlements with ritual platforms that correspond
to major divisions in the canal systems.
Meanwhile, environmental instability accelerated highland influence and led a
Cajamarca population to enter the valley and establish themselves at Cerro Chepén.
Rosas (2010) suggests that the extended period of drought between a.d. 650–730 ±
20 years as documented in the Quelccaya Ice core (Thompson et al. 1985:971) drove
peoples of either the Guzmango or Tantarica Cajamarca polity to seek fertile lands
and water in the lower Jequetepeque Valley. He posits that the Cajamarca settle-
ment at Cerro Chepén sought local Moche labor to work the agricultural lands
surrounding the site (Rosas 2010:852–853). The labor, in this case, would have come
from the contemporaneous Late Moche peoples living immediately outside of the
monumental core’s fortification (i.e., Cerro Chepén Bajo) and surrounding area.
The Serrano Canal that irrigates the fields around Cerro Chepén emanates
from a branch of the Talambo Canal—the highest canal of the region—thereby
placing the settlers of Cerro Chepén at a distinct advantage in regards to their
access to water during the LMP (Rosas 2010:853). Though the vitality of Cerro
Chepén’s new inhabitants depended, in part, on the continued flow of water,
they seem to have taken little interest in exerting their influence over the site at its
headwaters, namely Talambo, as evidenced by the lack of sierra material culture at
the latter site. Cajamarca influence, thus, appears selective in its scope and likely
was directed along preexisting social networks established in the LMP (Zobler
2014, 2016a). Additionally, sites reliant on irrigation networks may have been more
susceptible to coercion than hinterland settlements, where fortification and less
integrated water resources predominated.
Despite the presence of a fortified administrative and ceremonial presence
at Cerro Chepén, we argue that the political strategy employed by the Cajamarca
colonists was largely indirect and characterized by what Kolata (2006:210) refers
to as “hegemony without sovereignty,” or, more recently, as “laminar hegemony”

(Kolata 2013), wherein power and influence are exercised through the strategically
applied use (or threat) of force. Under such circumstances, subjugated peoples
represent economic citizens whose daily lives are largely unaffected by this form
of indirect rule. It is predominantly the ruling elites who directly articulate with
the subjugating force (in this case, the Cajamarca). Rather than attempting to
enact complete subjugation and control of the entire Jequetepeque Valley, the
Cajamarca immigrants likely co-opted ruling elites close to Cerro Chepén, such
as the lineage of priestesses that is thought to have resided at the important cer-
emonial and mortuary site of San José de Moro (Sutter 2013). In order to maintain
legitimacy, local elites at San José de Moro bolstered their own positions by delib-
erately situating themselves between the local and foreign symbols of power and
authority. Accordingly, subaltern groups selectively adopted dominant symbols
of power and authority in the public sphere while maintaining local traditions in
private—resulting in a strategic, yet partial blending of local and foreign mate-
rial culture and practice (Kolata 2006:215). At San José de Moro, Late Moche and
subsequent Transitional period potters experimented with hybrid foreign and
local vessel forms and designs for mortuary feasting wares. Thus, although elite
residents at San José de Moro chose to exhibit their affiliations with the Cajamarca
and Wari polities in public funerary ceremonies and rituals, they simultaneously
maintained distinctively local funerary traditions.
Rosas (2010) suggests that the Cajamarca inhabitants at Cerro Chepén were
the likely conduits for exotic fine wares and elite objects encountered as funer-
ary offerings at San José de Moro. Although limited elsewhere, Cajamarca Floral
Cursive fine wares are also reported from ceremonial sectors at Cerro Chepén
(Cusicanqui and Caramanica 2011; Rosas 2010) and Huaca Colorada of the Cañon-
cillo archaeological complex (Eling 1987; Swenson and Warner 2012). The indirect
and tactical hegemonic strategy practiced by the Cajamarca inhabitants of Cerro
Chepén likely explains the relative paucity of exotic wares at Talambo and other
hinterland settlements. Under such conditions, it seems plausible that Cajamarca
influence may have bypassed Talambo in favor of existing redistributive networks
established by elites at San José de Moro, who themselves had minimal contact
with the site during the LMP.
Inhabitants of Talambo, meanwhile, approached the extreme political and
environmental instability of the Late Moche collapse and Transition by adopting
an insular strategy centered on precollapse economic activities and water manage-
ment. Whatever the strategies of Cajamarca conquerors or San José de Moro elites,
it is clear that quotidian economic activities at Talambo continued to flourish in
the absence of foreign influence apparent at other ceremonial centers.
Conclusions
In our paper, we have suggested that the diverse regenerative processes

