Part 2:The Collapse of Complex Societies ....The Study of Collapse

The Collapse of Complex Societies

by Joseph A. Tainter

3 

The study of collapse 

I see no reason to suppose that the Roman and the Megatherium were not struck down by similar causes

 Ronald Ross (1907: 2) 

Introduction

It is not for lack of effort that collapse is still a little understood process. The research devoted in the historical and social sciences to explaining collapse is substantial, and has produced a literature which clearly reflects the significance of the topic. Among literate societies the attempt to understand the disintegration of states can be traced nearly as far as the phenomenon itself. 

The fall of the Western Roman Empire must surely be the most wrenching event of European history. It figured prominently in the writings of the late Empire itself, of the Middle Ages, and up to recent times (Mazzarino 1966). The collapses of the Chou Dynasty in China (Creel 1953, 1970; Needham 1965 ; Fairbank et al. 1973) and of the Mauryan Empire (ca. 300-100 B.C.) in India (Nehru 1959; Thapar 1966) hold similar significance for those areas. Quite often the fall of such early empires acquires for later peoples the status of a paradise lost, a golden age of good government, wise rule, harmony, and peace, when all was right with the world. This is clearly evident in the writings of, for example, Gibbon ( 1776-88) on the Antonine period of the Roman Empire, of the 'Hundred Schools' on Chou China (Creel 1970; Needham 1965; Fairbank et al. 1973), or of Nehru on Mauryan India (1959). The attempt to understand the loss of paradise is at the same time a grasping to comprehend current conditions and a philosophy of how a political society should be. Here then is another dimension to the study of collapse: it is not only a scholarly attempt to understand the past and a practical attempt to ascertain the future, but also, in many minds, a statement of current political philosophy (see, for example, Isaac [ 1971]).This last aspect will not figure highly in the present work, but does account for much of the perennial concern with collapse. 

What collapses? More on definitions 

Ancient and medieval writers saw collapse in a way that is largely congruent with the perspective of the present work, that is, as the fall of specific political entities. With the formal development of the social sciences in the last two centuries, however, a new conception has emerged: the transformation of civilizations as cultural forms. Many of the most prominent twentieth-century scholars, such as Spengler (1962), Toynbee (1962), Kroeber (1944, 1957), Caulborn (1954, 1966), and Gray (1958), and most of those who are read by popular audiences, have written in this vein. 

This school sees the end of a civilization as a transformation of the features or behaviors that characterize a cultural entity. These features are typically those that form the popular notion of 'civilization': specific styles of art and public architecture, traditions of literature and music, and philosophies of life and politics. Examples include Toynbee's 'Syriac,' or Spengler's 'Magian' (Arabian) and 'Faustian' (Western) civilizations. To such authors it is the end of these civilizations (that is, their transformation into some other civilization, defined as new traditions in art, literature, music, and philosophy) that is of concern. Each civilization may typically contain a number of individual political entities that themselves rise and fall, but the longevity of the civilization itself usually transcends such short-term fluctuations. In some cases, though, a civilization can be weakened when such polities conflict. So to Toynbee, the end of his 'Orthodox Christian' civilization lies in the decimation of the manpower of the Byzantine Empire in the Romano-Bulgarian war of A.D. 977-1019. The overexploitation of the Empire's Anatolian recruiting grounds for this campaign led to the disastrous loss to the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1 071, and to the subsequently easy conversion of Anatolia to Islam and the Turkish language (Toynbee 1962 (IV): 371-2, 392, 398). Yet in the main, the rise and fall of civilizations does not correspond (to such authors) nearly so closely to specific policies or events. 

There are major difficulties with this view, and specific reasons why it is not fruitful. The reader will have noticed that, while the fall of civilizations was discussed by way of introductory material in the first chapter, that term has since been avoided, and for the most part will continue to be . There are two reasons for this: first, the definition of what constitutes a 'civilization' tends to be vague and intuitive, and secondly, there is an almost unavoidable element of unscientific value judgement in the very concept. 

Pitirim Sorokin is particularly noted for criticism of the 'death of civilizations' idea (e.g., 1950, 1957). He correctly points out that at any point where such a death is postulated, there is nonetheless much continuity in cultural behavior from the dying civilization to the emerging one. Moreover, specific parts of cultural systems change continuously, so that qualitative transformation to a new civilization is difficult to pinpoint. He asserts as well that human cultures are not unified in any event, merely chance amalgamations of features, so that by definition they cannot cease to exist. On this last point most current social scientists would disagree with Sorokin, but that matter leads away from the discussion. 

