Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (99 page)

long-distance voyaging in East Polynesia," pp. 257-273 in Michael D. Glascock, ed.,
Geochemical Evidence for Long-Distance Exchange
(London: Bergin and Garvey,
2002). Three papers on Henderson Island crops and skeletons are Jon G. Hather
and Marshall Weisler, "Prehistoric giant swamp taro
(Cyrtosperma chamissonis)
from Henderson Island, Southeast Polynesia"
(Pacific Science
54:149-156 (2000));
Sara Collins and Marshall Weisler, "Human dental and skeletal remains from Hen
derson Island, Southeast Polynesia"
(People and Culture in Oceania
16:67-85
(2000)); and Vincent Stefan, Sara Collins, and Marshall Weisler, "Henderson Island
crania and their implication for southeastern Polynesian prehistory"
(Journal of the
Polynesian Society
111:371-383 (2002)).

No one interested in Pitcairn and Henderson, and no one who loves a great
story, should miss the novel
Pitcairn's Island
by Charles Nordhoff and James Nor
man Hall (Boston: Little, Brown, 1934)
—a realistically re-created account of the lives and mutual murders of the H.M.S.
Bounty
mutineers and their Polynesian companions on Pitcairn Island, after they had seized the
Bounty
and cast Captain Bligh and his supporters adrift. Caroline Alexander,
The Bounty
(New York: Viking, 2003) offers the most thorough effort to understand what really did happen.

Chapter 4

The prehistory of the U.S. Southwest is well served by books written for the general
public and well illustrated, often in color. Those books include Robert Lister and
Florence Lister,
Chaco Canyon
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1981); Stephen Lekson,
Great Pueblo Architecture of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986); William Ferguson and
Arthur Rohn,
Anasazi Ruins of the Southwest in Color
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987); Linda Cordell,
Ancient Pueblo Peoples
(Montreal:
St. Remy Press, 1994); Stephen Plog,
Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest
(New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997); Linda Cordell,
Archaeology of the South
west,
2nd ed. (San Diego: Academic Press, 1997); and David Stuart,
Anasazi America
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000).

Not to be missed are three illustrated books on the glorious painted pottery of
the Mimbres people: J. J. Brody,
Mimbres Painted Pottery
(Santa Fe: School of
American Research, 1997); Steven LeBlanc,
The Mimbres People: Ancient Pueblo
Painters of the American Southwest
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1983); and Tony Berlant, Steven LeBlanc, Catherine Scott, and J. J. Brody,
Mimbres Pottery: Ancient Art of the American Southwest
(New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1983).

Three detailed accounts of warfare and violence among the Anasazi and their
neighbors are Christy Turner II and Jacqueline Turner,
Man Corn: Cannibalism and
Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah
Press, 1999); Steven LeBlanc,
Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest
(Salt

Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999); and Jonathan Haas and Winifred
Creamer,
Stress and Warfare Among the Kayenta Anasazi of the Thirteenth Century
a.d.
(Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1993).

Monographs or scholarly books on specific problems or peoples in the South
west include Paul Minnis,
Social Adaptation to Food Stress: A Prehistoric Southwest
ern Example
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); W. H. Wills,
Early
Prehistoric Agriculture in the American Southwest
(Santa Fe: School of American Re
search, 1988); R. Gwinn Vivian,
The Chacoan Prehistory of the San Juan Basin
(San
Diego: Academic Press, 1990); Lynne Sebastian,
The Chaco Anasazi: Sociopolitical
Evolution and the Prehistoric Southwest
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992); and Charles Redman,
People of the Tonto Rim: Archaeological Discovery in
Prehistoric Arizona
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993). Eric
Force, R. Gwinn Vivian, Thomas Windes, and Jeffrey Dean reevaluated the incised arroyo channels that lowered Chaco Canyon's water table in their monograph
Relation of "Bonito" Paleo-channel and Base-level Variations to Anasazi Occupation,
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
(Tuscon: Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona,
2002). Everything that you might want to know about
Packrat Middens
is described
in the book with that title by Julio Betancourt, Thomas Van Devender, and Paul
Martin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990).

The Southwest has also been well served by edited multiauthored volumes col
lecting chapters by numerous scholars. Among them are David Grant Nobel, ed.,
New Light on Chaco Canyon
(Santa Fe: School of American Research, 1984); George
Gumerman, ed.,
The Anasazi in a Changing Environment
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Patricia Crown and W. James Judge, eds.,
Chaco and Ho-
hokam: Prehistoric Regional Systems in the American Southwest
(Santa Fe: School of American Research, 1991); David Doyel, ed.,
Anasazi Regional Organization and the
Chaco System
(Albuquerque: Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, 1992); Michael
Adler, ed.,
The Prehistoric Pueblo World
a.d.
1150-1350
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996); Jill Neitzel, ed.,
Great Towns and Regional Polities in the Prehis
toric American Southwest and Southeast
(Dragoon, Ariz.: Amerind Foundation,
1999); Michelle Hegmon, ed.,
The Archaeology of Regional Interaction: Religion, Warfare, and Exchange Across the American Southwest and Beyond
(Boulder: Uni
versity Press of Colorado, 2000); and Michael Diehl and Steven LeBlanc,
Early Pit-
house Villages of the Mimbres Valley and Beyond
(Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody
Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 2001).

