SURVIVING SUDDEN ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE SURVIVING SUDDEN ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE ANSWERS FROM ARCHAEOLOGY Edited by Jago Cooper and Payson Sheets Authors David Abbott, John Marty Anderies, Jago Cooper, Andrew Dugmore, Ben Fitzhugh, Michelle Hegmon, Scott Ingram, Keith Kintigh, Ann Kinzig, Timothy Kohler, Stephanie Kulow, Emily McClung de Tapia, Thomas McGovern, Cathryn Meegan, Ben Nelson, Margaret Nelson, Tate Paulette, Matthew Peeples, Jeffrey Quilter, Charles Redman, Daniel Sandweiss, Payson Sheets, Katherine Spielmann, Colleen Strawhacker, Orri Vésteinsson UNIVERSITY PRESS OF COLORADO © 2012 by the University Press of Colorado Published by the University Press of Colorado 5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C Boulder, Colorado 80303 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of American University Presses. The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State Col- lege of Denver, Regis University, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, and Western State College of Colorado. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materi- als. ANSI Z39.48-1992 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Surviving sudden environmental change : answers from archaeology / editors, Jago Cooper and Payson Sheets ; authors, David A. Abbott ... [et al.]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60732-167-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60732-168-2 (ebook) 1. Environmental archaeology—Case studies. 2. Social archaeology—Case studies. 3. Natural disasters—Social aspects—History—To 1500. 4. Climatic changes—Social aspects—History— To 1500. 5. Human ecology—History—To 1500. 6. Human beings—Effect of climate on— History—To 1500. 7. Social evolution—History—To 1500. 8. Social change—History—To 1500. I. Cooper, Jago. II. Sheets, Payson D. III. Abbott, David A. CC81.S87 2012 930.1—dc23 2011045973 Text design by Daniel Pratt Cover design by Zoë Noble and Daniel Pratt 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Foreword vii Thomas H. McGovern Chapter Abstracts xiii INTRODUCTION: Learning to Live with the Dangers of Sudden Environmental Change 1 Payson Sheets and Jago Cooper CHAPTER 1. Hazards, Impacts, and Resilience among Hunter-Gatherers of the Kuril Islands 19 Ben Fitzhugh CHAPTER 2. Responses to Explosive Volcanic Eruptions by Small to Complex Societies in Ancient Mexico and Central America 43 Payson Sheets CHAPTER 3. Black Sun, High Flame, and Flood: Volcanic Hazards in Iceland 67 Andrew Dugmore and Orri Vésteinsson CHAPTER 4. Fail to Prepare, Then Prepare to Fail: Rethinking Threat, Vulnerability, and Mitigation in the Precolumbian Caribbean 91 Jago Cooper v CONTENTS CHAPTER 5. Collation, Correlation, and Causation in the Prehistory of Coastal Peru 117 Daniel H. Sandweiss and Jeffrey Quilter CHAPTER 6. Silent Hazards, Invisible Risks: Prehispanic Erosion in the Teotihuacan Valley, Central Mexico 143 Emily McClung de Tapia CHAPTER 7. Domination and Resilience in Bronze Age Mesopotamia 167 Tate Paulette CHAPTER 8. Long-Term Vulnerability and Resilience: Three Examples from Archaeological Study in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico 197 Margaret C. Nelson, Michelle Hegmon, Keith W. Kintigh, Ann P. Kinzig, Ben A. Nelson, John Marty Anderies, David A. Abbott, Katherine A. Spielmann, Scott E. Ingram, Matthew A. Peeples, Stephanie Kulow, Colleen A. Strawhacker, and Cathryn Meegan CHAPTER 9. Social Evolution, Hazards, and Resilience: Some Concluding Thoughts 223 Timothy A. Kohler CHAPTER 10. Global Environmental Change, Resilience, and Sustainable Outcomes 237 Charles L. Redman List of Contributors 245 Index 249 vi Foreword Thomas H. McGovern It is a genuine pleasure to provide this foreword to what will certainly become a key volume for the integration of the long-term perspective (longue durée) with present and future efforts to cope with hazards to the environment and human welfare. As Payson Sheets and Jago Cooper emphasize in their introduction and overview chapter, this group of contributors draws upon an impressive range of disciplines and well-developed case studies from around the globe. They are united in a growing movement among archaeologists, environmental historians, and paleoecologists to make a well-understood past serve to cre- ate a more genuinely sustainable future and increase human resilience in the face of both gradual and sudden change (Constanza, Graumlich, and Steffen 2007; Crumley 1994; Dugmore et al. 2007; Fisher, Hill, and Feinman 2009; Hornberg, McNeill, and Martinez-Alier 2007; Kirch 1997, 2007; Kohler and van der Leeuw 2007; Marks 