ANT 312 Collapse

Practice Midterm

 

This is an optional practice midterm—it will not be collected or graded, and the answers will be available on the website as of the afternoon of October 1.

 

Definitions:  Please choose 2 of the following 4 definitions, define the term, and say why it is important to studying archaeological collapse.

 

1)      Rongorongo script

The writing system invented on Easter Island, probably after the Europeans arrived, that has not yet been translated.  It is important to collapse because it shows both the complexity of Easter Island society around European contact, and the thoroughness of the Easter Island collapse at contact—all readers of the language died or were kidnapped, which is why there is so little information on it.

 

2)      Gutians

The group of transitional nomads that ruled in Mesopotamia following the Sargonid (or Akkadian) empire.  Traditionally, the Mesopotamians blamed the collapse on either the Gutians (Invasion Theory) or impiety on the part of emperors (Mystical Factor Theory), rather than the fact that Sargonid expansion was not sustainable.  Important both for this reason, and because it shows the importance of transitional nomads in the Mesopotamian political cycle.

 

3)      Classic Maya

Mayan cultures dating to about 250-800 AD that typically include use of Long Count dates, semi-divine rulers, blood sacrifice, art styles, pottery types, and specific types of ancestor worship used by the rulers.  It is important to collapses because the Terminal Classic Mayan collapse represented the collapse of the Classic Mayan culture and population in the Mesoamerican Lowlands, not of the Mayan people, who largely moved to the northern Yucatan and began developing new traditions.

 

4)      Mystical factor theory of collapse

The idea that a collapse occurred due to supernatural or mystical factors, such as punishment by god for a specific sin, or for general decadence.  It is important to collapse because it is one of the explanations for collapse most favored by the historians belonging to a group that is collapsing (or their close enemies or neighbors).  Generally there are more accurate, but less poetic, explanations for the situation.

 

Essay:  Please choose 1 of the following 2 essay topics and write a complete and well-organized essay fully answering the question.

 

5)      Why are ecocide explanations presently popular for explaining collapses?

 

In outline form:

  1. There are several reasons why these explanations are fashionable. 
  2. Firstly, collapses always tend to be used as cautionary tales for modern societies
    1. Ecological issues are of great concern to modern society, and so we now look to see if ecocides happened in the past
    2. Ecocide, in particular, is an important contemporary issue
  3. That said, one of the other reasons is that more evidence for ecocides is now surfacing
    1. Better methods in scientific method and environmental reconstruction allows us to see ecocides that were previously missed
    2. More archaeological interest in the life of everyone in a society allows us to see these ecocides better, too
    3. Another reason is that we’re now looking for this explanation
  4. Which goes back to B.

 

6)      Discuss the differences between Tragedy of the Commons and the Invisible Hand as economic models for regulation.  How do they relate to collapse? 

 

Tragedy of the Commons and the Invisible Hand are two ways of looking at economic issues—they relate to collapse in that either or (rarely) both may be used to explain economic factors in a collapse, or an entire collapse, if it is felt to be due completely to economic factors.

  1. Tragedy of the Commons is when the benefit to an individual of a course of action outweighs the potential cost of the action to society as a whole.  As a result, people as individuals behave rationally, but can cause ruin to a resource base or economic system for the group as a whole (which includes them). 

a.     Classic examples are resource bases that appear very large or unlimited, that are unregulated (or not easily regulated) and that are owned by a large group of people (common property). 

  1. The Invisible Hand is the idea that people are rational actors and therefore self-regulating—when a person acts for their own good, they also act for the good of their community. 

a.     When a resource gets rarer, the price goes up, so fewer people buy it, reducing demand, causing fewer people to supply that resource, resulting in increasing conservation. 

b.    The Invisible Hand metaphor tends to work in open markets when the cost to the individual of a course of action is about the same as the cost to the group of that course of action.

  1. So, which metaphor is appropriate to a given collapse situation depends upon the individual circumstance, and the incentives for individual action.