critical perspectives on historical collapse

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Critical perspectives on historical collapseKarl W. Butzera,1 and Georgina H. Endeldb

aDepartment of Geography and the Environment, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712; and bSchool of Geography, University of

Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom

Historical collapse of ancient states or civilizations has raised new awareness about its possible relevance to current issues of sustainability,

in the context of global change. This Special Feature examines 12 case studies of societies under stress, of which seven suffered severe

transformation. Outcomes were complex and unpredictable. Five others overcame breakdown through environmental, political, orsocio-cultural resilience, which deserves as much attention as the identication of stressors. Response to environmental crises of

the last millennium varied greatly according to place and time but drew from traditional knowledge to evaluate new information orexperiment with increasing exibility, even if modernization or intensication were decentralized and protracted. Longer-term diachronic

experience offers insight into how societies have dealt with acute stress, a more instructive perspective for the future than is offered by

apocalyptic scenarios.

complexity| social-ecological resilience | multicausality

Current Visions of Collapse

T

he breakdown of historical statesor societies (1) has drawn atten-tion since the 18th century, with

shifting explanations that reectedprevailing intellectual climates (2). Anearly, macrohistorical mode gave way tobiological analogs or the overriding signif-icance of technological progress. However,two world wars of unspeakable brutalityreawakened millennialist anxieties, morerecently compounded by growing fears ofexponential population growth, environ-mental deterioration, and global climaticchange. In this spirit of crisis, some authorshave searched for alarming, futuristic sce-narios in historical digests. However, anincreasing number of scientists has begunto counter this sometimes chaotic dis-course with sophistication, to suggest moremeasured estimates for change or to steerattention to the desirability of remedialaction. Diverse efforts are underway tomodel social response and offer simulatedpredictions of short- or long-range envi-ronmental change.

In particular, concern with climaticchange, global environmental change, andsustainability has stimulated the formationof formal or informal programs and

working groups to address environmentsociety relationships and their implicationsfor sustainability. These include Inter-

national Council of Science-sponsoredefforts such as Past Global EnvironmentalChange, the Integrated Land Ecosystem

Atmosphere Processes Study, and a newlyminted Program on Ecosystem Changeand Society.

Related groups and programs focus onland-use change (35), resilience (68),

vulnerability (9, 10), and sustainability(11). Apart from the underlying need forinstitutional funding, such organizationalstrategies serve to draw attention to a newgeneration of directed, collaborative re-search (12) and help sketch alternativethematic agendas for cross-disciplinary

interaction. Together, such programs havefostered a series of research themes andconcepts, relevant for and, in many casesaddressing, societal collapse.

These themes and concepts includecomplexity and network theory, historicityand legacies, tipping elements and points,and associated path-dependent relation-ships of coupled systems. Through paleo-environmental and historical research,

various international science programsseek to identify the dynamics that stimulatesocietal adaptations to such elements, so asto provide insight into the resilience ofpast societies that arguably may be of useto contemporary and future societies.

The challenge remains to develop anoutline for comprehensive, integratedmodels that convincingly explicate past

socio-ecological interactions, or that cap-ture the broader, dynamic principles cross-cutting humanenvironmental systems

while also accounting for the ner-resolution evidence and complex outcomesthat they entail. Unfortunately there areinsufcient empirical, rather than simu-lated, data on the nature of societal re-sponse to cross-disciplinary inputs, triggers,or tipping points. The public is confrontedby metanarratives of global change orby semipopular works that suggest over-simplied causal correlations. Such hy-potheses can readily be misunderstood as

facts. Historical examples should insteadbe carefully selected to study the societalimplications of predicted, future environ-mental scenarios (13).

Other difculties arise when normativeenvironmental systems are coupled withhumansystems that emphasize information,technology,and social organization. Humangroups and individuals introduce cognition,information, and communication as pow-erful variables in dealing with values, atti-tudes, and decision making (1417), so thatculture, perception, and behavior conditionhow societies will interact with their envi-ronments or dene their priorities. Scien-

tic advances in simulating the physicaloutcomes of climatic change seem to bemore advanced than the modeling of socialresponse to that change (18, 19). This may

re

ect the profound complexities of socialanalysis (20, 21) and the lack of unanimityamong the physical and social sciences orhumanities in regard to concepts, assump-tions, legacies, validity, and contingencies.These issues pose difcult problems formodel designs to simulate coupled systems.