following the demise of the Moche (a.d. 200–800) within the Jequetepeque Val-
ley stemmed from the nature of precollapse sociopolitical developments during
the Middle Moche era as well as unique external influences that began during
environmental degradation in the Late Moche period. As the Moche collapsed,
political and economic decentralization occurred, concurrent with the prolifera-
tion of fortified hinterland sites and the reconfiguration of alliances that formed
along preexisting irrigation systems.
In the case of the preeminent Middle and Late Moche ceremonial site of San
José de Moro, new alliances were formed with the intrusive Cajamarca settlement
at nearby Cerro Chepén. Cajamarca occupation corresponds to the biodistance
results from San José de Moro—the inferred mortuary site for the valley—that
indicate significant levels of extralocal gene flow into the valley. There, resident
elites balanced their new alliances with the Cajamarca at Cerro Chepén while
continuing as representatives of the primary center for mortuary feasting. Pot-
ters at San José de Moro continued to produce mortuary wares by blending exotic
forms and styles with familiar local ones. We tentatively suggest that a similar
model of hegemony without sovereignty was likely employed by the Cajamarca at
other major precollapse ceremonial centers in the valley, such as Huaca Colorada
(Eling 1987; Swenson and Warner 2012).
Postcollapse regeneration was quite different at hinterland settlements that
show extremely limited evidence for direct articulation with the Cajamarca. Both
economic and ritual activities at these hinterland communities, as evidenced by
recent excavations at Talambo, San Idelfonso, and Charcape (among others), point
to resilience and conservatism in the face of external influence. Ultimately, the
Moche collapse in Jequetepeque highlights complex processes in which different
groups within Moche society negotiated their postcollapse identities amid dif-
ferential opportunities and challenges.
Notes
1. Although the Moro Canal, another subsidiary of the Talambo Canal, ir-
rigates the land surrounding San José de Moro more directly, it was likely a Late
Intermediate period construction (Eling 1987:259; Rosas 2010:133–134).
2. Nonmetric dental trait data were used to derive estimates of genetic dis-
tance and variation among skeletal samples from the Middle Moche, Late Moche,
and Transitional periods at San José de Moro and data for nine other previously
reported north-coast skeletal samples (Sutter 2009; Sutter and Cortez 2005; Sutter
and Verano 2007). Nonmetric tooth traits were collected using standardized casts
and descriptions (Turner et al. 1991) and then used to calculate the Mahalanobis
distance (D2) for binary traits (Konigsberg 1990). Subsequently, regional levels of
genetic diversity (FST), extralocal patterns of gene flow among the samples being
studied were estimated using the R- (relational) matrix method (Relethford 1996,
2003; Relethford and Blangero 1990; Relethford et al. 1997; Williams-Blangero
1989a, 1989b; Williams-Blangero and Blangero 1989) using statistical package for
the social sciences (SPSS) syntax appendix B published in Irish (2010). In addition
to the FST, the R-matrix provides an estimate of the average kinship coefficients
between populations (off the diagonal, or rij) and within populations (diagonal
values or rii). Unbiased estimates of both the R-matrix and FST were calculated
using the formula from Relethford et al. (1997) and population estimates derived
from relative differences in irrigable land and settlement pattern studies for the
region (Billman 1996; Castillo 2010; Wilson 1999) following methods described by
Nystrom (2006). A conservative heritability of 1.0 was used, which produces the
minimum FST (Relethford and Blangero 1990).
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20. Household Adaptation and
Reorganization in the Aftermath
of the Classic Maya Collapse at
Baking Pot, Belize
Julie A. Hoggarth and Jaime J. Awe
Abstract: Research focusing on the sociopolitical collapse of Classic Maya

society is abundant, detailing the processes of depopulation, abandonment,
and the decline of elite paraphernalia in the central and southern Maya
lowlands. Although the large number of studies focuses on the processes
of collapse, less attention has focused on the internal social responses by
households to the dissolution of Classic political institutions. This study
focuses on changing strategies of adaptation and reorganization by com-
moner and noble households in a community within the Baking Pot polity of
western Belize. Results from this study indicate that after the palace complex
and settlement of Baking Pot were abandoned during the Late to Terminal
Classic period (a.d. 600–900), the area was reoccupied during the Postclassic
period in Settlement Cluster C, developing new forms of economic, politi-
cal, and ideological organization. Using a quantitative approach to examine
changes in the distribution of mercantile goods, feasting materials, and ritual
deposits and iconography, noble and commoner households were found to
employ variable strategies of social differentiation, community integration,
and religious adaptation in the context of the disintegration of the state as
well as in the subsequent period of social reorganization of the community
in the Postclassic period.

ISBN 978-0-8093-3399-8.
504
Household Adaptation and Reorganization 505
Within the archaeological study of the collapse and regeneration of

societies, the reorganization of social hierarchies and institutions plays a promi-
nent role in the development of new social systems. Sociopolitical collapse rarely
means the complete disappearance of entire populations or their great traditions
(Yoffee and Cowgill 1988); rather, continuing research reveals that social institu-
tions and traditions are often renegotiated following the disintegration of states
(Schwartz 2006). As a result, regenerative social systems often exhibit new social
innovations, particularly in the realm of social organization and wealth accumula-
tion (Kolata 2006). Studies focusing on social regeneration following sociopoliti-
cal collapse gain additional importance in long-term studies of social change, as
periods of decentralization, reorganization, and regeneration are integral parts
of the dynamic processes of change through time (Marcus 1992, 1993).
Beyond emphasizing instances of continuity or disjunction following the
collapse of sociopolitical institutions, archaeological investigations are beginning
to examine the role and adaptability of households in the processes of collapse
and social reorganization (Faulseit 2011, 2012; Hoggarth 2012). In this paper, we
explore the ways that ancient Maya households participated in the reorganization
of society, considering how households of different socioeconomic status adopted
various strategies to align themselves with the emerging social orders at the end
of the Classic and during the Postclassic periods. We examine how households in
Settlement Cluster C at Baking Pot, a major center in western Belize, adapted to
the collapse of institutionalized rulership in the Late to Terminal Classic period
(a.d. 600–900), developing new forms of interaction and organization in response
to the changing nature of society in the Postclassic (a.d. 900–1521).
The Classic Maya Collapse
The “Classic Maya collapse,” as it is known in popular literature, was