The question of value judgements is equally serious. What distinguishes 'civilized' from 'uncivilized' societies? Anthropologists have long recognized that the very terms are value-laden: in popular thought civilized societies are superior. How do we recognize a civilized society? By such things as refined art styles, monumental architecture, and literary and philosophical traditions that seem akin to our own experiences. Civilizations display artistic, architectural, and literary styles that are similar in structure (if not in form and content) to our own; hence civilized societies are those like us. Many authors (supposed scientists) are blatant about their value  judgements to the point of embarrassment. Gray, for example, characterized the Greek Archaic period as 'crude' (1958: 19). Clough defined civilization as achievement in aesthetic and intellectual pursuits, and success in controlling the physical environment. A more civilized people is more successful in these (Clough 1951: 3). Kroeber, one of the masters of this field, made reference to ' ... higher cultural values and forms' (1944: 8), assigned to ancient Egypt ' ... a fairly high idea system' (1944: 664), and referred to cultural patterns ' ... which we adjudge as of high quality' ( 1944: 763). In A Study of History Toynbee asserted that ' . . . civilizations are in their nature progressive movements' (1962 (III): 128). Spengler was curiously different. To him, civilizations are undesirable, even evil. 

They are a conclusion ... death following life, rigidity following expansion 

They are an end, irrevocable, yet by inward necessity reached again and again (1962: 24). 

Such biases have no place in objective social science, and a concept that is so laden with this problem is better abandoned or rethought. 

Not all have approached the concept so uselessly. Melko (1969: 8) characterizes civilizations as large, complex cultures, and is echoed in this by Flannery (1972: 400) and Coulborn (1966: 404). Somewhat refined, such a definition will more clearly fit the present study. A civilization is the cultural system of a complex society. The features that popularly define a civilized society - such as great traditions of art and writing - are epiphenomena or covariables of social, political, and economic complexity. Complexity calls these traditions into being, for such art and literature serve social and economic purposes and classes that exist only in complex settings. Civilization emerges with complexity, exists because of it, and disappears when complexity does. Complexity is the base of civilization, and civilization, by definition here, can disappear only when complexity vanishes (see also Clark [1979: 9-12]). It may be true that specific polities can rise and fall within a civilization, but political complexity itself must disintegrate for civilization to disappear. For this reason the study of rising and falling complexity serves as a monitor of the phenomenon termed civilization, a monitor that is at once measurable and specifiable, and so less subject to the biases and value judgements of other approaches. The concept of civilization is thus obviated for present purposes. 

Does this mean that the work of the cultural school is not pertinent to the study of collapse? Surely the popularity of this school would itself argue against this supposition. But there are other reasons for considering the works of Spengler, Toynbee, Kroeber, and others, and indeed, considering these in some detail. The inextricable link between complexity and civilization, even if denied or unrecognized by this school, indicates that a discussion of why civilizations disappear will be pertinent to understanding why polities do. More basically, though, the approach to selecting works to consider in this chapter dictates their inclusion. Some of the work to be discussed pertains, for example, to societies that never did collapse (as defined here), such as the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. Such cases are included, along with the theories of the cultural school, because of the importance not only of political collapse, but also of circumstances that could lead to this condition. Thus, theories of the end of civilizations and discussions of political weakness will receive prominent treatment. 

Classification of theories 

In conducting the research for this chapter it became tempting at times to rephrase an old joke, and suggest that there are two or three theories of collapse for every society that has experienced it. While greater scientific attention has been devoted to the development of complexity than to collapse, the literature on the latter subject is still voluminous, and the diversity of ideas impressive. True, these range from respectable and scholarly to some that provide only comic relief. Yet the popularity of some views that scholars value little requires that all receive some treatment. 

This diversity of views dictates a need to impose order. Theories of collapse fall into a limited number of recurrent explanatory themes. These themes by and large persist through time. The authors whose works are here assigned to each theme are characterized by overriding similarities in framework, assumptions, and approach. Within each theme, of course, a great deal of diversity still exists, so that some level of individual discussion is necessary for many authors. 

