Comparative Approaches to Complexity in the Tropics

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Tropical environments around the world have been the foundation upon which many complex societies have risen, peaked, and ultimately collapsed. Exploring the complexities found within the environment, agricultural strategies, water management practices, urbanism, as well as social and political organizations, provide avenues to understanding why these classical state societies followed similar or divergent trajectories. Over years of discourse, a wealth of information has accumulated on these tropical societies, but only occasionally, have scholars collectively assessed and compared their research questions, methods, and results. This symposium provides an arena to discuss the importance of comparative approaches to understanding the complexities exhibited by tropical societies.

Other Keywords
Water Management • Urbanism • Resilience • complex societies • Maya • Agriculture • Pottery • Wetlands • Status • comparative studies

Geographic Keywords
East/Southeast Asia • Mesoamerica • South Asia

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-12 of 12)

  • Documents (12)
Documents
  1. A Comparative Approach to Understanding Ancient Agriculture Complexity in the Tropics (2016)
  2. The constraints and conditions of water chemistry for human use of Maya tropical wetland fields (2016)
  3. Elite formation and wet-rice access in the northern Philippine highlands (2016)
  4. Heterarchical Entanglement: The Complexity of Maya Water Management (2016)
  5. Household archaeology in Angkorian Cambodia: Preliminary results and challenges for future research (2016)
  6. Investigating Integrative Mechanisms Among Early Tropical States (2016)
  7. A Mentality for Monumentality? Monumental Architecture and Hierarchical Social Organization on Subtropical and Tropical Islands (2016)
  8. A Model for Urbanism from the Neotropics? (2016)
  9. One Foot in the Field and the Other in the Forest: Indigenous "State Hedging" in Cambodia and Beyond. (2016)
  10. The Socio-Ecological Entanglement in Tropical Societies (SETS) Project (2016)
  11. Using Adaptive Capacity to Assess the Water Management System of Koh Ker, Cambodia (2016)
  12. Water Management in the Ancient States of South India and Sri Lanka (2016)