Collapse

by Diamond, Jared

  Many good books accessible to the general reader describe the settlement of Polynesia or the Pacific as a whole. They include Patrick Kirch, On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands Before European Contact (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), The Lapita Peoples: Ancestors of the Oceanic World (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), and The Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Peter Bellwood, The Polynesians: Prehistory of an Island People, revised edition (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987); and Geoffrey Irwin, The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). David Lewis, We, the Navigators (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1972) is a unique account of traditional Pacific navigational techniques, by a modern sailor who studied those techniques by embarking on long voyages with surviving traditional navigators. Patrick Kirch and Terry Hunt, eds., Historical Ecology in the Pacific Islands: Prehistoric Environmental and Landscape Change (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997) consists of papers about human environmental impacts on Pacific Islands other than Easter.

  Two books by Thor Heyerdahl that inspired my interest and that of many others in Easter Island are The Kon-Tiki Expedition (London: Allen & Unwin, 1950) and Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958). A rather different interpretation emerges from the excavations of the archaeologists whom Heyerdahl brought to Easter Island, as described in Thor Heyerdahl and E. Ferdon, Jr., eds., Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the East Pacific, vol. 1: The Archaeology of Easter Island (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961). Steven Fischer, Glyph Breaker (New York: Copernicus, 1997) and Rongorongo: The Easter Island Script (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) describe Fischer’s efforts at deciphering the Rongorongo text. Andrew Sharp, ed., The Journal of Jacob Roggeveen (London: Oxford University Press, 1970) reprints on pp. 89-106 the first European eyewitness description of Easter Island.

  An archaeological mapping of Easter Island is summarized in Claudio Cristino, Patricia Vargas, and R. Izaurieta, Atlas Arqueológico de Isla de Pascua (Santiago: University of Chile, 1981). Detailed articles about Easter Island are published regularly in the Rapa Nui Journal by the Easter Island Foundation, which also publishes occasional conferences about the island. Important collections of papers are Claudio Cristino, Patricia Vargas et al., eds., First International Congress, Easter Island and East Polynesia, vol. 1 Archaeology (Santiago: University of Chile, 1988); Patricia Vargas Casanova, ed., Easter Island and East Polynesia Prehistory (Santiago: University of Chile, 1998); and Christopher Stevenson and William Ayres, eds., Easter Island Archaeology: Research on Early Rapanui Culture (Los Osos, Calif.: Easter Island Foundation, 2000). A summary of the history of cultural contacts is to be found in Claudio Cristino et al., Isla de Pascua: Procesos, Alcances y Efectos de la Aculturación (Easter Island: University of Chile, 1984).

  David Steadman reports his identification of bird bones and other remains excavated at Anakena Beach in three papers: “Extinctions of birds in Eastern Polynesia: a review of the record, and comparisons with other Pacific Island groups” (Journal of Archaeological Science 16:177-205 (1989)), and “Stratigraphy, chronology, and cultural context of an early faunal assemblage from Easter Island” (Asian Perspectives 33:79-96 (1994)), both with Patricia Vargas and Claudio Cristino; and “Prehistoric extinctions of Pacific Island birds: biodiversity meets zooarchaeology” (Science 267:1123-1131 (1995)). William Ayres, “Easter Island subsistence” (Journal de la Société des Océanistes 80:103-124 (1985)) provides further archaeological evidence of foods consumed. For solution of the mystery of the Easter Island palm and other insights from pollen in sediment cores, see J. R. Flenley and Sarah King, “Late Quaternary pollen records from Easter Island” (Nature 307:47-50 (1984)), J. Dransfield et al., “A recently extinct palm from Easter Island” (Nature 312:750-752 (1984)), and J. R. Flenley et al., “The Late Quaternary vegetational and climatic history of Easter Island” (Journal of Quaternary Science 6:85-115 (1991)). Catherine Orliac’s identifications are reported in a paper in the above-cited edited volume by Stevenson and Ayres, and in “Données nouvelles sur la composition de la flore de l’Île de Pâques” (Journal de la Société des Océanistes 2:23-31 (1998)). Among the papers resulting from the archaeological surveys by Claudio Cristino and his colleagues are Christopher Stevenson and Claudio Cristino, “Residential settlement history of the Rapa Nui coastal plain (Journal of New World Archaeology 7:29-38 (1986)); Daris Swindler, Andrea Drusini, and Claudio Cristino, “Variation and frequency of three-rooted first permanent molars in precontact Easter Islanders: anthropological significance (Journal of the Polynesian Society 106:175-183 (1997)); and Claudio Cristino and Patricia Vargas, “Ahu Tongariki, Easter Island: chronological and sociopolitical significance” (Rapa Nui Journal 13:67-69 (1999)).