characterized by processes of sociopolitical decentralization, with various attri-
butes that include the depopulation and abandonment of centers in the central
and southern Maya lowlands, a decline in the scale of ceremonial architecture and
art (including elite paraphernalia), increasing warfare, and changes in ideology
at the end of the Classic (a.d. 750–1000) (Aimers 2007; Andrews and Sabloff 1986;
Culbert 1973; Demarest 2004; Demarest et al., eds. 2004; Webster 2000, 2002). The
broad focus on the Classic collapse has revealed that the demographic collapse
of political centers in the central and southern lowlands was gradual, with many
sites being slowly depopulated and eventually abandoned over several hundred
years. Explanations for the collapse have been varied, although today, models fea-
turing multiple variables are favored. These variables have included: subsistence
stress (Culbert 1974, 1977; Dunning and Beach 1994), deforestation and soil erosion
(Beach et al. 2006; Brenner et al. 2002; Dunning et al. 1997, 1998; Pohl 1990; Rice
1996), and climate change and/or drought (Dahlin 2000, 2002; Gill 2000; Hodell
et al. 1995; Kennett et al. 2012; Lucero 2002; Yaeger and Hoddell 2002), as well as
sociopolitical factors, such as warfare (Demarest 2004; Inomata 2006; Palka 2001;
Webster 1993, 2000), intra-elite rivalry (Demarest 2004), competition for trade routes
506 J. A. Hoggarth and J. J. Awe
and resources (Demarest 2004), and emic concepts of cyclical fatalism (Puleston
1979; Rice 2004).
Despite the larger focus on periods of centralization in archaeological litera-
ture, periods of political decentralization provide an opportunity for understand-
ing the social changes associated with the reorganization of society (Schwartz
and Nichols 2006). Understanding social responses to political decentralization
has received minimal attention despite a major focus in Maya archaeology on
the Classic Maya collapse. Although household and community studies have
been a main focus of archaeological attention in Maya studies for over 50 years,
settlements in the central Maya lowlands with Classic and Postclassic occupa-
tion are not widespread. Contingent with the paucity of research on the subject,
many studies assume that the collapse affected communities and households in
similar ways; however, we should exercise considerable caution about making as-
sumptions to gauge how large-scale social and political change manifested itself
at the household level (Bermann 1994). Instead, research at the household and
community scales may indicate considerable continuities in domestic practices,
as well as provide a variety of dimensions that are not apparent at larger scales
(Yaeger and Hodell 2002).
Despite these issues, three recent studies have focused on understanding
household adaptation at the end of the Classic period, through increasing partici-
pation in interregional mercantile exchange (Masson 2002), large-scale community
feasting (LeCount 1999, 2001; Robin et al. 2010; Yaeger 2000), and the appropriation
of Pan-Mesoamerican symbols and motifs (Urban and Schortman 2011:186–192).
These strategies of adaptation were examined to identify their applicability to
understand domestic change at Baking Pot and to identify aspects of social change
between the Classic and Postclassic periods.
Household Strategies of Adaptation and Reorganization
In her research at Laguna de On and Caye Coco in northern Belize,

Masson and her colleagues (Masson 2002; Masson and Boteler Mock 2002; Mas-
son and Peraza 2004) have suggested various means for household adaptation
during the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods. This research suggests that
commoner and elite households were engaging in increasing participation in
interregional mercantile exchange, which became more prominent during the
Postclassic. As households retained more of the products of their labor as surplus
due to decreased tribute demands following the end of institutionalized ruler-
ship, this may have provided additional opportunities for households to produce
locally available items and resources to exchange for exotic luxury and utilitarian
items (Masson 2000; Masson and Boteler Mock 2002; Masson and Peraza 2004).
These authors propose that households in these communities took advantage
of the amplification of interregional exchange and less-strict social hierarchies
following the Classic period to create new opportunities in wealth accumula-
tion. In addition, Masson (2002) also suggests that Postclassic residents in these
communities were more dependent on obsidian for stone tools in comparison to

earlier periods when households primarily used local chert, providing additional
evidence that supports the hypothesis that households of all status levels becom-
ing increasingly engaged in the expansion of interregional mercantile exchange
leading into the Postclassic period.
A comparable second study on household adaptation to sociopolitical col-
lapse was presented by LeCount, Yaeger, and their colleagues (LeCount 1999, 2001;
Robin et al. 2010; Yaeger 2000) working outside of Xunantunich, a Classic period
site in western Belize. This research identified evidence of large-scale community
feasting by elite households (Yaeger 2000; LeCount 2001), primarily in the form
of high quantities of serving vessels in the largest residential groups in the small
community of San Lorenzo outside of Xunantunich. LeCount (2001) suggests that
feasting became more prominent during the Terminal Classic as nobles sought to
forge new relationships with commoner households and generate solidarity in this
socially and politically unstable period. They also suggest that these community-
wide feasts served to redistribute special types of food, such as venison, as faunal
remains were described as being nearly exclusively found in elite house groups
(Robin et al. 2010). In this example, changes in the power structure of society at
the end of the Classic period led to new forms of interaction and relationships
between households of different status.
The third example of Maya strategies of adaptation that we are comparing
focuses on the appropriation of foreign symbols and motifs in the Classic and
Postclassic periods. In the discussion on the spread of iconography associated
with the Cult of Quetzalcoatl/Kukulcan in the Postclassic (Boone and Smith 2003;
Ringle et al. 1998), several scholars (Aimers 2004; Urban and Schortman 2011:186–
192) have noted the presence of Pan-Mesoamerican symbols and motifs in elite
contexts, suggesting that elites utilized Pan-Mesoamerican symbols as a form
of status differentiation, claiming access to foreign knowledge and associations
with interregional elites through the display of this iconography. The presence of
motifs associated with Pan-Mesoamerican symbol horizons was not restricted to
the Postclassic, as Olmec-like iconography was widespread across Mesoamerica
during the Preclassic period (Grove 1993), and motifs from Teotihuacan and central
Mexico were present throughout Mesoamerica during the Classic period (Pasztory
1993). While the display of foreign iconography may have been used as a form
of social differentiation, the use of Maya symbols and motifs may have fostered
a shared sense of identity and solidarity. Furthermore, other long-established
local traditions, such as burial practices, may provide indications that house-
holds were emphasizing a shared sense of identity and internal cohesion rather
than differentiation.
Overall, these three examples suggest that households developed innovative
strategies to adjust to changes leading into the Postclassic period. However, each of
these studies has focused on singular types of adaptation and participation in new
forms of organization. This paper explores each of these strategies to understand
household adaptation and reorganization at Baking Pot, a major center in western
Belize with evidence of occupation during the Classic and Postclassic periods.
Baking Pot
Baking Pot is located in the Cayo District of western Belize, on the

