Keynote Speaker
Hansen, Richard D. - Idaho State University
The Climate of Change and the Collapse of Complex Societies: A Case Study from the Mirador Basin, Guatemala
Investigations of the Mirador Basin of northern Guatemala have demonstrated a major Maya occupation of the region during the Middle and Late Preclassic periods. The massive architectural complexes of numerous major sites and evidence for associated logistics and resource procurement systems suggest a vibrant and precocious cultural florescence that ultimately faced a drastic demographic reduction. Major abandonments of primary structures, degeneration of associated logistics and import systems, and non- functional utilization of monumental architecture suggest a collapse. Although the causes are almost certainly not mono-causal, experimental replications suggest that the investment of labor and resources for lime procurement, stone, and mortar for the construction programs had profound negative environmental, economic, and political impacts near the close of the Late Preclassic period. The excesses and exorbitant costs contributed to societal and environmental stresses and ultimately were some of the primary factors for the long-term abandonment of the major Preclassic sites of the Basin.
Plenary Speakers
Hegmon, Michelle - University of Michigan
The Human Experience of Social Change and Continuity: The Southwest and North Atlantic in the Interesting Times circa 1300
Archaeological research has great potential to contribute to policy and decision tools for addressing challenges today and in the future, and such contributions will be enhanced by perspectives that consider the human costs of such processes. Drawing on comparative study of the US Southwest and the North Atlantic, I investigate how some societies maintain continuity in the face of major changes in the environment, broadly construed. Specific focus is on Iceland and Greenland (in the North Atlantic) and Zuni, and Salinas (in the Southwest) in the “interesting times” of the 13th and 14th centuries AD. Both regions experienced (1) new climatic regimes that resulted in generally more difficult and more variable biophysical conditions; and (2) migrations, violence, political changes, and religious developments that changed their social and demographic environments. Societies in the four cases persisted, albeit with some reorganization, with varying long term trajectories and consequences. Research is based on a new method to operationalize – in archaeological research -- multiple dimensions of human security, as were defined by the United Nations Development Programme.
Fitzhugh, William W. - Smithsonian Institution Changing Climate--Changing Paradigms: Interpreting Arctic Archaeology from Vikings to Modern Times.
The dramatic changes in global climate and its profound impacts in the Arctic necessitate re-evaluation of the role climate change has played in the history of northern cultures. Once ridiculed as the ravings of Elizabethan pedants, an open Arctic Ocean may be a seasonal reality in just a few decades. The onset of such conditions radically changed opportunities for peoples in the past, just as the imposition of ice curtains has forced northern peoples to retreat, adapt, and sometimes disappear. This address surveys how archaeologists have interpreted new discoveries in Arctic history according to the perspectives of their times. What is striking is the importance of the status quo and the cultural perspective of the observer, rather than the evidence observed. Although paleoenvironmental sciences have offered accurate reconstructions for nearly 100 years, it has taken the climate shift of the past two decades to bring the surprising dynamism of the Arctic into focus for the first time. How our new encounters with environmental change will influence our ability to reconstruct the past remains to be seen.
Joyce, Arthur A. - University of Colorado Human Impact on the Landscapes of Ancient Oaxaca, Mexico
This talk summarizes 25 years of interdisciplinary research on the long-term history of human impact on the environment along the Río Verde drainage basin of Oaxaca. Geomorphological research in the Nochixtlán Valley of the Río Verde’s upper drainage basin provides evidence for four cut-and-fill cycles from the Terminal Pleistocene to the present. The research indicates that after 2000 B.C. sedentary farmers cleared the valley of its natural vegetation increasing sediment transfers and the frequency of local cut-and- fill cycles. As early as ca. 1000 B.C. farmers modified streams by building cross-channel agricultural terraces known as lama-bordos. The erosion in the highlands altered the drainage system and led to changes in the agriculturally productive floodplain of the lower Río Verde Valley on the Pacific coast more than 100 km downriver. Sediment discharged into the Pacific Ocean also contributed to the formation of bay barriers and back barrier estuaries. The implications for human settlement and subsistence in the lowlands are considered.
Magne, Marty – Parks Canada Changing Approaches to Understanding Athapaskan Migrations
Models for the Athapaskan migrations have not explored very completely the theoretical implications of how and why the migrations occurred as process. Here I borrow from, and modify elements of, recent thinking about colonization, applying concepts to the particulars of the Athapaskan case. This yields a clearer understanding of how we need to change our frames of reference to design future investigations into the routes of the migrations and the signs of their occurrence.