From the Euphrates Valley to the southern
Peruvian Andes, early complex societies have risen and fallen, but in
some cases they have also been reborn. Prior archaeological
investigation of these societies has focused primarily on emergence
and collapse. This is the first book-length work to examine
the question of how and why early complex urban societies have
reappeared after periods of decentralization and collapse.
Ranging widely across the Near East, the Aegean, East Asia,
Mesoamerica, and the Andes, these cross-cultural studies expand our
understanding of social evolution by examining how societies were
transformed during the period of radical change now termed
"collapse.” They seek to discover how societal complexity
reemerged, how second-generation states formed, and how these
re-emergent states resembled or differed from the complex societies
that preceded them.
The contributors draw on material culture as well as textual and
ethnohistoric data to consider such factors as preexistent
institutions, structures, and ideologies that are influential in
regeneration; economic and political resilience; the role of social
mobility, marginal groups, and peripheries; and ethnic change. In
addition to presenting a number of theoretical viewpoints, the
contributors also propose reasons why regeneration sometimes does not
occur after collapse. A concluding contribution by Norman
Yoffee provides a critical exegesis of collapse and highlights
important patterns found in the case histories related to peripheral
regions and secondary elites, and to the ideology of statecraft.
After Collapse
blazes new research trails in both archaeology and the study of social
change, demonstrating that the archaeological record often offers more
clues to the “dark ages” that precede regeneration
than do text-based studies. It opens up a new window on the past by
shifting the focus away from the rise and fall of ancient civilizations
to their often more telling fall and
rise.
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After Collapse
The
Regeneration of Complex Societies
edited by Glenn M. Schwartz and John J. Nichols
University of Arizona Press,
2006
Order
a copy |