southern bank of the Belize River (Figure 20-1). Located along the eastern edge
of the central Maya lowlands, the geological and natural diversity of the Belize
Valley distinguished it from the Petén to the west and the Yucatan to the north;
the Belize River served as a major transportation route between the coast and the
interior. Baking Pot was occupied from the Middle Preclassic (900–400 B.C.) to
the Terminal Classic, reaching its apogee as a small polity at the end of the Late
Classic (a.d. 600–800) (Helmke and Awe 2008). Maximum population at Baking
Pot is estimated at over 3,000 people during this period (Hoggarth 2012:62). The
ceremonial center was abandoned in the Terminal Classic, around a.d. 800–900
(Audet 2006), although recent radiocarbon dates on burials may suggest reoccupa-
tion of the site in the Middle to Late Postclassic period in Baking Pot’s settlement
(Hoggarth et al. 2014), although this chronology is currently being tested.
To evaluate these strategies of household and community adaptation, eight
house groups in the eastern settlement area of Settlement Cluster C, where Post-
classic occupation is concentrated, were selected for excavation. This sample was
stratified to select house groups for excavation from various status levels, using
total (terminal) architectural volume of all house groups at Baking Pot to identify
the three subgroups of noble, high-status commoner, and low-status commoner
households (Hoggarth 2009, 2012). The trimodal distribution of architectural vol-
ume for all house groups (excluding the royal palace) surveyed at Baking Pot sug-
gests that these designations represent distinct populations, likely representing
variation within the socioeconomic spectrum during the Classic period. Within
the excavation sample of eight groups selected for excavation in Settlement Cluster
C, one noble house group was selected for excavation, along with three high-status
commoner house groups and four low-status commoner house groups. Due to the
abandonment of the center at the end of the Classic and the reoccupation during
the Postclassic, these designations may not correspond to status groups during
the Postclassic, as little construction was recorded during this time. However, the
highest-status items were recovered from these house groups, suggesting that the
socioeconomic differences between households living at the largest and smallest
residential groups may have still been apparent during this time.
The artifacts from the house-group excavations were processed and ana-
lyzed, and using a modified version of Hirth’s (1998) distributional approach, the
proportional distributions of the domestic inventories of households were used
to explore the applicability of the three studies of household adaptation.
Evaluating Strategies of Household Adaptation

and Reorganization
To evaluate the applicability of Masson’s (2002) example of mercantile

strategies in Settlement Cluster C at Baking Pot, we identified exotic materials
Figure 20-1. Map of the Maya Lowlands showing the location of Baking Pot
in western Belize
recovered from excavation, including jade, greenstone, basalt, pyrite, obsid-

ian, marine shell, and copper items in a variety of households of different sta-
tus. Masson (2002) suggests that households in northern Belize increasingly
participated in the expanding networks of interregional exchange, with both
commoner and elite households producing local resources and items to ex-
change for exotic luxury and utilitarian items. Similar patterns were identified in
Settlement Cluster C.
Strategies of Mercantile Exchange

The proportions of exotic luxury items in noble, high-status commoner,
and low-status commoner households (Figure 20-2) show that most of these items,
including jade, greenstone, copper, and pyrite items, were completely absent from
the domestic inventories of all households during the Late Classic. Exotic luxury
items were identified in low but relatively even amounts in both noble and com-
moner households in the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods, suggesting
that these items were available through open forms of mercantile exchange that
expanded into the Postclassic, a similar pattern as Masson’s (2002) evidence in
northern Belize. The presence of marine shell items in all types of households in
the Late Classic suggests that these items were available to households of various
statuses in all periods at Baking Pot.
Two types of utilitarian items made from exotic materials were identified
from excavations in Settlement Cluster C, those made from obsidian and ba-
salt. Obsidian was primarily recovered in the form of blade tools; fragments of
basalt were identified as broken pieces of grinding stones. The proportion of
obsidian across status groups through time (Figure 20-3) shows that low-status
commoners had higher amounts of obsidian during the Late Classic and Ter-
minal Classic. This suggests that lower-status households at Baking Pot may
have been producing or recycling obsidian blades. The proportion of obsidian
declined among all groups from the Late to Terminal Classic, increasing dur-
ing the Postclassic nearly 6 percent at noble house groups and over 1.75 percent
among commoners. Basalt grinding stones were only distributed in one of the
six house groups in the Postclassic. Overall, an examination of exotic utilitarian
items suggests that these items were used in relatively even amounts among all
groups in the Postclassic.
The majority of chipped-stone debitage and tools at Baking Pot was made
from locally available types of chert and chalcedony brought downhill from ero-
sion in the foothills approximately 4 km to the south, where chert outcroppings
are present. Despite the widespread availability of local chert, the chipped-stone
assemblage from Baking Pot also has a small amount of nonlocal chert. This is
high-quality chert that originates in the area to the east around Colha, which is
known as a major center of chert production (Shafer and Hester 1991). Comparing
the proportions of local, nonlocal, and exotic materials in the chipped-stone as-
semblages provides one means by which to identify if households were becoming
increasingly reliant on exotic materials for utilitarian purposes due to the expan-
sion of interregional exchange.
Figure 20-2. Proportions of exotic luxury items, including marine shell, jade
and greenstone, copper items, and pyrite (to total sherds) in noble (black),
high-status commoner (dark gray), and low-status commoner house groups
(light gray) during the Late Classic, Terminal Classic, and Postclassic peri-
ods. Proportions are represented with attached 80 percent, 95 percent, and 99
percent confidence levels to identify statistically significant differences in the
proportional distributions.
Figure 20-3. Proportions of exotic utilitarian items of obsidian and of basalt

grinding stones (to total sherds) in noble (black), high-status commoner (dark
gray), and low-status commoner house groups (light gray) during the Late
Classic, Terminal Classic, and Postclassic periods. Proportions are represented
with attached 80 percent, 95 percent, and 99 percent confidence levels to iden-
tify statistically significant differences in the proportional distributions.
Figure 20-4 shows a high proportion of chipped-stone material made from