  Christopher Stevenson’s papers on intensive agriculture and lithic mulches include Archaeological Investigations on Easter Island; Maunga Tari: an Upland Agriculture Complex (Los Osos, Calif.: Easter Island Foundation, 1995), (with Joan Wozniak and Sonia Haoa) “Prehistoric agriculture production on Easter Island (Rapa Nui), Chile” (Antiquity 73:801-812 ( 1999)), and (with Thegn Ladefoged and Sonia Haoa) “Productive strategies in an uncertain environment: prehistoric agriculture on Easter Island” (Rapa Nui Journal 16:17-22 (2002)). Christopher Stevenson, “Territorial divisions on Easter Island in the 16th century: evidence from the distribution of ceremonial architecture,” pp. 213-229 in T. Ladefoged and M. Graves, eds., Pacific Landscapes (Los Osos, Calif.: Easter Island Foundation, 2002) reconstructs the boundaries of Easter’s 11 traditional clans.

  Dale Lightfoot, “Morphology and ecology of lithic-mulch agriculture” (Geographical Review 84:172-185 (1994)) and Carleton White et al., “Water conservation through an Anasazi gardening technique” (New Mexico Journal of Science 38:251-278 (1998)) provide evidence for the function of lithic mulches elsewhere in the world. Andreas Mieth and Hans-Rudolf Bork “Diminution and degradation of environmental resources by prehistoric land use on Poike Peninsula, Easter Island (Rapa Nui)” (Rapa Nui Journal 17:34-41 (2003)) discuss deforestation and erosion on the Poike Peninsula. Karsten Haase et al., “The petrogenetic evolution of lavas from Easter Island and neighboring seamounts, near-ridge hotspot volcanoes in the S.E. Pacific” (Journal of Petrology 38:785-813 (1997)) analyze the dates and chemical compositions of Easter’s volcanoes. Erika Hagelberg et al., “DNA from ancient Easter Islanders” (Nature 369:25-26 (1994)) analyze DNA extracted from 12 Easter Island skeletons. James Brander and M. Scott Taylor, “The simple economics of Easter Island: a Ricardo-Malthus model of renewable resource use” (American Economic Review 38: 119-138 (1998)) give an economist’s view of overexploitation on Easter.

  Chapter 3

  The settlement of Southeast Polynesia is covered in the sources for the settlement of Polynesia as a whole that I provided under the Further Readings for Chapter 2. The Pitcairn Islands: Biogeography, Ecology, and Prehistory (London: Academic Press, 1995), edited by Tim Benton and Tom Spencer, is the product of a 1991-92 expedition to Pitcairn, Henderson, and the coral atolls Oeno and Ducie. The volume consists of 27 chapters on the islands’ geology, vegetation, birds (including Henderson’s extinct birds), fishes, terrestrial and marine invertebrates, and human impacts.