Social Science Agenda for Collapse

Without downplaying the importance ofhard science and modeling in studies ofcollapse, it can be argued that socio-cul-tural and political processes need greaterattention. We therefore suggest a broader,integrative denition: Societal collapserepresents transformation at a large socialor spatial scale, with long-term impact oncombinations of interdependent variables:(i) environmental change and resilience;(ii) demography or settlement; (iii) socio-economic patterns; (iv) political or socie-tal structures; and (v) ideology or cul-tural memory.

These are intrinsic properties ratherthan a shopping list. They encompass en-ergetic structures and ows, but equally sohave cultural and psychological dimensionsthat are grounded in human perceptions,

values, and solidarity. Temporal parame-

ters are relative, because the interactivecluster of processes waxes and wanes inshifting constellations as a transformationbegins, climaxes, and concludes, with or

without obvious discontinuities. Such adenition of collapse calls for a genuinelyinterdisciplinaryeld of analysis, one thatpays explicit attention to social and

Author contributions: K.W.B. and G.H.E. designed research;

K.W.B. performed research; and K.W.B. wrote the paper.

The authors declare no conict of interest.

1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:

[email protected].

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mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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humanistic issues, which should be morethan an afterthought.

In pursuing such a line of research, an-alytical case studies are particularly pro-ductive. If based rst and foremost inempirically grounded data, from specicareas, case studies can be examined in-ductively and deductively. For example, the1930s Dust Bowl phenomenon on the

Great Plains has been reexamined manytimes (2226), with an explicit historicalmodel by Robert Kates, to arrive at in-creasingly closer approximations of per-ceptions, issues, and processes. Renewedattention to good heuristic exemplars isintegral to scientic investigation, and inthe case of historical collapse also providesoccasion to examine how societies dealt

with crises to avoid breakdown.In addressing the issues and nature of

historical collapse, the articles of thisSpecial Feature rely heavily on case studiesthat specically draw from archaeology,

anthropology, economics, and geography,as well as the geological and biologicalsciences. However, the cross-disciplinaryelds of interaction are much broader anddirectly intersect with overarching conceptssuch as environmental history, land-usechange, institutional structures, resilience,and sustainability. A consistent componentis scale, in both space and time.

Importance of Direct, InsiderInformation

Over the span of the Holocene, tellingevidence of socialecological change iscommonly provided by archeological sur-

vey and geoarcheological evidence (27) forsettlement discontinuities. The number,density, or size of settlements can declineor shift to new concentrations. Archeo-logical inventories may change, or wholelandscapes may be abandoned (2830).When resettlement takes place, new ar-chaeological components often dominate,and few older loci may be reoccupied.Settlement shifts or discontinuities arecommon enough in the Neolithic, Bronze

Age, or Iron Age records of Europe (31)and typically take place over centennialtime scales. Change may represent partial

or complete archeological succession, withsome shifts rapid or even catastrophicand others marked by a measure ofevo-lutionary continuity. Human impact mayhave effected environmental modication,or biotic evidence may record a shift to theexploitation of new habitats or resources,accompanied by changing adaptations ormore complex patterns of resilience, inline with new, inferred vulnerabilities.External parameters can also shift, asa result of climatic anomalies, invasion, orepidemic diseasebeyond the ebb andow of endogenic change, and driven bynew opportunities or priorities, famine

disasters, or feedbacks reecting adjust-ments to land access and land use.

Such shifts or discontinuities in theprehistoric record may well have beentraumatic or even catastrophic at somescale, but the archaeological record oftenlacks the necessary sensitivity to detect this,even when regional depopulation is ap-parent. That indeterminate picture im-

proves when the archaeological recordacquires a much larger palette of criteria,such as socially differentiated architecturalsites, suggestive of more complex andstratied communities, especially if there isevidence of concentrated craft production,exploitation of mining resources, hints orbetter of exchange networks, and nestedhierarchies of larger and smaller sites withpossible economic differentiation. Enterthe concept of the cityhighlighted byspecial economic, political, or religiousprestige or control (27).