local chert among all status groups, with the proportions of local chert to all
chipped stone ranging between 68 percent to 75 percent in the groups in the Late
Classic. In contrast, nonlocal chert and obsidian were used at much-lower levels,
accounting for approximately 7 percent to 20 percent of the chipped-stone as-
semblage. In contrast, nobles were using approximately 5 percent more nonlocal
chert than commoners. The use of local chert increased in the stone-tool assem-
blages of all households in the Terminal Classic, rising approximately 20 percent
among nobles and 11 percent to 16 percent among commoners; the proportions
of nonlocal chert and obsidian declined. These declines suggest that exotic and
nonlocal materials were used less in the Terminal Classic, with all households
becoming more reliant on local sources of stone material. Finally, the proportion
of obsidian and nonlocal chert increased among all groups in the Postclassic, with
the proportion of obsidian increasing between 2 percent to 6 percent among all
groups; the use of local chert declined approximately 25 percent at the noble house
groups in the Postclassic. Preliminary analyses of obsidian sources using portable
X-ray fluorescence (XRF) technology suggests that trade routes may have shifted
from the Classic period to the Postclassic period, as obsidian from Classic period
contexts predominantly source to El Chayal, whereas obsidian from Postclassic
contexts may have been primarily associated with the Ixtepeque source (Ebert et
al. 2015; Hoggarth et al. 2015), a pattern that has been identified elsewhere in the
Maya lowlands (Braswell 2003; Golitko et al. 2012). Overall, this evidence suggests
that all households were becoming slightly more reliant on obsidian for chipped-
stone tools in the Postclassic. However, all households were using lower amounts
of obsidian than they did during the Late Classic period.
Evidence for production of local items was recovered in excavations. Al-
though evidence of stone-tool production was identified across all households,
it is unlikely that these bulky items would have been useful in interregional
exchange. However, artifacts including slate, spindle whorls, and bifaces pro-
vide evidence of local production. Unworked slate pieces were recovered in
excavations, suggesting the production of slate items. While spindle whorls
would have been used for spinning thread, it may imply that cloth was being
produced. Similarly, bifaces may have been used to clear land or harvest crops
in agricultural production.
Figure 20-5 shows that slate was distributed among both noble and com-
moner house groups in the Late Classic, Terminal Classic, and Postclassic, increas-
ing among occupants at high-status commoner house groups in the Postclassic.
Similarly, spindle whorls were distributed in low levels among all status groups,
being found primarily at noble house groups in the Terminal Classic and Postclas-
sic. Additional research is needed to understand the type of quality of fiber that
was being spun (see Carpenter et al. 2012). Finally, bifaces were found among all
status groups. However, this evidence suggests that nobles had more bifaces than
commoners in the Late Classic period, although no statistical differences were
identified for the Terminal Classic and Postclassic.
Overall, some similar strategies of interregional exchange and local produc-
tion to Masson’s (2002) evidence were identified at Baking Pot. Most types of exotic
luxury items, which were restricted during the Late Classic, were distributed in
low amounts with relatively even proportions among both noble and commoner
house groups in the Terminal Classic and Postclassic. However, unlike the north-
ern Belize examples, Baking Pot households became less reliant on exotic materi-
als for stone tools when comparing the Late Classic to Postclassic proportions of
obsidian. In contrast, the production of local items was similar to the processes
at Laguna de On and Caye Coco, with low-level production of local items or re-
sources identified at Baking Pot, with a slight increase in cloth production among
nobles in the Terminal Classic and slate items in the Postclassic, while agricultural
production increased at smaller house groups in the Postclassic. This suggests
Figure 20-4. Proportions of local chert, nonlocal chert, and obsidian (to all
chipped stone) in noble (black), high-status commoner (dark gray), and low-
status commoner house groups (light gray) during the Late Classic, Terminal
Classic, and Postclassic periods. Proportions are represented with attached 80
percent, 95 percent, and 99 percent confidence levels to identify statistically
significant differences in the proportional distributions.
that households were producing local items at slightly higher levels during the
Postclassic. This, along with the even distributions of exotic luxury items among
all status levels, suggests an increasing engagement in interregional exchange in
the Postclassic, although these processes did not entail complete economic restruc-
turing. Overall, excavations at Baking Pot revealed shifting strategies of exchange
and low-level diversified craft production, a pattern widespread throughout Me-
soamerica (Hirth 2009).
Figure 20-5. Proportions of items used in the production of local goods, in-
cluding slate, spindle whorls, and bifaces (to total sherds) in noble (black),
Strategies of Community Feasting

LeCount and her colleagues’ (LeCount 1999, 2001; Robin et al. 2010;
Yaeger 2000) example of household and community strategies of adaptation sug-
gests that large-scale community feasts were important for the changing social
relationships during the Terminal Classic between households at San Lorenzo,
outside of the Xunantunich polity, with high-status elites hosting feasts to bring
the community together to share special meals and promote community integra-
tion (Robin et al. 2010). Archaeological correlates of feasting (Hayden 2001:40–41)
include higher amounts of serving vessels, especially those that are decorated or
rare, and higher levels of food preparation, along with large quantities of food
remains and special food-disposal features, among many other features. If large-
scale community feasting was an important aspect of social life for political and
community integration following the abandonment of the palace complex, then
materials associated with feasts should be differentially found in noble house-
holds, which could afford to finance such expensive events.
Evidence of feasting was identified during the Terminal Classic and Post-
classic in Settlement Cluster C. Figure 20-6 shows that serving vessels were not
differentially found in noble households during the Late Classic. There is only a
small proportional difference in the amount of serving vessels between nobles
and high-status commoners. This pattern does not suggest large-scale feasting.
However, during the Terminal Classic, this pattern shifted, as nobles had nearly
8 percent more serving vessels than commoner households during this time. This
provides some indication that residents at the noble house group (M-99) may have
been hosting large-scale community feasts beginning in the Terminal Classic. The
same pattern can be identified for the Postclassic, with even higher proportions
of serving vessels, suggesting that the intensity of feasts may have increased.
Decorated ceramics can provide information about public displays of con-
sumption that are often associated with status differentiation, along with visual
display of these materials in feasts. Evidence in Settlement Cluster C at Baking
Pot suggests that nobles had more decorated ceramics than commoners during
the Late Classic period (see Figure 20-6). However, the proportion of decorated ce-
ramics declined in comparison during the Terminal Classic and Postclassic, when
there is evidence of large-scale community feasting. This pattern is likely tied to
broader patterns, including the decline of elite paraphernalia associated with the
sociopolitical collapse at the end of the Classic period (Aimers 2007:332), and this
may also suggest other types of interactions in these events. Community feasts
could serve many different purposes (Hayden 2001:37–40), including fostering
solidarity and integration through the sharing of food and resources, as well as
status competition through the public display of elaborate ceramic vessels associ-
ated with wealth and status. The decline in the proportion of decorated ceramics
in the Terminal Classic and Postclassic suggests that large-scale community feasts
may have been more based on solidarity than status competition.
In contrast with serving vessels, cooking vessels would have been integral
for everyday food preparation activities as well as feasts. Figure 20-6 shows no
statistical differences in cooking vessels between noble and commoner households
Figure 20-6. Proportions of items associated with large-scale community