It should be noted that any such classification of theories is to some degree arbitrary, and indeed, many approaches to classification would be possible. It is common in the social sciences to write of internal vs . external causes of social change, and the study of collapse can be similarly dichotomized (e.g., Sabloff 1973a: 36). (There is nothing new here: Polybius made the same observation in the second century B.C. [1979: 350].) Similarly, just as one can write of conflict vs. integration theories of change (see Chapter 2), so such theories have been advanced to account for collapse. Again, this is an ancient development (contrast, for example , Plato's Laws with Flannery [1972]). Neither dichotomy is useful for this work, although both are certainly valid and will be discussed in the final chapter. 

There appear to be eleven major themes in the explanation of collapse . These are: 

1. Depletion or cessation of a vital resource or resources on which the society depends. 

2. The establishment of a new resource base. 

3. The occurrence of some insurmountable catastrophe. 

4. Insufficient response to circumstances. 

5. Other complex societies. 

6. Intruders. 

7. Class conflict, societal contradictions, elite mismanagement or misbehavior. 

8. Social dysfunction. 

9. Mystical factors. 

10. Chance concatenation of events. 

11. Economic factors. As simple as it is to present this classification, there are still ambiguities. There is much overlap in the categories listed, while some themes could be subdivided further . The assignment of authors to themes adds another level of uncertainty, for many fall easily into more than one class. Other investigators, including the authors so classified, might legitimately assign writers to different themes, or even devise an alternative classification. The present classification is based on an assessment of the major approaches and assumptions in an author's work. While other classifications are clearly possible, the evaluation of individual studies would not in any event be altered. 

Framework of discussion 

The goal of this study throughout is to understand collapse as a general phenomenon, to gain an understanding not limited to specific cases, but applicable across time, space, and type of society. Most explanations of collapse focus on a particular society or civilization, rather than approach the global process. Thus there are far more explanations of the fall of Rome or of the Maya than there are comparisons of these. Some authors do make comparisons of two or three cases of collapse, but desist from further generalization. This situation, indeed, is no more than characteristic of history and the social sciences, which have always been overwhelmingly particularistic. 

One outcome of explaining individual collapses is that criticisms of these attempts have been primarily factual. While a critique of an author's explanation for the demise of society X might discuss the logic of the argument, it seems easier for such critics to focus On factual matters : to show that the historical and/or archaeological records of society X don't fit the proposed explanation. Thus, when scholars postulate climatic deterioration for the fall of Mycenaean Civilization, or invaders for the collapse of the Maya, critics will generally assert that factual evidence for climatic fluctuations or invaders is either lacking, or contradictory to the proposal. Subsequent debate tends to turn about the factual contest: there is/is not evidence for the climatic fluctuation, for the invaders, and the like. Rarely do authors question the logic of the original proposition. How does or how can climatic fluctuations, invaders, and so forth lead to collapse? Can the postulated cause really account for the outcome? Is the explanation adequate? While some critics do raise such questions, this is rarely done on a general basis. The factual debate remains prominent. 

The premise of the present approach is that if the logic of an argument is faulty, a discussion of factual matters is largely unnecessary. If the climatic shift or the intruders could not have caused the society to collapse, then all the evidence for or against these is interesting, but immaterial. Hence in what follows the major focus will be on the logic of proposed explanations. Factual matters will from time to time be discussed, but these are never of major importance. 

The stimulus to undertake this study was the perception that existing explanations of collapse logically cannot account for it. This chapter will detail the reservations about previous approaches, and show where these approaches fail. The tone is necessarily critical, but it is worth noting that for all this the existing literature does have much to offer in understanding collapse. It simply cannot offer all that might be presently wished. After these pages of skepticism, the chapter will conclude with some hopeful comments. 

Resource depletion 

Two major explanations for collapse are subsumed under this theme: the gradual deterioration or depletion of a resource base (usually agriculture), often due to human mismanagement, and the more rapid loss of resources due to an environmental fluctuation or climatic shift. Both are thought to cause collapse through depletion of the resources on which a complex society depends. 