For urban societies there may also bedocumentary sources that help identifycollapse of a group of towns or an archaicstate. Urban centers in the Near East reachback into prehistoric times in the case ofproto-literate, high cultures or civili-zations.Investigation can move beyondarchaeological survey to unravel the suc-cessive horizons of settlement mounds,

with the preferred assistance of geo-archaeological research (32). Houseoors, former streets, and community ormonumental structures can be studied atthe microlevel to identify different kindsof sediments that accumulate during set-tlement growth or decline, until the time

of abandonment or deliberate destruction(14, 33, 34). On a wider scale, transport ofurban sediments to adjacent streams mayallow testing of relationships betweenoccupation histories and regional degra-dation or environmental change. Ex-planations for discontinuities or collapsebecome more tangible.

Although some written sources becomeavailable for parts of the Near East toward3000 B.C.E., they initially are very frag-mentary or thematically limited. In con-

junction with later recording of oraltraditions, they offer a skeletal frameworkof changing dynasties but, until late in

the third millennium, little by way of ex-planation for or perceptions of change(35, 36). For example, the demise of the

Akkadian Empire is incompletely docu-mented by coeval sources. Instead,changes have to be inferred from youngertexts or chronicles that were ideologicallytailored with respect to an idealized role ofthe good ruler.Although the conven-tional canons of Near East historiographyare complemented by phenomenally richarchaeological and artistic records, initialreconstructions of administrative struc-tures and social changes depend to somedegree on anthropological models. Even

with multiple lines of convergent evidenceand social science sophistication, a possi-ble diagnosis of protohistoric collapsemust rely on a fragmentary data set. Thisexplains the signicance of the insiderperspective for later societies that do havea complex written record (37), as was thecase in Egypt, Colonial Mexico, or Cyprus.

Dating, Timing, and CorrelationReliable time frames are as much a prob-lem in identifying collapse as are recordsthat include direct narratives (38, 39). Ina specic case study, the criteria to datekey information on environmental vari-ability, depopulation, political simplica-tion, or social resilience may simply beinadequate to integrate or to correlate

with other sites or outlying regions.The collapse of the Akkadian Empire in

Mesopotamia or of Old Kingdom Egyptillustrates the problem. Accurate calibra-tion of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry

(AMS) dates for the mid to late thirdmillennium B.C.E. is tenuous, given theirregularities of the calibration curve (40).

Attempted calibrations may have a rangeof some 300 y, with multiple intercepts. Onthe other hand, chronological recon-structions from regnal years are beset byproblems of incomplete, incorrect, or il-legible records or elite accounts for in-dividual reigns, in addition to periods withan uncertain number of short-term rulers.No generally accepted chronology hasbeen established for Mesopotamiabefore 2100 B.C.E. For example, withinthe Syrian site of Tell Brak a very large

body of isotopic datesfor three distinctarchaeological levels that represent suc-cessive ruling administrationsare in-distinguishable (41). In Egypt, the OldKingdom dynasties seem to be reasonably

well dated, but the subsequent First In-termediate Period is not (42). As a result itis uncertain which Egyptian dynasties orrulers correlate with which Akkadiankings, let alone how either region in-terdigitated with events in the Aegean

world or Indus Valley. The ancient capitalof Akkad has not yet been found and isprobably dispersed deep in alluvial de-

posits of the Euphrates River, whereasevents referred to in the chronicles can bedifcult to relate to actual places, let alonescientically excavated sites.

It is a stretch to correlate the reputedcollapse of several Near Eastern civi-lizations (supposedly around 2200 B.C.E.)across western Asia and beyond when infact major events are imprecisely dated

within 2 or more centuries. Such temporaluncertainty also does not warrant the useof proxy climate records from distantoceans or continents to explain socio-historical processes proceeding apace inMesopotamia or Egypt.

