Category: Societal Change

This is part three of a multi-part series that highlights archaeological research into how and why societies dramatically change, and what that tells us about societies both past and present. This part is a bit longer that previous entries, since it lays the theoretical foundation necessary to interpret the data moving forward.

Social and Ecological Factors of Societies

As mentioned previously, certain anthropological and ecological frameworks allow us to focus on how humans (and the societies they construct) respond to issues like climate change. Those responses are complex but fundamentally social and ecological in nature, which can be challenging to disentangle. Fortunately, with the right theoretical perspectives, we can untangle how and why social and environmental characteristics affect the resilience of societies. This results in a deeper understanding of what causes dramatic societal change than just focusing on proximate stressors like a drought—the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Three characteristics in particular are thought to structure the course of societal change in various anthropological theories—environmental diversity, social connectivity, and sociopolitical organization (e.g., Adams 1974, Crumley 1995). These factors are also central to a body of theory in ecology and the study of complex adaptive systems more broadly: Resilience Theory.

Resilience Theory focuses on the interaction between these key social-ecological properties and how they shape resilience or vulnerability to stressors in a society, ecosystem, or other complex adaptive system.

Resilience Theory

This theory originated in ecology as a means to understand how the structure and function of ecosystems influence change within those systems. Since its inception in the 1970s, it has shifted from its original focus on ecosystems to now encompass social-ecological systems as a whole—because complex systems (including societies) behave in fundamentally similar ways, and societies are deeply interconnected with their environments.

• Origins in Ecology during the 1970s
• Explains how complex adaptive systems change over time
• Shifts the focus from how individual stressors force changes in systems to the underlying characteristics affecting adaptability

It now provides a broader framework for understanding how all sorts of complex adaptive systems persist and change over time, and aligns well with an anthropological understanding of societal change. This shift of focus from individual stressors to the underlying state of societies undergoing change has led Resilience Theory to contribute to a growing literature on the dynamics of societal change in anthropology and related fields.

Anthropological Theories of Change

Equipped with this framework, more recent anthropological research has sought to explain not just which stressors may have precipitated societal change, but how exactly various social, political, and ecological characteristics of a society (like those outlined above) influence change. That’s because it is one thing to 1) look at societal changes, then 2) look at potential stressors that occurred around the same time as them, and then 3) assume a causal relationship. An example of this type of logic is: “There was climate change around the time of societal change, and climate change is intractable—therefore, climate change caused societal change.”

On the contrary, there are numerous historic and ethnographic examples where the onset of stressors actually prompted adaptive responses and resulted in societies flourishing. Several such cases were highlighted by Georgina Endfield in her work on colonial Mexico, where a combination of rich archival material and climate change at various timescales provided a rich case for analysis. She drew on these historical examples to explore how societies adaptively responded to stressors and avoided what earlier scholars perceived as a collapse (Endfield 2012).

One of these historical cases comes from the 1785-1786 “year of hunger” that followed extensive and consecutive droughts (Méndez and Magaña 2010). Despite the severity of this famine, it did not result in collapse. On the contrary, evidence suggests that many people responded with cooperative action within and across communities to adapt their way of life to the significant challenges (Endfield 2012).

Therefore, if one is to understand the causal mechanisms driving change, then it is more useful to explore factors related to resilience that underlie all societies and assess these characteristics leading up to societal change. A marriage of Resilience and anthropological theories provides a framework to do that.

What are these social, political, and ecological characteristics? How do they influence change on a societal scale?

Why would environmental diversity affect societal resilience?

The diversity of the environment a society occupies affects access to key ecosystem services, such as arable land, pasture, water, and other things required for subsistence of one form or another. By examining environmental variation, one gains insight into community subsistence strategies, degrees of diversity and self-sufficiency, and thus how vulnerable they are to disruptions. Theoretically, the richer and more varied a community’s local environment, the more resilient that community is to stressors. For example, diverse local environments should be associated with self-sufficiency and the ability to withstand occasional crop failures. After all, it’s generally not a good idea to keep all of one’s eggs in the same basket! It’s important to spread the risk around.