Although the causal chain from economic deterioration to collapse is a recent theory, the linkage between the two was a source of speculation to many who experienced the Roman breakdown. Among some ancient writers, though, the causal chain was reversed from theories of today. The decline in agricultural yields in Italy in the first century B.C., for example, was thought by some to be a result of moral decadence (Mazzarino 1966: 21, 32-3). Writers of the second and third centuries A.D. are often reminiscent of nineteenth- and twentieth-century climatological theorists, although usually the decline of agriculture and mining was seen by the Romans as a covariable rather than as a cause of political weakness. The world as a whole, to these observers, was aging and losing vigor (Mazzarino 1966: 40-2). The Christian writer Cyprian, in Ad Demetnanum (third century A.D.), asserted 

... that the age is now senile . . . the World itself. .. testifies to its own decline by giving manifold concrete evidences of the process of decay. There is a diminution in the winter rains that give nourishment to the seeds in the earth, and in the summer heats that ripen the harvests. The springs have less freshness and the autumns less fecundity. The mountains, disembowelled and worn out, yield a lower output of marble; the mines, exhausted, furnish a smaller stock of the precious metals: the veins are impoverished, and they shrink daily. There is a decrease and deficiency of farmers in the field, of sailors on the sea, of soldiers in the barracks, of honesty in the marketplace, of justice in court, of concord in friendship, of skill in technique, of strictness in morals ... Anything that is near its end, and is verging towards its decline and fall is bound to dwindle ... This is the sentence that has been passed upon the World ... this loss of strength and loss of stature must end, at last, in annihilation (quoted in Toynbee [1962 (IV): 8]). 

The present link between climate and resource depletion, and the rise and fall of civilizations, owes much to the work of Ellsworth Huntington (1915, 1917), and to more recent theorists such as Winkless and Browning (1975), J. Hughes ( 1975 ), and Butzer (1976, 1980, 1984). Huntington espoused a biological model that few anthropologists today could endorse: 'The nature of a people's culture ... depends primarily upon racial inheritance .. .' (1915: 1). But beyond biology, Huntington argued that civilization is affected by climate, that many of the great nations of the past rose and fell with favorable and unfavorable climatic conditions. During ' ... times of favorable climate in countries such as Egypt and Greece the people were apparently filled with a virile energy, which they do not now possess' (1915: 6). With aridity in Greece there came economic distress, famine, and lawlessness. To Huntington, high frequencies of cyclonic storms 'energized' populations to create civilizations, and when a climate became unfit, no people could retain the energy and 'progressiveness' that he believed was necessary for civilization (1915: 9, 257). The fall of Rome was explained by adverse climatic conditions after the early third century A.D. (Huntington 1917: 194-6). 

Winkless and Browning provide an updated climatic theory, but with a curious reversal of some of Huntington's reasoning. To them, changing physical factors (e.g., increased volcanism) lead to changing climates, which lead to changing food supplies, and thus to changing human behavior (wars, migrations, economic upheavals, changing ethics , etc .) (Winkless and Browning 1975: 15). Whereas Huntington saw civilizations flourishing in stimulating climates, Winkless and Browning ascribe civilization to benign climatic conditions , and collapse conversely. They suggest that when climate changes, marginal areas are affected first. Buffer states begin to abandon the characteristics of civilization, return to nomadism and raiding, and ultimately topple the weakened centers of power. These authors further postulate an 800 year climatically-induced cycle to human affairs, superimposed on shorter cyclic patterns ( 1975 : 147-9, 185). 

An alternative resource depletion argument has been offered by Ekholm (1980), who ascribes collapse to loss of trade networks, external resources, and imported goods. An economic system becomes fragile when it comes to depend on external exchange over which it has little control. Since civilizations are always dependent on access to foreign markets, they are intrinsically vulnerable in this regard. Ekholm accounts in this manner for the collapses of the Third Dynasty of Ur and of Mycenaean civilization, for regional instability in the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean ca. 2300-2200 B.C. , and for recent political upheavals in Madagasgar.

Similarly, Robert Briffault in 1938 predicted the demise of the British Empire for reasons of unfavorable trade . Hodges and Whitehouse, in their critique of the Pirenne thesis (1983), ascribe the post-Carolingian dark age to disruption of trade between Europe and the Near East, following the economic collapse of the Abbasids. Cipolla argues that the economic decline of Italy in recent centuries has resulted from unsuccessful competition in foreign trade (1970b). 

