"Let's Talk about [Collapse], Baby": Explorations in the Archaeology of Societal Collapse

Societal collapse has long been a topic of archaeological discourse, and as a concept it continues to have contemporary relevance. We see it evidenced in discussions of climate change, in contemporary ‘failed state’ rhetoric, and in our fears about the future. But what does it mean to say a society has collapsed, and what are its material effects? What happens in the aftermath of collapse, and how is societal collapse similar across time and space?

This session explores the archaeology of collapse and its aftermath by bringing together a range of geographical, theoretical, and methodological approaches in order to facilitate a new discussion about collapse. Examples include studying how collapse operates at both local and regional levels; using small sites to talk about more overarching patterns; combining multiple datasets, methods, and/or theoretical approaches; and scaling up from specific data in order to develop theoretical models of collapse. Our goal is to consider collapse both in terms of specific historical trajectories—what does collapse look like at specific points in time and space?—and as a concept—how might we think about collapse in more general terms?