Evolving Complexity and Environmental Risk in the Prehistoric Southwes

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.

List 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

About the author

Tainter, Joseph A. | Tainter, Bonnie Bagley

Summary

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

• Authors: Santa Fe Institute, Bonnie Tainter, Bonnie Bagley Tainter, Joseph Tainter, Joseph A Tainter, Joseph A. Tainter, Joseph A. Tainter Tainter
• Assisted by: Bonnie B. Tainter (Editor), Bonnie Bagley Tainter (Editor), Joseph Tainter (Editor), Joseph A. Tainter (Editor)
• Publisher: Perseus Books Uk
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 11.12.1995
• EAN: 9780201870404
• ISBN: 978-0-201-87040-4
• No. of pages: 284
• Series: Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity
• Subjects: Education and learning > Schoolbooks, general education schools; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Biology > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > General, dictionaries; Cultural Studies, Anthropology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social