Resource depletion arguments are perennial favorites in collapse studies. They have been prevalent for some time in Mesoamerican and Southwestern studies, but have also begun to gain prominence in eastern North America, Europe, and the Near East. The possibility of resource depletion is, of course, a major concern to contemporary forecasters (e .g., Catton 1980). 

Mesoamerica 

The spectacular collapse of Mayan civilization in the Southern Lowlands has frequently led scholars to focus on resource depletion. C. W. Cooke proposed in 1931 that collapse here was caused by soil erosion and land scarcity, encroachment of grasses, silting of lakes with consequent destruction of water transportation, a decline of water supply in dry years, and an increase in mosquito populations along with increase or introduction of malaria. Thirty years later, Sanders (1962, 1963) conducted an extensive study of Lowland ecology, and reached nearly the same conclusions. He argued that swidden agriculture in this region leads to soil nutrient depletion, weed competition, and savanna formation. In later writings, Sanders continues to favor an environmental deterioration argument, but supplements it by suggesting that political competition between Mayan centers, favoring resource intensification, was also a factor (Sanders and Webster 1978 : 29 1-5). Haas argues similarly, that the Mayan collapse was due to weakening of the power base of subsistence resources and trade goods by environmental deterioration and external events ( 1982: 212). Rathje (1973) and Sharer ( 1982) both indict loss of trade in the Mayan collapse.

Such ideas have been applied elsewhere in Mesoamerica. S. Cook argued that soil exhaustion was responsible for both the OLmec and Highland collapses ( 1947). Weaver sees the destruction of Tula as largely due to a climatic change that caused the desiccation of north-central Mexico, forcing peripheral northern populations to push south and overthrow the city (1972: 213). Sanders et al. ( 1979 : 137) and Hirth and Swezey ( 1976: 11, 15) suggest that the collapse of Teotihuacan was due to loss of control over vital trade networks.

Peru 

Moseley ( 1983) indicts tectonic uplift in the agricultural collapse of Chimu, post-1000 A.D. Due to tectonic underthrust, the Pacific watershed tends to tilt and rise, causing rivers to downcut, and leading to lower groundwater levels and less runoff. The entire Chimu hydrological regime constricted, with consequences for surface vegetation. Canal intakes had to be repositioned upstream, which was less efficient. As water tables dropped in the Chimu case, farmers concentrated more on sunken gardens. But both sunken gardens and canals contracted through time back toward the river, and downslope toward the sea. Moseley does not single out tectonic movement as the sole source of collapse (see also Kus [1984]). He suggests that it provides the background conditions that make intelligible such things as revolt, conquest, soil depletion, and so forth. He does, however, implicate uplift in agricultural collapses elsewhere, such as the Near East, the Mayan Lowlands, and the Mesoamerican Cordillera.

The American Southwest 

Climatic change is the most common explanation for the collapse of horticultural settlements, ana of social complexity, in various areas of the Southwest. Agricultural mismanagement is occasionally added to the picture. The most frequent resource depletion arguments postulate such things as drought, erosion, shifts in rainfall seasonality, lower temperatures, overhunting of game, and depletion or increasing alkalinity of cultivable soils (summarized in Martin and Plog [1973: 322-5] and Martin, Quimby, and Collier [1947:147]). Throughout the Southwest uplands, drought and arroyo cutting have long been the dominant explanations of regional abandonment (Reed 1944; Kelley 1952; Wenke 198 1: 110). 

Climatic explanations are common in the Hohokam region of southern Arizona (e.g., Doyel 1981), but here the results of agricultural malpractice are often added, such as waterlogging and/or salt build-up in soils (Haury 1976: 355). D. Adams notes that there are signs of malnutrition in some late Hohokam skeletons, and links these  signs to agricultural problems ( 1983: 37). Weaver has developed the most complete argument along these lines. He suggests that after 1275 A.D. , drought and salt accumulation in tilled fields led to a decline of the complex Hohokam social, political, and ritual systems, especially in outlying areas. Then ca. 1325 a period of abnormally high moisture with heavy spring runoff damaged or destroyed many canal heads and brush dams. This led to continued declines in crop yield, lower population, and increased dependence on wild foods. The economic stress led to sociopolitical collapse. When normal climatic conditions returned after ca. 1475 a variety of factors prevented the reemergence of Hohokam complexity (D. Weaver 1972: 49)

