Evolving Complexity And Environmental Risk In The Prehistoric Southwest
Perseus Books (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 28. December 1995
Book
Hardback
284 pages
978-0-201-87039-8 (ISBN)
Description
Proceedings of the Workshop Resource Stress, Economic Uncertainty, and Human Response in the Prehistoric Southwest, Held February 2529, 1992 in Santa Fe, NM.. Cultural behavior exhibits many of the features of complex adaptive systems, but is in some ways distinctive. Cultural complexity is enigmatic, improbable, and difficult to maintain. It constrains behavior, limits understanding of processes, and imposes economic burdens. The advantages of complexity are modified by human cognition and limited by economic and environmental costs. This book explores in detail how and why prehistoric Southwestern societies changed in complexity, and thus offers important new perspectives on the evolution of culture.The papers discuss the factors that made prehistoric Southwesterners vulnerable to an arid environment, and their strategies to lessen risk and stress. The topics of the book link Southwestern data to fields such as economics, climatology, and evolutionary theory.
In addition to a readership of archaeologists and anthropologists, this volume will be of interest to specialists in these related fields and to those concerned with complex adaptive systems and the work of the Santa Fe Institute.
In addition to a readership of archaeologists and anthropologists, this volume will be of interest to specialists in these related fields and to those concerned with complex adaptive systems and the work of the Santa Fe Institute.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Boulder
United States
Publishing group
INGRAM PUBLISHER SERVICES US
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
ISBN-13
978-0-201-87039-8 (9780201870398)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Content
Introduction: Prehistoric Societies as Evolving Complex Systems (Joseph A. Tainter); Demography, Environment, and Subsistence Stress (Jeffrey S. Dean); Notes on Economic Uncertainty and Human Behavior in the Prehistoric North American Southwest (Paul E. Minnis); Hunting, Gathering, and Health in the Prehistoric Southwest (Katherine A. Spielmann and Eric A. Angstadt-Leto); Technological Strategies Responsive to Subsistence Stress (Margaret C. Nelson); The Calculus of Self-Interest in the Development of Cooperation: Sociopolitical Development and Risk Among the Northern Anasazi (Timothy A. Kohler and Carla R. Van West); Risk, Reciprocity, and the Operation of Social Networks (Alison E. Rautman); Variability in Food Production, Strategies of Storage and Sharing, and the Pithouse-to-Pueblo Transition in the Northern Southwest (Michelle Hegmon); Models and Frameworks for Archaeological Analysis of Resource Stress in the American Southwest (Linda S. Cordell)