Why would social connectivity affect societal resilience?

The social connectivity of a society consists of the interrelations within and between communities—whether they are more or less intertwined with each other. The effect on resilience is, admittedly, less straightforward in this case. Theoretically, the more connected a community is with its neighbors, the more vulnerable it is to non-local stressors. For example, tight connections between communities could lead to interdependence and increased exposure to cascade effects from disturbances elsewhere in the network. Think along the lines of the domino effect in the financial system during the leadup to the Great Recession in 2008. Conversely though, social connectivity can also create a safety net where communities can tap into aid from others during periods of strain. In both cases, the resilience of a community is directly affected by its social connectivity!

Why would sociopolitical organization affect societal resilience?

Put another way, sociopolitical organization is the structure of decision-making power in a society. Are decisions made by leaders at the top of a power structure, far removed from the “conditions on the ground”? Or, are decisions made by those closest to the issues facing them? Maybe something in between? These factors affect how capable communities are to respond to their local needs as well as any external demands. Theoretically, the more hierarchical the organization, the more vulnerable a community would have been to most stressors due to its rigidity. For example, it’s expected that communities with more horizontally arranged decision-making power are associated with greater self-determination and therefore the ability to respond in a more agile way to disruptions in their local conditions. As with social connectivity though, there are exceptions. For example, certain stressors may require a community to mobilize more quickly than can be done in cases where consensus is required. Centralized decision-making power at the top of a hierarchy can respond more rapidly in such cases.

Taken together, how can these factors inform us of the resilience or vulnerability of a society, and thus how it can respond to stressors?

Empirical research has been done where 1) these properties were measured, 2) interactions between them observed, and 3) the hypothetical outcomes tested (based on the theoretical framework laid out above). The results, which will be detailed in a later part of this series, clearly indicate that each property (and specific combinations of them) are significantly related to documented changes within a variety of communities in the past—societal collapses in some cases, persistence in others.

What makes a society resilient?

We live in a globalized society that faces increasingly intense global challenges to social, economic, and political stability. Valid concerns about our vulnerability to these stressors permeate our culture. Archaeological and historical examples show us that societies can respond to such challenges in different ways, whether by building flexible institutions, adaptively transforming, or by doubling-down on preexisting strategies and structures. In every case, the outcome is not predetermined as these responses to crises are fundamentally social. Even the effects of dramatic climate change on any society are socially mediated—there are examples of societies flourishing in response to such challenges as well as those that have resulted in a so-called collapse.

If we are to address modern anxieties and overcome the enormous challenges facing us, we need to hone comprehensive models for societal resilience to identify the salient social-ecological dynamics of past societies that facilitate adaptations to a crisis. In this way, we can reveal strategies to bolster the resilience of our societies before it is too late.

With this theoretical framework in place, the next part of this series will address why the Ancient Near East (in general) and the Jezreel Valley (in particular) is a useful case for studying dramatic societal changes.

---

Have a question or comment on anything mentioned here? Leave a comment and let’s carry on the discussion!

How do archaeologists study societal changes in general? What about so-called collapses in particular?

This is part two of a multi-part series that will highlight archaeological research into how and why societies dramatically change, and what that tells us about societies both past and present.

What causes societies to dramatically change?

Human societies grow and change over time due to all sorts of factors ranging from the highest-level policies of modern governing systems to the smallest decisions made by individuals in farming villages during the Neolithic. The direct and indirect effects each of these factors has on the shape of sociocultural evolution is not always clear though. This is even the case with modern societies equipped with advanced measurement tools, scientific theories, etc.

Archaeology is a discipline that is well-positioned to illuminate the different courses of change across societies due to its focus on long periods of time (i.e., the longue durée). With such a perspective of the past, we can observe extensive stretches of growth, transformation, disintegration, and so on.