2007; McGovern et al 2007; Norberg et al. 2008; Redman et al. 2004; Rick and Erlandson 2008; Sabloff 1998). THE EAGLE HILL MEETING, OcTOBER 2009 The editors and contributors are also connected by their participation in the three-day Global Longterm Human Ecodynamics Conference hosted by the Humboldt Field Research Institute at its excellent facility in Eagle Hill, vii THOMAS H. McGOVERN Maine, on October 16–19, 2009 (http://www.eaglehill.us/). The conference was generously funded by a grant from the US National Science Foundation (NSF), Office of Polar Programs (OPP), Arctic Social Sciences Program, as part of President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Our OPP grants officer, Dr. Anna Kerttula de Echave, played an invaluable and inspirational role before, during, and after what proved to be an incredibly ener- gized and successful meeting. The Eagle Hill meeting grew out of discussions with the NSF about the desirability of harvesting fresh data and perspectives acquired by some of the large-scale projects funded under new cross-disciplin- ary initiatives, including the NSF Biocomplexity competition, the Human and Social Dimensions of Global Change program, and the International Polar Year (2007–2009), as well as various European interdisciplinary programs (BOREAS, Leverhulme Trust projects), to promote more effective interre- gional (especially north-south) communication and integration of teams, cases, and new ideas. In spring 2009 a team drawn from the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) research and education cooperative (Andy Dugmore of the University of Edinburgh, Sophia Perdikaris and Tom McGovern of CUNY, and Astrid Ogilvie of the University of Colorado) was tasked with organizing a working conference that would connect teams and scholars active in diverse areas of human ecodynamics research and involve students participating in Sophia’s Islands of Change Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. The October Eagle Hill meeting eventually had seventy-one faculty and student active participants, representing a dozen disciplines and nations worldwide. Prior to the meeting, participants interacted through the NABO website maintained by Dr. Anthony Newton (University of Edinburgh), and this on-line collaboration and preparation proved critical to the success of the meeting (for a full report on the Eagle Hill meeting and a list of faculty partici- pants, see http://www.nabohome.org/meetings/glthec2009.html). As part of the pre-meeting preparation we grouped participants into working groups, each with at least two chairs charged with organizing their groups, leading discussions before and during the meeting, and preparing pre- sentations by each working group for discussion by the entire group. The teams and chairs were: • Methods, Data, and Tools (chairs Doug Price and Tina Thurston): New analytic tools allow transformation in our abilities to trace migra- tion, reconstruct diet, and reconstruct settlement. Some specialties and approaches are very recent in origin (stable isotopes, aDNA), and others have recently been able to significantly upgrade their general util- ity through expanded data resources (archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, geoarchaeology). • Who Cares Wins (Shari Gearheard and Christian Keller): Education, community involvement, policy connections, and interdisciplinary viii FOREWORD engagement. Moving beyond outreach to mobilize traditional environ- mental knowledge (TEK) and local knowledge and expertise for global science. Engaging underrepresented sources of innovation and expand- ing human resources. Connecting science to the public and providing diversity to policy makers. • Hazards and Impacts (Payson Sheets and Jago Cooper): Recurring haz- ards, differential impacts, long-term lessons for vulnerability and resil- ience, successful and unsuccessful models of response and adaptation. • Climate Change (Socorro Lozano and Lisa Kennedy): Climate change impacts, threshold crossings, adaptation versus resilience, past lessons for future impacts. • Models and Visualization (Shripad Tuljapurkar and Tiffany Vance): Digital resources for education, data integration and dissemination, integrative modeling, and exploration of complex causality and complex self-organizing adaptive systems. • Coping and Scale (Tate Paulette and Jeff Quilter): Societies of different scales have produced cases of both failure and long-term sustainability in balancing demands of specialization, short-term efficiency, and long- term flexibility in the face of discontinuous but often rapid changes in natural and social environments. • Ecodynamics of Modernity