Environmental Disaster and the Archaeology of Human Response

This cross-cultural study of the response by human groups to major environmental disruption brings together archaeological experts on Mediterranean Europe, Asia, Eurasia, Peru, Mexico, and the US desert Southwest. Using the school of geographical analysis known as Hazard Research to identify the key attributes of natural disasters and the human social systems that respond to them, researchers consider environmental variables such as the magnitude, speed, and extent of the disaster as well as social variables such as population density, wealth distribution, and political complexity to analyse and assess the damage potential of various types of natural disasters. Such analyses can be useful in generating hypotheses about human response to disaster and in evaluating catastrophic models of socio-political collapse. The research in this book tends to show that social collapse is an unusual outcome of environmental disaster. The authors hope to identify general patterns of human response to such disasters, and the chapters cover major themes such as timing and human agency.