feasts, including serving vessels, decorated vessels, and cooking vessels (to
total sherds) in noble (black), high-status commoner (dark gray), and low-
status commoner house groups (light gray) during the Late Classic, Terminal
Classic, and Postclassic periods. Proportions are represented with attached 80
percent, 95 percent, and 99 percent confidence levels to identify statistically
significant differences in the proportional distributions.
Table 20-1. Ratios of Serving Vessels to Cooking Vessels among House

Groups in Several Time Periods
Terminal
House Group Late Classic Classic Postclassic
Noble 1.49 1.58 1.60
High-status commoner .88 .67 .77
Low-status commoner .74 .78 .70
in any period. However, the ratio of serving vessels to cooking vessels (Table 20-1)
shows that activities associated with serving, as opposed to cooking, increased
among households at noble house groups in the Terminal Classic and Postclassic.
In addition to the ceramic correlates for feasting, these events would have
included elaborate meals of rare, higher-quality, and more labor-intensive food
along with higher quantities of food remains than in typical domestic settings.
Unlike at San Lorenzo, where faunal remains were found exclusively among the
highest-status households (Robin et al. 2010), faunal remains were found at Baking
Pot among all status groups in all periods. Figure 20-7 shows that there were no
significant statistical differences in the distribution of faunal remains between
nobles and commoners in the Late and Terminal Classic. However, this pattern
shifted during the Postclassic when households at the noble house groups had
four times more faunal remains than commoner households. This may provide
evidence that large-scale community feasts in the Postclassic may have empha-
sized the sharing of food and resources.
Strategies of the Appropriation of Pan-Mesoamerican Ideology

Several examples, including Urban and Schortman’s (2011:186–192) re-
search in the Naco Valley, have suggested that Postclassic elites in the Maya low-
lands utilized Pan-Mesoamerican symbols as a form of status differentiation and
legitimation, claiming access to foreign knowledge and elites through the display
of these motifs. In contrast to this scenario, displaying Maya symbols may have
worked to promote a sense of shared identity. Excavations in Settlement Cluster
C at Baking Pot revealed no evidence of Pan-Mesoamerican symbols or motifs
during the Classic or the Postclassic periods. However, local Maya iconography
was found in low proportions among households of different status. Although
the majority of these symbols was found on painted ceramic vessels, a small
number were carved from marine shell. Of these, all items were located in ritual
deposits, such as burials. This suggests that the medium on which the symbols
were displayed was just as important as the symbols themselves, carrying their
own ideological importance to the audience.
Although households did not appropriate foreign iconography following the
collapse of rulership at Baking Pot, the proportion of Maya symbols did decline
Figure 20-7. Proportions of faunal remains (to total sherds) in noble (black),
in the Terminal Classic and Postclassic (Figure 20-8). This may suggest that this
expression of a shared sense of identity established in the Classic period was less
important beginning in the Terminal Classic, although the amount of these ma-
terials is admittedly low. This raises several questions, including whether other
types of ideological practice persisted among the community. An examination
of changes in burial patterns may provide some indications of whether local
ideological systems shifted following the abandonment of the palace at Baking
Pot in the Terminal Classic. A multidimensional scaling analysis of burials from
both ceremonial and domestic contexts at Baking Pot was conducted in order to
identify similarities between burials, as well as identify shifts in the burial pat-
terns through time.
Eleven burials were excavated from house groups in Settlement Cluster C at
Baking Pot. These were included with the burials in the ceremonial center for the
analysis. Figure 20-9 shows the results of the multidimensional scaling, plotted
in two dimensions, with a distinction between public and domestic burials in
the upper and lower clusters. Both of these groups can be further divided based
on burial investment, with those with few grave goods and low investment in
mortuary architecture on the left and those with greater amounts of grave goods
and mortuary architecture on the right. One further distinction can be identified
in the figure: Postclassic burials skewed downward, slightly differentiated from
Classic period burials above. In general, Classic period burials in both public and
domestic contexts were interred within a structure, in prone, extended positions
Figure 20-8. Proportions of materials with Maya symbols and motifs (to total
sherds) in noble (black), high-status commoner (dark gray), and low-status
commoner (light gray) house groups during the Late Classic, Terminal Classic,
and Postclassic periods. Proportions are represented with attached 80 percent,
95 percent, and 99 percent confidence levels to identify statistically significant
differences in the proportional distributions.
with the head oriented to the south. In contrast, the Postclassic burials from
Settlement Cluster C were adjacent to structures, in a flexed position, and with
the head oriented to the north. Overall, this suggests that like the use of Maya
iconography, long-held mortuary traditions were altered. However, whether this
evidence suggests that this change was due to foreign influence is unknown,
as burial patterns among other Postclassic Maya settlements, including Santa
Rita Corozal and Tayasal (Chase 1997), show similar patterns as the Baking Pot
Postclassic burials.
Conclusions
This study indicates that households at Baking Pot developed diverse

strategies to adapt to the processes of sociopolitical collapse at the end of the Late
Classic and regeneration during the Postclassic period. The broad manifestations
of transformation, detailed in Faulseit (chapter 1, this volume), suggest that ex-
tensive variation in social responses can occur at regional levels and at smaller
household scales. This is apparent at the end of the Classic period at Baking Pot,
as strategies of adaptation are similar to those in other regions of the Maya low-
lands, with evidence for the leveling of differential access to luxury items, as well
as strategies of community integration through feasting. However, other features
of household and community adaptation detailed in other regions were not ap-
parent at Baking Pot, with local strategies of economic adaptation based on access
Figure 20-9. Multidimensional scaling for similarities between burials in

