Societal collapse (Other Keyword)
1-2 (2 Records)
Increasing literature has focused on the role of climate change in the collapse of complex societies. These studies suggest that abrupt shifts in climate can exacerbate existing political, social, and economic issues by affecting the basic subsistence systems on which populations depend. Here we compare archaeological, historic, and climate proxy data from two state-level societies: the Classic Maya and the Roman Empire. A strong focus on the impact of multi-decadal droughts from the ninth to...
Thinking Through Zooarchaeological Approaches to Empire and Environment (2017)
In this paper, I explore the intersection of empire and environment in imperial and post-imperial contexts using the collapse of the Hittite empire and its aftermath in central Turkey around 1200 BC as a case study. More specifically, I mobilize zooarchaeological evidence from the Hittite capital of Hattuşa and from Çadır Höyük, a rural town, in order to discuss how we might distinguish between political, economic, and climatic factors in our interpretations of the relationships between empire...