  Most of our information about the Polynesian settlement and abandonment of Pitcairn and Henderson comes from the studies of Marshall Weisler and various colleagues. Weisler provides an overall account of his research in a chapter, “Henderson Island prehistory: colonization and extinction on a remote Polynesian island,” on pp. 377-404 of the above-cited volume by Benton and Spencer. Two other overview papers by Weisler are “The settlement of marginal Polynesia: new evidence from Henderson Island” (Journal of Field Archaeology 21:83-102 (1994)) and “An archaeological survey of Mangareva: implications for regional settlement models and interaction studies” (Man and Culture and Oceania 12:61-85 (1996)).
Four papers by Weisler explain how chemical analysis of basalt adzes can identify on what island the basalt was quarried, and thus can help trace out trade routes: “Provenance studies of Polynesian basalt adzes material: a review and suggestions for improving regional databases” (Asian Perspectives 32:61-83 (1993)); “Basalt pb isotope analysis and the prehistoric settlement of Polynesia,” coauthored with Jon D. Whitehead (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 92:1881-1885 (1995)); “Interisland and interarchipelago transfer of stone tools in prehistoric Polynesia,” coauthored with Patrick V. Kirch (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 93:1381-1385 (1996)); and “Hard evidence for prehistoric interaction in Polynesia” (Current Anthropology 39:521-532 (1998)). Three papers describe the East and Southeast Polynesia trade network: Marshall Weisler and R. C. Green, “Holistic approaches to interaction studies: a Polynesian example,” pp. 413-453 in Martin Jones and Peter Sheppard, eds., Australasian Connections and New Directions (Auckland, N.Z.: Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, 2001); R. C. Green and Marshall Weisler, “The Mangarevan sequence and dating of the geographic expansion into Southeast Polynesia” (Asian Perspectives 41:213-241 (2002)); and Marshall Weisler, “Centrality and the collapse of long-distance voyaging in East Polynesia,” pp. 257-273 in Michael D. Glascock, ed., Geochemical Evidence for Long-Distance Exchange (London: Bergin and Garvey, 2002). Three papers on Henderson Island crops and skeletons are Jon G. Hather and Marshall Weisler, “Prehistoric giant swamp taro (Cyrtosperma chamissonis) from Henderson Island, Southeast Polynesia” (Pacific Science 54:149-156 (2000)); Sara Collins and Marshall Weisler, “Human dental and skeletal remains from Henderson Island, Southeast Polynesia” (People and Culture in Oceania 16:67-85 (2000)); and Vincent Stefan, Sara Collins, and Marshall Weisler, “Henderson Island crania and their implication for southeastern Polynesian prehistory” (Journal of the Polynesian Society 111:371-383 (2002)).

  No one interested in Pitcairn and Henderson, and no one who loves a great story, should miss the novel Pitcairn’s Island by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall (Boston: Little, Brown, 1934)—a realistically re-created account of the lives and mutual murders of the H.M.S. Bounty mutineers and their Polynesian companions on Pitcairn Island, after they had seized the Bounty and cast Captain Bligh and his supporters adrift. Caroline Alexander, The Bounty (New York: Viking, 2003) offers the most thorough effort to understand what really did happen.

  Chapter 4

  The prehistory of the U.S. Southwest is well served by books written for the general public and well illustrated, often in color. Those books include Robert Lister and Florence Lister, Chaco Canyon (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981); Stephen Lekson, Great Pueblo Architecture of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986); William Ferguson and Arthur Rohn, Anasazi Ruins of the Southwest in Color (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987); Linda Cordell, Ancient Pueblo Peoples (Montreal: St. Remy Press, 1994); Stephen Plog, Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997); Linda Cordell, Archaeology of the Southwest, 2nd ed. (San Diego: Academic Press, 1997); and David Stuart, Anasazi America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000).

  Not to be missed are three illustrated books on the glorious painted pottery of the Mimbres people: J. J. Brody, Mimbres Painted Pottery (Santa Fe: School of American Research, 1997); Steven LeBlanc, The Mimbres People: Ancient Pueblo Painters of the American Southwest (London: Thames and Hudson, 1983); and Tony Berlant, Steven LeBlanc, Catherine Scott, and J. J. Brody, Mimbres Pottery: Ancient Art of the American Southwest (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1983).

  Three detailed accounts of warfare and violence among the Anasazi and their neighbors are Christy Turner II and Jacqueline Turner, Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999); Steven LeBlanc, Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999); and Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer, Stress and Warfare Among the Kayenta Anasazi of the Thirteenth Century A.D. (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1993).

  Monographs or scholarly books on specific problems or peoples in the Southwest include Paul Minnis, Social Adaptation to Food Stress: A Prehistoric Southwestern Example (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); W. H. Wills, Early Prehistoric Agriculture in the American Southwest (Santa Fe: School of American Research, 1988); R. Gwinn Vivian, The Chacoan Prehistory of the San Juan Basin (San Diego: Academic Press, 1990); Lynne Sebastian, The Chaco Anasazi: Sociopolitical Evolution and the Prehistoric Southwest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Charles Redman, People of the Tonto Rim: Archaeological Discovery in Prehistoric Arizona (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993). Eric Force, R. Gwinn Vivian, Thomas Windes, and Jeffrey Dean reevaluated the incised arroyo channels that lowered Chaco Canyon’s water table in their monograph Relation of “Bonito” Paleo-channel and Base-level Variations to Anasazi Occupation, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (Tuscon: Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, 2002). Everything that you might want to know about Packrat Middens is described in the book with that title by Julio Betancourt, Thomas Van Devender, and Paul Martin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990).