Eastern. North America 

Over the last two decades or more climatic explanations have gained currency in Midwestern archaeology. This is due largely to the work of James B. Griffin (1960, 1961). The collapse of northern Hopewell was ascribed by Griffin to a slightly cooler climatic phase in the upper Mississippi Valley. He has made similar assertions regarding the shift from the agricultural Mississippian Old Village Tradition to the foraging Oneota pattern, which occurred ca. 1200-1400 A.D. Vickery (1970) supports the argument, as in large part do Barreis, Bryson, and Kutzbach (1976; see also Barreis and Bryson [1965]). Melvin Fowler has developed a contrasting interpretation for the collapse of the Mississippian center of Cahokia, arguing for exhaustion of local resources (timber, game, fertile soil), and the rise of competitive political centers ( 1975 : 100-1). 

Egypt Karl Butzer has argued in a number of studies ( 1976, 1980, 1984) that the collapse of the Old Kingdom, and other political catastrophes of Egyptian history, can be traced at least in part to variations in Nile flood levels, and thus to precipitation patterns in the interior of Africa. High Nile floods are damaging in that they favor soil crop parasites; destroy dikes, ditches, settlements, food stores, and livestock; and delay harvesting into the dry season. Low floods also reduce yields (Butzer 1976: 52, 1984: 105). Butzer cites Nile failure as a definite factor in the end of the New Kingdom ( 1570-1070 B .C.), and as a likely factor in the Old Kingdom disintegration between 2760 and 2225 B.C. This was the most prominent element in the failure of the Second Dynasty (2970-2760 B.C.), and of the Middle Kingdom (2035-1668 B.C.) (Butzer 1980: 522). 

Butzer's argument is by no means a simple climatic one. He notes that ca. 1720 B.C. Egyptian unity was threatened by the establishment of petty principalities in the Delta, well before the Hyksos invasion of 1668 B.C. This in turn followed a period from 1840 to 1770 B.C. in which one-third of Nile floods were destructive enough to ruin the entire irrigation system. He also suggests that in the Old Kingdom collapse, political weakness preceded any Nile-related disasters, but these in turn may have triggered social unrest ( 1980: 520, 1984: 109, 110). Butzer thus sees Nile fluctuations as a contributory rather than causal agent, acting in concert with political weakness, poor leadership, over taxation, and a top-heavy social pyramid to bring about episodes of disintegration (1980: 522, 1984: 112). 

Butzer's views are reinforced by O'Connor (1974), who believes the Old Kingdom collapsed from consistently lower Nile inundations and consequent famines. Barbara Bell's thesis (1971) is more encompassing. She argues that the widespread, eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern regional dark ages of ca. 2200-2000 and 1200-900 B.C. can both be accounted for by widespread droughts, each lasting several decades. In the Old Kingdom case, Bell argues , the failure of the Egyptian king to maintain proper flood levels through ritual intervention led to reduced legitimacy of, and confidence in, the central government at a time when the power of regional nobles was increasing ( 1971: 21-2).  

The Harappan Civilization 

There are a variety of resource depletion arguments for the end of the Indus Valley, or Harappan, civilization. Both Thapar ( 1982) and Sharer (1982) implicate declining foreign trade in this collapse. Dales suggests that ' ... massive extrusions of mud, aided by the pressure of accumulated gases ,' caused damming of the Indus River 90 miles downstream from Mohenjo-Daro, and formation of a large lake (1966: 95, 96). Raikes ( 1964) argues for the same outcome, but with flooding resulting from coastal uplift. By either mechanism (perhaps in conjunction with earthquakes) commerce, agriculture, and communications were disrupted (Raikes 1964: 296; Wheeler 1966: 83). Mortimer Wheeler ( 1966, 1968) and Dales (1966) prefer an argument with a more mystical tone: that the morale of the population was simply worn down by centuries of fighting mud, that the ' ... Harappan spirit mired in an unrelenting sequence of invading water and engulfing silt' (Dales 1966: 98). 

Mesopotamia 

One of the best explanations of collapse has been developed by Jacobsen and Adams ( 1958) and R. McC. Adams (1981) for episodic political catastrophes in the Mesopotamian alluvium. Like Butzer, they recognize that resource depletion arguments can only partially account for any instance of collapse, that political and economic factors frequently influence production systems to create favorable or unfavorable conditions. 