Settlement Cluster C and the Baking Pot ceremonial center in dimensions 1
and 2. Clustering shows that although Postclassic burials share many of the
same features of Classic period domestic burials, the distinct orientations and
locations of the Postclassic show a new form of burial practices.
to local resources to adjust to disruptions in exchange systems likely attributed

to the disintegration of political systems.
The recent reevaluation of the Postclassic chronology at Baking Pot (Hog-
garth et al. 2014), although still tentative, may lead to interesting new directions
and questions about the processes of social change during this period of reor-
ganization. The results of this study indicate that households were participating
in new economic institutions and networks, with a rebound in the reliance on
exotic materials, such as obsidian, in addition to the introduction of new items
made from copper. Other forms of social reorganization were also apparent, with
distinct shifts in burial patterns that had endured for millennia from the Preclas-
sic and Classic periods shifting to new forms of mortuary practices. Despite the
lack of demographic continuity between the Classic and Postclassic periods at
Baking Pot, the resilience of some types of community integration continued,

with evidence for even higher levels of large-scale feasting at the largest house
groups in the settlement.
Like other small settlements located along rivers and lakes during the Post-
classic period, households at Baking Pot were adopting a wide range of strat-
egies to be able to persist within the new organization of Postclassic society.
During this time, the changing environmental and geopolitical landscape of
the Maya lowlands brought about many changes to the lives of households, as
well as in the structural institutions of Maya society. Cycles of political decline
and regeneration have been widely noted throughout the Maya lowlands and
Mesoamerica (Marcus 1992, 1993, 2012), with the collapse of political entities
creating new opportunities for the expansion of new regional centers and social
orders. Evidence for the role of multidecadal droughts at the end of the Classic
period (Curtis et al. 1996; Hodell et al. 2005, 1995; Kennett et al. 2012) suggests
that environmental changes intensified existing social and political stressors and
likely contributed to the disintegration of political systems. Evidence at Baking
Pot during the Postclassic aligns with these concepts, suggesting adaptation and
innovation in economic and ideological systems in the reorganization phase of
regrowth. Overall, this suggests that we can no longer only focus on identifying
the causes of the Classic Maya collapse, as we must examine the variable social
responses to these processes.
Acknowledgments
This research was conducted under the auspices of the Belize Valley
Archaeological Reconnaissance (BVAR) project, directed by Jaime Awe. The
fieldwork was supported by the BVAR field school, as well as through several
archaeology field and laboratory method courses offered by Galen University. A
predissertation pilot study was funded by the University of Pittsburgh Center
for Latin American Studies (CLAS) and the Department of Anthropology at the
University of Pittsburgh. Several individuals conducted specialized analysis for
this research, including Jennifer Piehl, Carolyn Freiwald, and Anna Novotny
(human remains), Norbert Stanchly (faunal remains), and Valorie Aquino and
Keith Prufer (obsidian pXRF). Special appreciation goes to Olivier de Mont-
mollin, Marc P. Bermann, Robert D. Drennan, and Lara Putnam (University of
Pittsburgh) for their direction as members of the dissertation committee of the
first author. This research has also benefitted from more recent collaborative
research on the Baking Pot materials at the Human Paleoecology and Isotope
Geochemistry laboratory at Penn State, directed by Douglas Kennett and man-
aged by Brendan Culleton. Additional thanks are extended to the organizers
of the annual Visitors Scholars Conference at the Southern Illinois Univer-
sity Center for Archaeological Investigations, particularly to the conference
organizer and general editor, Ronald K. Faulseit, and the copy editor, Mary
Lou Kowaleski.
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Contributors
Iliana Ancona Aragón received her master’s degree from the Facultad de Antro-
pología, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Mexico.
J. Heath Anderson is an assistant professor at Minnesota State University,

Mankato.
Jaime J. Awe is an emeritus member of the Institute of Archaeology, National

Institute of Culture and History, Belize, and an assistant professor in the Depart-
ment of Anthropology, Northern Arizona University.
Robert H. Cobean is the director of Investigation, Instituto Nacional de Antro-

pología e Historia, Mexico, D.F.
Christina A. Conlee is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology,

Texas State University, San Marcos.
Miguel Covarrubias Reyna is the codirector of the Ah Kin Chel project and the
Dzilam project in Yucatan, Mexico.
Thomas E. Emerson is Illinois state archaeologist and director of the Illinois

State Archaeological Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.
Ronald K. Faulseit is a postdoctoral fellow at the Field Museum in Chicago.
Gary M. Feinman is the MacArthur Curator of Anthropology at the Field Mu-

seum in Chicago.
Liu Haiwang is an archaeologist at the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural

Relics and Archaeology in China.
Dan M. Healan is a professor emeritus at Tulane University, New Orleans,

Louisiana.
529
530 Contributors
Kristin M. Hedman is a physical anthropologist and the assistant director of the

Program on Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Material within the Illinois
State Archaeological Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.
Michelle Hegmon is a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social

Change, Arizona State University, Tempe.
Julie A. Hoggarth is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology,

Baylor University.
Scott Hutson is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, Uni-

versity of Kentucky, Lexington.
Gyles Iannone is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at

Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.
Tristram R. Kidder is a professor in the Department of Anthropology, Washington

