Final Review Guide

Collapse: ANT 312

--The exam will be written from this study guide. Please be able to define the following terms and describe how they are important to studying collapses:

Collapse	Political collapse	Social collapse
State	Tragedy of the Commons	Ecocide
Catastrophe theory of collapse	Invasion theory of collapse	Mystical factor theory of collapse
Class conflict/elite stupidity theory of collapse	Insufficient response to circumstance theory of collapse	Sea Peoples
Governmental folly	Popular folly	Wooden-headedness
Reactionary folly	Consuls	Roman Senate
Tribune	Plebeian assembly	Dignitas
Auctoritas	Patron	Clientela
Amicitia	Consular families	Novus homo
Knights or Equites	The Gracchi	Marian reforms
Octavius Caesar	Augustus	Battle of Actium
Julio-Claudian dynasty	Tiberius	Caligula
Claudius	Nero	Vespasian
Flavian dynasty	Year of the Four Emperors	The Antonines
Marcus Aurelius	Commodus	Septimius Severus
Severan dynasty	Syrian princesses	3^rd Century Crisis
Hyperinflation	Currency devaluation	Aurelian
Diocletian	Constantine	Constantinople
Visigoths	Alaric	Vandals
Genseric	Odoacer	Eastern Roman empire
Western Roman empire	Ostrogothic kingdom	Systems theory
Homeostasis	Negative feedback	Subsystems
Law of Diminishing Returns	Bread and Circus example	Positive feedback
Drunkard’s Walk model of complexity	Rational irrationality	Cognitive dissonance
Pain avoidance	Loss aversion	Herding
Anchoring	Compartmentalization	Magical thinking
Availability heuristic	Representativeness heuristic	Hot-Cold empathy gap
Economic irrationality

Please think about the following topics and be able to write essays either about them, or use them as examples:

Invasions as an explanation for collapse

The 3^rd-Century Crisis in Rome

The final collapse of the Western Roman empire, and what caused it

When Rome really fell, and why

Systems analysis of collapses

The Law of Diminishing Returns hypothesis for collapse and the Ecocide hypothesis for collapse

Violence, stupidity, and folly

Folly, irrationality, and how it affects political systems

You should also be able to compare and contrast collapses we have discussed in this class: Rome, the Maya, Mesopotamia, and Easter Island.