Megadrought and Collapse

From Early Agriculture to Angkor

Edited by Harvey Weiss

First book to treat global history of megadroughts and societal collapses, from origins of agriculture to fall of Angkor Wat
With megadrought as primary causal agency, challenges previous multi-causal endogenous theories of societal collapse
Represents the most current primary research presented by its principal investigators
Potential for crossover appeal to contemporary audiences via present and pressing global environmental concerns

Megadrought and Collapse

From Early Agriculture to Angkor

Edited by Harvey Weiss

Description

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

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

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

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

Megadrought and Collapse

From Early Agriculture to Angkor

Edited by Harvey Weiss

Contributors
Introduction
Harvey Weiss
1. 12,000-11,700 cal BP: The Collapse of Foraging and Origins of
Cultivation in Western Asia
Ofer Bar-Yosef, Miryam Bar-Matthews, and Avner Ayalon
2. 6600-6000 cal BP Abrupt Climate Change and Neolithic Dispersal
from West Asia
Bernard Weninger and Lee Clare
3. 4.2 ka BP Megadrought and the Akkadian Collapse
Harvey Weiss
4. 3.2 ka BP Megadrought and the Late Bronze Age Collapse
Daniel Kaniewski and Elise Van Campo
5. AD 550-600 Collapse at Teotihuacan: Testing a Climate Forcing from
a 2400-Year Mesoamerican Rainfall Reconstruction
Matthew S. Lachniet and Juan Pablo Bernal-Uruchurtu
6. AD 750-1100 Climate Change and Critical Transitions in Classic Maya
Sociopolitical Networks
Douglas J. Kennett and David A. Hodell
7. Twelfth Century AD: Climate, Environment, and the Tiwanaku State
Lonnie Thompson and Alan L. Kolata
8. Thirteenth Century AD: Implications of Seasonal and Annual Moisture 0 Reconstructions for Mesa Verde, Colorado
David W. Stahle, Dorian J. Burnette, Daniel Griffin,
Edward R. Cook, and Larry V. Benson
9. Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries AD: The Case of Angkor and
Monsoon Extremes in Mainland Southeast Asia
Roland Fletcher, Brendan M. Buckley,
Christophe Pottier, and Shi-Yu Simon Wang
Index

Megadrought and Collapse

From Early Agriculture to Angkor

Edited by Harvey Weiss

Author Information

Edited by Harvey Weiss, Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Environmental Studies, Yale University

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

Contributors:

Avner Ayalon, Senior Researcher at the Department of Geochemistry, Geological Survey of Israel.

Miryam Bar-Matthews, Senior Researcher at the Department of Geochemistry, Geological Survey of Israel

Ofer Bar-Yosef, MacCurdy Research Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University

Brendan Buckley, Lamont Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Institute of Columbia University

Dorian Burnette, Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Memphis

Lee Clare, Research Lecturer at the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), Berlin.

Edward R. Cook, Ewing Lamont Research Professor and the Director of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Tree-Ring Laboratory

Roland Fletcher, Professor of Theoretical and World Archaeology at the University of Sydney.

Daniel Griffin, Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Minnesota.

David A. Hodell, Woodwardian Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge

David Kaniewski, Associate Professorint the Department of Biology and Geosciences, University Paul Sabatier-Toulouse 3 (France)

Douglas Kennett, Professor of Environmental Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at Penn State University

Alan L. Kolata, Bernard E. and Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago

Matthew Lachniet, Professor of Geosciences at the University of Nevada Las Vegas

Christophe Pottier, Associate Professor at the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO)

David W. Stahle, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences and Director of the Tree-Ring Laboratory at the University of Arkansas

Lonnie Thompsom, Distinguished University Professor, School of Earth Sciences Senior Research Scientist, Byrd Polar Research Center, Ohio State University

Juan Pablo Bernal-Uruchurtu, an investigator at the Centro de Geociéncias of the Universidad Autónoma de México

Elise van Campo, Research Director at the Institute of Ecology and Environment, National Center for Scientific Research (France)

Shih-Yu Simon Wang, Associate Professor of Climate at Utah State University in Logan, Utah

Harvey Weiss, Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at Yale University

Bernhard Weninger, director of the radiocarbon laboratory at the University of Cologne since 1993