Research on Early Social Complexity

Much archaeological research in the 20^th century focused on the fluorescence and growth of complex societies. Little attention was paid to what happens after states and other complex societies form, resulting in minimal research on transformation and discontinuity. However, research on such transformations has shifted in recent decades.

“Collapse”

Dramatic societal changes—especially those that result in discontinuity—are now of particular interest to both researchers and the public. This recent shift has occurred in light of global challenges that currently threaten to upend institutions and ways of life that have persisted for centuries or more.

The specter of such dramatic changes to past societies, in particular, captures the imagination of many people today that are anxious about global climate change, environmental degradation, economic disenfranchisement, and more. In so doing, many liken our modern globalized society to those of the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean, the Maya, or the Roman Empire—and the perceived collapse of those complex societies.

Modern Anxieties about Societal Change

This modern anxiety and the notion of grand societal collapses hugely motivate both the scholarly and popular interest in this subject today. Despite this global concern about institutional or economic collapse, and the efforts of many researchers to explore the causes underlying such dramatic changes, both the public and policymakers are chiefly confronted by popular narratives that present oversimplified or downright fallacious causal mechanisms for change, such as Jared Diamond’s popular volume on collapse.

Gaps in Archaeological Approaches

In this same vein, much of the archaeological research on this subject has continually focused on specific stressors (e.g., drought, invasion, and economic disruptions) as the direct or sole causes for dramatic changes in past societies (e.g., Cline 2015, Hoggarth et al. 2017). Such explanations fail to explain why a drought would necessarily result in dramatic changes, especially in light of cases where societies have persisted or even flourished when faced with such stressors. They don’t take into account the resilience or vulnerability of a society to such stressors.

Examples of commonly-referenced stressors:

• Depletion or cessation of a vital resource
• The establishment of a new resource base
• The occurrence of some insurmountable catastrophe
• Intruders or invaders
• Economic factors
• A combination of several stressors

If anthropologists want to understand the mechanisms that truly influence dramatic changes in past and present societies, then this frequent focus on stressors as the main or most important causes of dramatic change is problematic.

The Last Straw

That is not to say that stressors are unimportant when it comes to processes of societal change, only that they are at most proximate causes. These proximate causes mirror the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back” and only raises the question: Why was that society unable to overcome that stressor—or metaphorically—Why was the camel unable to withstand that single straw?

This approach can also be problematic since it is impossible for any society to anticipate or avoid all stressors. In the end, an emphasis on stressors typically occurs at the expense of grasping the underlying factors that structure and give context to events and the societal responses to them.

Is there more to it?

Numerous social, political, and economic traits of a society emerge from collective human behaviors. These traits, in turn, mediate societal responses to stressors—after all, humans are not passive observers, nor are their cultures monolithic. This complexity does pose a significant theoretical challenge to understanding the effects of various societal traits. However, research into how and why societies vary and change must delve into these deeper causes, rather than be satisfied by proximate causes.

Fortunately, anthropological and ecological perspectives allow us to focus on how humans (and the societies they construct) perceive and react to factors like climate change in fundamentally social ways. Instead of: What went wrong? The question becomes: How and why do underlying social and ecological traits affect societal resilience?

To that end, the next post in this series will examine how and why such environmental and social characteristics affect the resilience of societies, with the ultimate goal being to reveal deeper causes of dramatic societal change.

---

Have a question or comment on anything mentioned here? Leave a comment and let’s carry on the discussion!

This is an overview of a multi-part series that will highlight archaeological research into how and why societies dramatically change, and what that tells us about societies both past and present.

Anxiety about Societal Collapse

Dramatic societal changes in past societies capture the imagination of many people, particularly with issues such as “failed” states, pandemics, global financial crises, and climate change eroding ideas of unstoppable technological progress in our own society. One only needs to look at the many headlines in the last several years, even before the Covid-19 Pandemic, to see this fixation.