  The Southwest has also been well served by edited multiauthored volumes collecting chapters by numerous scholars. Among them are David Grant Nobel, ed., New Light on Chaco Canyon (Santa Fe: School of American Research, 1984); George Gumerman, ed., The Anasazi in a Changing Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Patricia Crown and W. James Judge, eds., Chaco and Hohokam: Prehistoric Regional Systems in the American Southwest (Santa Fe: School of American Research, 1991); David Doyel, ed., Anasazi Regional Organization and the Chaco System (Albuquerque: Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, 1992); Michael Adler, ed., The Prehistoric Pueblo World A.D. 1150-1350 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996); Jill Neitzel, ed., Great Towns and Regional Polities in the Prehistoric American Southwest and Southeast (Dragoon, Ariz.: Amerind Foundation, 1999); Michelle Hegmon, ed., The Archaeology of Regional Interaction: Religion, Warfare, and Exchange Across the American Southwest and Beyond (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000); and Michael Diehl and Steven LeBlanc, Early Pit-house Villages of the Mimbres Valley and Beyond (Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 2001).

  The bibliographies of the books that I have cited will provide signposts to the literature of scholarly articles on the Southwest. A few articles particularly relevant to this chapter will now be mentioned separately. Papers by Julio Betancourt and his colleagues on what can be learned from historical reconstructions of the vegetation at Chaco Canyon include Julio Betancourt and Thomas Van Devender, “Holocene vegetation in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico” (Science 214:656-658 (1981)); Michael Samuels and Julio Betancourt, “Modeling the long-term effects of fuelwood harvests on pinyon-juniper woodlands” (Environmental Management 6:505-515 (1982)); and Julio Betancourt, Jeffrey Dean, and Herbert Hull, “Prehistoric long-distance transport of construction beams, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico” (American Antiquity 51:370-375 (1986)). Two papers on changes in Anasazi wood use through time are Timothy Kohler and Meredith Matthews, “Long-term Anasazi land use and forest production: a case study of Southwest Colorado” (American Antiquity 53:537-564 (1988)), and Thomas Windes and Dabney Ford, “The Chaco wood project: the chronometric reappraisal of Pueblo Bonito” (American Antiquity 61:295-310 (1996)). William Bull provides a good review of the complex origins of arroyo cutting in his paper “Discontinuous ephemeral streams” (Geomorphology 19:227-276 (1997)). Strontium isotopes were used to identify the local origins of Chaco timber and maize by the authors of two papers: for timber, Nathan English, Julio Betancourt, Jeffrey Dean, and Jay Quade, “Strontium isotopes reveal distant sources of architectural timber in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 98:11891-11896 (2001)); and, for maize, Larry Benson e
t al., “Ancient maize from Chacoan great houses: where was it grown?” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 100:13111-13115 (2003)). R. L. Axtell et al. provide a detailed reconstruction of population size and agricultural potential for the Kayenta Anasazi of Long House Valley in their paper “Population growth and collapse in a multiagent model of the Kayenta Anasazi in Long House Valley” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 99:7275-7279 (2002)).

  Chapter 5

  Three recent books presenting different views of the Maya collapse are David Webster, The Fall of the Ancient Maya (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002), Richardson Gill, The Great Maya Droughts (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), and Arthur Demerest, Prudence Rice, and Don Rice, eds., The Terminal Classic in the Maya Lowlands (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2004). Webster provides an overview of Maya society and history and interprets the collapse in terms of a mismatch between population and resources, while Gill focuses on climate and interprets the collapse in terms of drought, and Demerest et al. emphasize complex variation among sites and deemphasize uniform ecological interpretations. Earlier, multiauthored edited volumes setting out diverse interpretations are T. Patrick Culbert, ed., The Classic Maya Collapse (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973), and T. Patrick Culbert and D. S. Rice, eds., Precolumbian Population History in the Maya Lowlands (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990). David Lentz, ed., Imperfect Balance: Landscape Transformation in the Precolumbian Americas (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) contains several chapters relevant to the Maya, plus chapters on other relevant societies mentioned elsewhere in this book, including Hohokam, Andean, and Mississippian societies.