Evolving Complexity And Environmental Risk In The Prehistoric Southwest

Häftad, Engelska, 1996

959 kr

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Cultural behaviour 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 behaviour, 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.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum1996-01-01
Mått162 x 232 x 18 mm
Vikt474 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor284
FörlagTaylor & Francis Inc
ISBN9780201870404

Tillhör följande kategorier

Antropologi inom Samhälle och politik
Kulturvetenskap inom Samhälle och politik

Joseph A. Tainter is project leader of Cultural Heritage Research, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has taught anthropology at the University of New Mexico, and is the author or editor of many articles and monographs. His book The Collapse of Complex Societies develops a long-standing research interest in the evolution of socioeconomic complexity. His work has been recognized in several fields, and has led to invitations to lecture to organizations as diverse as the Getty centre for the History of Art and the Humanities and the International Society for Ecological Economics.Bonnie Bagley Tainter is an archaeologist, poet, editor, and private consultant. Her academic interests range from vertebrate and invertebrate evolution to Southwestern archaeology, and include historic preservation planning for her home community of Corrales, New Mexico. She previously contributed to the editing of several papers for the book Effects of War on Society, and has done research on the architecture of Hovenweep National Monument and on prehistoric settlement changes in the Albuquerque area.

About the Santa Fe Institute -- Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity -- Introduction: Prehistoric Societies as Evolving Complex Systems -- Demography, Environment, and Subsistence Stress -- Notes on Economic Uncertainty and Human Behavior in the Prehistoric North American Southwest -- Hunting, Gathering, and Health in the Prehistoric Southwest -- Technological Strategies Responsive to Subsistence Stress -- Risk, Anthropogenic Environments, and Western Anasazi Subsistence -- The Calculus of Self-interest in the Development of Cooperation: Sociopolitical Development and Risk Among the Northern Anasazi -- Risk, Reciprocity, and the Operation of Social Networks -- Variability in Food Production, Strategies of Storage and Sharing, and the Pithouse-to-Pueblo Transition in the Northern Southwest -- Models and Frameworks for Archaeological Analysis of Resource Stress in the American Southwest