Title: Megadrought and collapse : from early agriculture to Angkor /
Authors: Weiss, Harvey, 1945-
Year: 2017
Subjects: Droughts History.; Droughts Social aspects History.; Human beings Effect of climate on History.; Environmental archaeology.; Human ecology History; Climate and civilization; Climatic changes; Climatic changes Social aspects; Droughts; Human beings Effect of climate on
Abstract: "Megadrought and Collapse is the first book to treat in one volume the current paleoclimatic and archaeological evidence of megadrought events coincident with major prehistoric and historical examples of societal collapse. Previous works have offered multi-causal explanations for collapse, from overpopulation, overexploitation of resources, and warfare to poor leadership and failure to adapt to environmental changes. In earlier synthetic studies of major instances of collapse, the full force of climate change has often not been considered. This volume includes nine case studies that span the globe and stretch over fourteen thousand years, from the paleolithic hunter-gatherer collapse of the 12th millennium BC to the 15th century AD fall of the Khmer capital at Angkor. Together, the studies constitute a primary sourcebook in which principal investigators in archaeology and paleoclimatology present their original research. Each case study juxtaposes the latest paleoclimatic evidence of megadrought (so-called for its severity and its decades - to centuries-long duration) with available archaeological records of synchronous societal collapse. The megadrought data are derived from all five archival paleoclimate proxy sources: speleothems (cave stalagmites), tree rings, and lake, marine, and glacial cores. The archaeological records in each case are the most recently retrieved."--Provided by publisher.
Contents: Introduction / Harvey Weiss -- 12,000-11,700 cal BP: the collapse of foraging and origins of cultivation in western Asia / Ofer Bar-Yosef, Miryam Bar-Matthews, and Avner Ayalon -- 6600-6000 cal BP abrupt climate change and neolithic dispersal from west Asia / Bernard Weninger and Lee Clare -- 4.2 ka BP megadrought and the Akkadian collapse / Harvey Weiss -- 3.2 ka BP megadrought and the late Bronze Age collapse / Daniel Kaniewski and Elise Van Campo -- Ad 550-600 collapse at Teotihuacan: testing a climate forcing from a 2400-year Mesoamerican rainfall reconstruction / Matthew S. Lachniet and Juan Pablo Bernal-Uruchurtu -- AD 750-1100 climate change and critical transitions in classic Maya sociopolitical networks / Douglas J. Kennett and David A. Hodell -- Twelfth century AD: climate, environment, and the Tiwanaku State / Lonnie Thompson and Alan L. Kolata -- Thirteenth century AD: implications of seasonal and annual moisture reconstructions for Mesa Verde, Colorado / David W. Stahle, Dorian J. Burnette, Daniel Griffin, and Edward R. Cook -- Fourteenth to sixteenth centuries AD: the case of Angkor and monsoon extremes in mainland southeast Asia / Roland Fletcher, Brendan M. Buckley, Christophe pottier, and Shi-Yu Simon Wang.