University, St. Louis, Missouri.
Ann P. Kinzig is a professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State Uni-
versity, Tempe.
Katie Lantzas is an adjunct professor in the Department of Liberal Studies, Rut-

gers University, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Liberal Arts, Dela-
ware College of Art and Design.
Zachary Larsen received his master’s degree from the Department of Plant Sci-
ences at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
Michael L. Loughlin is a staff archaeologist in the Program for Archaeological

Research, University of Kentucky, Lexington.
Katie Lukach is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology,

Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts.
Jayur M. Mehta is a doctoral candidate in anthropology and an adjunct instructor

in environmental studies and anthropology at Tulane University, New Orleans,
Louisiana.
Maureen Meyers is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and

Anthropology, University of Mississippi, Oxford.
Margaret C. Nelson is a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social

Change and the vice dean of Barrett Honors College, Arizona State University,
Tempe.
Contributors 531
Linda M. Nicholas is an adjunct curator at the Field Museum, Chicago.
Matthew A. Peeples is an assistant professor in the School of Human Evolution

and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe.
Shannon E. Plank is an instructor in the Department of Anthropology, University

of Kentucky, Lexington.
Christopher A. Pool is a University Research Professor in the Department of

Anthropology, University of Kentucky, Lexington.
Christopher B. Rodning is associate professor of anthropology at Tulane Univer-

sity, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Karen G. Schollmeyer is a preservation archaeologist at Archaeology Southwest,

Tucson, Arizona.
Jakob W. Sedig is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology, Uni-

versity of Colorado Boulder.
Nicola Sharratt is an assistant professor of anthropology at Georgia State Uni-

versity, Atlanta.
Glenn R. Storey is an associate professor, joint appointment, in the Departments

of Classics and Anthropology, University of Iowa, Iowa City.
Rebecca Storey is an associate professor of anthropology in the Department of

Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Houston, Texas.
Michael J. Storozum is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology,

Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.
Colleen Strawhacker is a research scientist in the National Snow and Ice Data
Center, University of Colorado Boulder.
Richard C. Sutter is a professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology,

Indiana University–Purdue University, Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Laura Swantek is a doctoral candidate in the School of Human Evolution and

Joseph A. Tainter is a professor in the Department of Environment and Society

at Utah State University, Logan.
Richard E. Terry is a professor in the Department of Plant and Wildlife Sciences

at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
532 Contributors
Victor D. Thompson is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropol-

ogy, University of Georgia, Athens.
Andrea Torvinen is a doctoral candidate in the School of Human Evolution and

Willem Vanessendelft is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology,

Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Qin Zhen is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology, Wash-

ington University, St. Louis, Missouri.
Kari A. Zobler is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology, Uni-

versity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Archaeological Perspectives On Resilience, Revitalization, and Transformation in Complex Societies

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Beyond

Center for Archaeological Investigations

Center for Archaeological Investigations

Southern Illinois University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Printed on recycled paper.

I. Setting the Stage

1. Collapse, Resilience, and Transformation in Complex Societies:

2. Why Collapse Is So Difficult to Understand

II. Reframing Narratives of Societal Transformation

3. After Monte Albán in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca: A Reassessment

4. New Perspectives on the Collapse and Regeneration of the

6. A Historical Processual Approach to Continuity and Change in

7. The Dangers of Diversity: The Consolidation and Dissolution of

III. Resilience Theory and Societal Transformation

8. Release and Reorganization in the Tropics: A Comparative

9. Reestablishment of Complex Societies following Collapse and

10. The Decline and Reorganization of Southwestern Complexity:

11. Transformation without Collapse: Two Cases from the U.S.

12. Tres Zapotes: The Evolution of a Resilient Polity in the Olmec

IV. Long-Term Resilience and Adaptive Strategies

13. Finding Resilience in Ritual and History in the Lake Okeechobee

14. Resilience and Persistent Places in the Mississippi River Delta of

V. Postcollapse Resilience and Reorganization

16. Crafting a Response to Collapse: Ceramic and Textile Production in

18. Reconsidering Collapse: Identity, Ideology, and Postcollapse

20. Household Adaptation and Reorganization in the Aftermath of the

1-1. Adaptive cycle 13

6-1. Map of the northern Maya lowlands, showing many locations

15-3. Approximate location of Structure 3 and Mounds A and B at

18-7. Map demonstrating the chronologically latest inhumations within

3-1. Tendencies in politicoeconomic mechanisms 48

18-5. Ceramic assemblages from mortuary contexts dating to the

by the limited scholarly attention paid, especially in broad theoretical terms, to

Wilshaw-Watts, who fulfilled a vital role in the development of the conference

A recent online article hosted by the British newspaper the Guardian

Beyond Collapse: Archaeological Perspectives on Resilience, Revitalization, and Transformation in Com-

Definitions and Limitations

Many scholars have identified and discussed the problems associated

Modeling Societal Transformation

There have been a number of excellent critical reviews and informa-

Declining Marginal Returns

General Systems Theory (GST)

loops between governing institutions on various levels. Because these approaches

of environmental determinism and developmental “stages” of neo-evolutionary

Resilience Theory and Societal Transformation

was slower.” Although we do not yet have a revolt- or remember-type mechanism

In contrast to comparative approaches, scholars who concentrate on

Agency and Eventful Archaeology

Organization of the Volume

The conference on which this volume is based took place in 2013, 25

(e.g., Culbert 1973), focused on the collapse of complex societies. Subsequent

I extend a heartfelt appreciation to the three anonymous reviewers

Carballo, David M. (editor)

Hegmon, Michelle, Margaret C. Nelson, and Susan M. Ruth

McAnany, Patricia A., and Norman Yoffee (editors)

Redman, Charles, and Ann P. Kinzig

Abstract: The study of collapse and similar phenomena has a distinguished

Empires being neither up nor down do not fall.

It is difficult to pinpoint when collapse studies began. Much depends

Beyond Collapse: Archaeological Perspectives on Resilience, Revitalization, and Transformation in Com-

historical processes—loss of political unity and overall simplification in the