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SPECIALFEATU

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Implementing a Social Science Agenda

The research articles of this Special Fea-ture constitute an alternative framework toa metanarrative-driven understanding ofhistorical humanenvironment relation-ships and collapse. These empiricallygrounded articles represent four con-tinents and come from many distinct en-

vironments, addressing a wide range ofglobal variability and resilience. They spandifferent time ranges, so as to offera spectrum of contextual factors andissues, with cumulative contributions toa repertoire of ideas.

The opening Perspective [includingsupporting information (SI), availableonline] by Butzer (2) argues that a plausi-ble cause for sociopolitical breakdownshould be grounded in direct, insider in-formation, drawn from internal histories.Case studies from Old and New KingdomEgypt record how economic decline, cor-ruption, insecurity, or war precondition

a state for concatenations of decliningproductivity, recession, and possible cli-matic perturbations. With low resilience,cascading devolutionary feedbacks canthen destabilize a system through famine,internal conict, and political simplica-tion, eventually leading to subsistence cri-ses, breakdown of the social order, andcivil wars. However, with high societal re-silience, buffering feedbacks may insteadlead to the emergence of military leaders,support by new elites, a reafrmation ofthe cosmic order, and ideological shiftsthat allow reconstitution of the state. Ineffect, multiple interactive thresholds ledto different regime shifts(see ref. 43) inOld vs. New Kingdom Egypt.

Expansion of these case studies to in-clude Islamic Mesopotamia, EgyptsFayum Oasis, and Axum (Ethiopia) (ref. 2and its SI) adds experience on irrigationfailure or demographic decline in the wakeof ethnic change, climatic anomalies, orenvironmental degradation. Although themany interlinked inputs, triggers, andfeedbacks can precondition or lead tobreakdown, environmental change wassubordinate to internally driven processes,rather than the primary cause of de-

volution. Cognition, values, and prioritiesare critical, so that the conceptual modelproposed (gure 1 in ref. 2) not only em-phasizes environmental resilience but alsothe role of leadership, elites, and ideologyfor either breakdown or reconstitution.These historical examples of cyclical col-lapse were not abruptbut mainly playedout over centennial rather than decennialtime scales.

In a strictly archaeological setting,Rosen and Rivera-Collazo (44), with thehelp of good paleoecological data, showthe utility of adaptive cycles from resil-ience theory (45). The authors suggest that

the abrupt, cold-climate oscillation at theend of the Pleistocene (the YoungerDryas, 12,90011,600 cal. B.P.) delayedthe transition to food production in theopen woodlands of the southern Levant.In response, resilient foraging groups re-organized to implement earlier, successfulstrategies, exploiting a broader spectrumof resources (identied by plant and

animal residues), in combination withgreater mobility. Later in the cycle,a greater investment in prime, high-yieldfoods narrowed the resource spectrum anddecreased mobility. However, huntingpressures eventually reduced the avail-ability of large game, favoring a belatedshift to food production. Multidisciplinaryarchaeology can indeed develop usefulmodels for prehistoric times.

The Maya Collapse (750900 C.E.) iscontroversial, with explanations rangingfrom long-distance teleconnections to ar-guments centered on different environ-mental responses in various regional,ecological contexts, originally includingtropical forests and woodland. As noted byLuzzadder-Beach et al. (46), this processspanned time and distance. Complexproxy data indicate several drier periods,linked to major transitions in human ad-aptation or response. However, during theTerminal Classic, collapse was pervasive,even in perennial wetlands that shouldhave been less affected by drought. Dun-ning et al. (47) address the different ratesof Maya population recovery from suchrecurrent droughts and environmentaldegradation. In some areas long-term en-

vironmental changes required develop-ment of new adaptations, whereaselsewhere cultural factors may have de-layed repopulation, including the re-consecration of abandoned lands (kax)before reoccupation as cultivated space(kol). As in the Levant, cyclic growth anddecline involved both environmental andcultural resilience, but given its diversiedcriteria, the Maya record is more complex.