Archaeology is a discipline that is well-positioned to evaluate the different courses of change across societies thanks to its focus on long periods of time. Many archaeologists, historians, and other researchers have therefore tried to find out what influences dramatic changes in past societies. This work is often done in the hope that we might learn how to avoid the worst outcomes in the future (Kintigh et al 2014). This post marks the beginning of a series I’m writing that provides a generalized view of archaeological research on societal changes (e.g., collapse) and how it can inform resiliency efforts today!

Traditional Approaches to Societal Collapse in Archaeology

Archaeological research on this subject usually identifies specific stressors (e.g., drought, invasion, economic disruptions) as the cause for dramatic changes (e.g., Cline 2015, Yoffee 2005). However, research shouldn’t simply focus on these proximate causes in order to understand the dynamics of societal change. Too much of a concern with the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back does little to answer bigger anthropological questions about how and why societies change (Kintigh, et al. 2014; Tainter 1988, 2015). After all, stressors of all sorts constantly barrage societies at every level—from individuals up to continent-spanning governments. Thus, research into how and why societies vary and change should focus on deeper causes of change, such as: Why couldn’t the proverbial camel withstand the addition of even the tiniest weight on its back?

Stressors and other explanations often cited as causing societal collapse:

• Depletion of a vital resource
• Establishment of a new resource base
• Occurrence of some insurmountable catastrophe
• Insufficient response to circumstances
• Other complex societies; intruders
• Class conflict, societal contradictions, elite mismanagement or misbehavior, other social dysfunction
• Mystical factors
• Chance concatenation of events; a domino effect or “perfect storm”

Resilience Theory as a Tool for Improved Understanding

Thankfully, there are other research tools that let archaeologists dig deeper into the causes of change. Resilience Theory is one such tool, with its focus on how the interactions between the social and environmental characteristics of societies (e.g., social connectivity) make them resilient or vulnerable to stressors (Biggs et al 2012, Levin 1999, Hegmon et al 2008, Tainter & Crumley 2007). By shifting the focus from individual stressors to the underlying structure of societies undergoing change, this body of theory has contributed to a growing literature on the dynamics of societal change that this series will explore (e.g., Butzer 2012; Chase et al 2014; Chase & Scarborough 2014; Endfield 2012; Hegmon et al 2008; McAnany & Yoffee 2009; Nelson et al 2011, 2014; Petrie 2019, Redman 2005; Schwartz 2006; Sedig 2015).

The Course of this Series

I will present research on a well-documented case of extensive settlement abandonment in the Early Bronze Age to show how Resilience Theory can effectively explain why some societies persist while others collapse. The explanations proposed for this episode of collapse and change have, so far, focused on stressors (i.e., regional economic shifts, climate change). Over the course of this series, I hope to answer the question: Why weren’t these communities able to overcome such challenges, especially in what was a rich environment at the time?

The roadmap for this series (shown below) will start with a general look at how archaeologists have approached societal changes before taking the reader through a primer on Resilience Theory, the specifics of the region and time being studied, the analytic methods applied to it, as well as the outcomes of analysis and the resulting implications for understanding how and why these societies changed so dramatically.

Please refer to this list for updated links as the series progresses:

1. This overview
2. How do we as archaeologists go about studying societal changes in general, and so-called societal collapses in particular?
3. How can Resilience Theory help us better understand societal changes in the past and present?
4. A look at dramatic societal changes in the southern Levant during the Early Bronze Age
5. How exactly can archaeologists use Resilience Theory to analyze societal changes?
6. Why did some societies persist and some collapse in the southern Levant during the Early Bronze Age?

There is far more to each of these topics than I will cover in this initial series, which is only intended as an overview of the subject. But stay tuned after this series because I plan to dive deeper into each topic for those that are interested in the nitty gritty!

---

Have a question or comment on anything mentioned here? Leave a comment and let’s carry on the discussion!