The bibliographies of the books that I have cited will provide signposts to
the literature of scholarly articles on the Southwest. A few articles particularly rele
vant to this chapter will now be mentioned separately. Papers by Julio Betancourt and his colleagues on what can be learned from historical reconstructions of the
vegetation at Chaco Canyon include Julio Betancourt and Thomas Van Deven
der, "Holocene vegetation in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico"
[Science
214:656-658

(1981)); Michael Samuels and Julio Betancourt, "Modeling the long-term effects of
fuelwood harvests on pinyon-juniper woodlands"
(Environmental Management
6:505-515 (1982)); and Julio Betancourt, Jeffrey Dean, and Herbert Hull, "Prehis
toric long-distance transport of construction beams, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico"
{American Antiquity
51:370-375 (1986)). Two papers on changes in Anasazi wood use through time are Timothy Kohler and Meredith Matthews, "Long-term Anasazi land use and forest production: a case study of Southwest Colorado"
{American An
tiquity
53:537-564 (1988)), and Thomas Windes and Dabney Ford, "The Chaco
wood project: the chronometric reappraisal of Pueblo Bonito"
(American Antiquity
61:295-310 (1996)). William Bull provides a good review of the complex origins of
arroyo cutting in his paper "Discontinuous ephemeral streams"
(Geomorphology
19:227-276 (1997)). Strontium isotopes were used to identify the local origins of
Chaco timber and maize by the authors of two papers: for timber, Nathan English,
Julio Betancourt, Jeffrey Dean, and Jay Quade, "Strontium isotopes reveal distant
sources of architectural timber in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico"
(Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, USA
98:11891-11896 (2001)); and, for maize, Larry
Benson et al., "Ancient maize from Chacoan great houses: where was it grown?"
(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA
100:13111-13115 (2003)).
R. L. Axtell et al. provide a detailed reconstruction of population size and agricul
tural potential for the Kayenta Anasazi of Long House Valley in their paper "Popu
lation growth and collapse in a multiagent model of the Kayenta Anasazi in Long
House Valley"
(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA
99:7275-7279
(2002)).

Chapter 5

Three recent books presenting different views of the Maya collapse are David Web
ster,
The Fall of the Ancient Maya
(New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002), Richardson Gill,
The Great Maya Droughts
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), and Arthur Demerest, Prudence Rice, and Don Rice, eds.,
The Terminal Classic in the Maya Lowlands
(Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2004). Webster
provides an overview of Maya society and history and interprets the collapse in
terms of a mismatch between population and resources, while Gill focuses on climate and interprets the collapse in terms of drought, and Demerest et al. emphasize
complex variation among sites and deemphasize uniform ecological interpreta
tions. Earlier, multiauthored edited volumes setting out diverse interpretations are
T. Patrick Culbert, ed.,
The Classic Maya Collapse
(Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 1973), and T. Patrick Culbert and D. S. Rice, eds.,
Precolumbian Popu
lation History in the Maya Lowlands
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1990). David Lentz, ed.,
Imperfect Balance: Landscape Transformation in the Precolumbian Americas
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) contains sev-

eral chapters relevant to the Maya, plus chapters on other relevant societies men
tioned elsewhere in this book, including Hohokam, Andean, and Mississippian
societies.

Books summarizing the rises and falls of specific cities include David Webster,
AnnCorinne Freter, and Nancy Gonlin,
Copdn: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient
Maya Kingdom
(Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 2000); Peter Harrison,
The Lords of Tikal
(New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999); Stephen Houston,
Hieroglyphs and
History at Dos Pilas
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); and M. P. Dunning,
Lords of the Hills: Ancient Maya Settlement in the Puuc Region, Yucatan, Mexico
(Madison, Wis.: Prehistory Press, 1992). For books about Maya history and society
not focusing specifically on the collapse, see especially Michael Coe,
The Maya,
6th
ed. (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999); also, Simon Martin and Nikolai
Grube,
Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens
(New York: Thames and Hudson,
2000); Robert Sharer,
The Ancient Maya
(Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press,
1994); Linda Scheie and David Freidel,
A Forest of Kings
(New York: William Mor
row, 1990); and Linda Scheie and Mary Miller,
The Blood of Kings
(New York:
Braziller, 1986).

The two classic books by John Stephens describing his rediscoveries are
Inci
dents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan
(New York: Harper, 1841)
and
Incidents of Travel in Yucatan
(New York: Harper, 1843); both have been
reprinted by Dover Publications. Victor Wolfgang von Hagen,
Maya Explorer
(Nor
man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1948) combines a biography of John Stephens
with an account of his discoveries.

Numerous papers and books by B. L. Turner II discuss aspects of Maya agri
cultural intensification and population. They include B. L. Turner II, "Prehis
toric intensive agriculture in the Mayan lowlands"
(Science
185:118-124 (1974));
B. L. Turner II and Peter Harrison, "Prehistoric raised-field agriculture in the Maya lowlands"
(Science
213:399-405 (1981)); B. L. Turner II and Peter Harrison,
Pull-
trouser Swamp: Ancient Maya Habitat, Agriculture, and Settlement in Northern Be
lize
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983); Thomas Whitmore and B. L. Turner II, "Landscapes of cultivation in Mesoamerica on the eve of the conquest"
(Annals
of the Association of American Geographers
82:402-425 (1992)); and B. L. Turner II
and K. W Butzer "The Columbian encounter and land-use change"
(Environment
43:16-20 and 37-44 (1992)).

Recent articles describing in detail the studies of lake cores that provide evi
dence for links between droughts and Maya collapses include Mark Brenner et al.,
"Paleolimnology of the Maya lowlands: long-term perspectives on interactions
among climate, environment, and humans"
(Ancient Mesoamerica
13:141-157 (2002)) (see also other articles on pp. 79-170 and 265-345 of the same volume);
David Hodell et al., "Solar forcing of drought frequency in the Maya lowlands"
(Sci
ence
292:1367-1370 (2001)); Jason Curtis et al., "Climate variability of the Yucatan
Peninsula (Mexico) during the past 3500 years, and implications for Maya cultural