Two other articles offer insights on re-silience and social transformations in thefar North Atlantic realm, as based onsurvey, excavation, and a battery of ana-lytical techniques, applied to multiscale

comparative analyses of examples fromMedieval Iceland and Greenland. Dug-more et al. (48) assess differences of socialtransformation, sustainable practice, envi-ronmental change, isolation, mobility,and choices about subsistence and socialorganization. Under what circumstancescan population levels not be maintained?How did divergent adaptations benetIceland and the Greenland colonies withthe onset of the Little Ice Age (LIA)? Thisinforms on the consequences of locationalchoices for settlements, with respect tosubsistence and external connectivity.High-resolution correlation of tephra lay-

ers from Iceland, by Streeter et al. (49),shows that plague-related depopulation onIceland was followed by reduced pastoralimpact on the soil balance, which eventu-ally may have improved environmentalresilience in the face of the LIA. TheNorth Atlantic articles illustrate the ef-fectiveness of comparative analyses oflarge datasets from an expanded range of

variables. They go well beyond the singularemphasis of abrupt climatic change, byteasing out the role of systemic resilienceand niche specialization.

Since 1878 British colonial and Cypriotpostcolonial governments enacted envi-ronmental policies based on the premise ofongoing deforestation and degradation ofa fragile Mediterranean ecosystem (i.e.,coupled system degradation). According toHarris (50), this narrative is based on in-accurate assumptions and interpretationsthat oversimplify the goals of government,fail to recognize the difference between

degradation and change, and scapegoatthe pastoral lifestyle and its presumedenvironmental impact. Archival and eldresearch instead underscore the environ-mental and societal resilience of de-gradedareas and the effects of changingeconomic, political, and social contexts.This case study of natural resource man-agement and environmental resilience(see ref. 43) illustrates that what the co-lonial government viewed as unsustainable

was, in all probability, sustainable.The Special Feature concludes with

Endelds (51) archivally based study ofresilience and adaptive response in co-

lonial Mexico. She marshals archival doc-umentation to argue that although muchof human history can be viewed throughan ontogenetic lens of emergence, ores-cence, and decline, intersecting with ex-treme events or natural disasters, to do so

would obscure the specic socio-eco-nomic, cultural, political, and backgroundenvironmental contexts that helped shapethem. The interactions between theenvironment and society inuence howregional livelihoods may be vulnerable todisruption. However, her detailed caseanalyses also inform on the degree to

which different societies and groups candevelop institutions and cultural copingstrategies to deal with environmentalchanges at different scales, to show that

vulnerability to change can lead to an im-proved understanding of risk (10). Envi-ronmental crises could therefore challengebut also improve societal resilience, in-creasing opportunities for learning andinnovation, to broaden the repertoire ofadaptive responses (17, 52). Collapse isnot an inevitable result of transformations,although the transformations themselvesoffer opportunities to examine the com-plex structure of social interactions.

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Overall, the case studies present sixexamples of collapse in response to mainlysocietal, interacting factors (cascadingfeedbacks), in which climatic or ecologicalchange was no more than a coagency, witha single case of signicant degradation(Axum). Some ve examples without col-lapse illustrate different facets of envi-ronmental or societal resilience. This set of

supporting articles cuts across ecologicalvariability and time to articulate comple-mentary insights about multicausality,rather than single-factor environmentalexplanations. The environment is of coursecritically important for sustainability,but such interrelationships are ltered

through a web of complex social responses.Rather than assemble an anthology ofhistorical collapse, the Special Featurehighlights multicausality, resilience, un-predictability, and how societies cope

with crises.Societal collapse raises productive

questions about diachronic coupled sys-tems. Such issues would include the fol-

lowing: why collapse is important, howcommon it is in the historical record,

whether it is inevitably linked to environ-mental disasters, or whether it offersprecedents to correct contemporary out-comes or devise solutions for the future.Perhaps the most trenchant would be

how societies have avoided collapse byrevitalizing a common will to overcomeadversity, drawing from both old experi-ence and new information to revise ordevelop collective strategies for survival.Voluntary transformation can be painful,but it does offer hope for reconstitutionand recovery. The case studies developed

in this Special Feature suggest that optimalsolutions ultimately are cognitive and col-laborative. However, solutions to acutecrises of sustainability cannot be devised orimplemented if remedial response ismodeled with stereotypic assumptionsabout human behavior.

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critical perspectives on historical collapse

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