Evolving Complexity And Environmental Risk In The Prehistoric Southwest

by Joseph A. Tainter

Overview

This book explores how and why prehistoric Southwestern societies changed in complexity, and offers important new perspectives on evolution of culture. It discusses the factors that made prehistoric Southwesterners vulnerable to an arid environment, and their strategies to lessen risk and stress.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780429972218
Publisher:	CRC Press
Publication date:	05/04/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	300
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Tainter, Joseph A. | Tainter, Bonnie Bagley

Table of Contents

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