In this area, agricultural intensification and excessive irrigation lead to short-term above-normal harvests, with increasing prosperity, security, and stability. Within a few years, though, the rise of saline groundwater erodes or destroys agricultural productivity, and thus stability. When powerful regimes (such as the Third Dynasty of Ur, the late Sassanians, and in the early Islamic period) pursued policies of maximizing resource production, complex irrigation systems were developed that were beyond local abilities to manage and repair. State control was required. When the political realm proved unstable, dangers of salinity increased and the possibility loomed for sudden, catastrophic fluctuations. 

In the Sassanian and Islamic periods , both population and the state's fiscal demands increased, more marginal land was cultivated regardless of declining returns, and for many there was a catastrophic drop in living standards. Impressive accomplishments were built on an unstable political base, and at the expense of increasing ecological fragility. Decline was inevitable, and became precipitate in the late ninth century A.D. While revenues dropped the costs of agricultural management remained stable or increased. Harsh taxation alienated the support popUlation, leading to revolts and destruction of irrigation facilities. With reduced government power, repair was impossible. The perimeter of government jurisdiction contracted to the area around Baghdad, and any chance for a solution to the agricultural problems was lost. The result was the devastation and abandonment of much of the region, as Adams (1981: xvii) has described so well in the quote that heads this work (see also Waines (1977]). 

Mycenaean Civilization 

In 1966 Rhys Carpenter developed an elegantly written argument for the collapse of Mycenaean civilization: that it, and other thirteenth-century B.C. upheavals in the Mediterranean, were due to climatic change leading to famine, depopulation, and migration. What appears to be a Mycenaean collapse in the Peloponnese is actually a drought-induced evacuation to other areas, including Attica. The climatologist Reid Bryson and his colleagues support Carpenter's interpretation of this climatic fluctuation (Bryson et al. 1974: 47-50).

The Roman Empire 

Both Huntington (1915: 6) and Winkless and Browning (1975: 179-82) argued that climatic change, leading to resource insufficiencies, stimulated the barbarian migrations that so disastrously affected the Roman Empire, but disagree on causal mechanisms. Huntington ascribed the matter to desiccation in Asia, Winkless and Browning to the end of a cool period. 

In a study of pollen diagrams from northern Europe, Waateringe (1983) noted a disastrous change toward the end of the Empire. There was a major decline in pollens of cereals, arable plants, and pasture weeds, and an increase in tree pollen. Woodland apparently encroached on land formerly cultivated. Waateringe believes this was brought about by intensification of production for market distribution. Large markets, the Pax Romana, road networks, and centralized administration created a situation in early Roman times where local food shortages could be alleviated to a greater degree than previously. The subsequent opportunities to profit from agriculture led to intensification and surplus production. Population consequently increased, leading to still greater demands for food and then to agricultural exhaustion. Agricultural collapse ensued both within and adjacent to the Empire. 

Hughes indicts the Roman failure to adapt their society and economy harmoniously to the natural environment. This failure was then a major cause of collapse. Deforestation led to erosion, the most readily accessible minerals were mined, lands were overgrazed, and agriculture declined. Food shortages and population decline sapped the Empire's strength (J . Hughes 1975). In focusing on agricultural decline, Hughes echoes the opinions of both ancient and recent writers (e.g., Simkhovitch 1916; Finley 1973). 

Another explanation of the Roman collapse concentrates on lack of human resources . Gilfallen, in a well-known argument (1970), indicts lead poisoning for debilitating the human population on which Roman strength depended. 

Assessment 

Resource depletion arguments, to judge from the number advanced, are perpetually attractive. There is something to such arguments, for no society can maintain complexity when its resource base is depleted beyond a certain point. Yet long before that point is reached a whole range of responses may be undertaken. Here is the first of several problems which make one uneasy at the resource depletion theory. 

The resource depletion argument, at base, ascribes collapse to economic weakness, often suddenly induced. Most investigators would assume at the outset that economically weakened societies are indeed prone to collapse, so this point may be taken as a warranted assumption. One supposition of this view must be that these societies sit by and watch the encroaching weakness without taking corrective actions. Here is a major diffIculty. Complex societies are characterized by centralized decision making, high information flow , great coordination of parts, formal channels of command , and pooling of resources. Much of this structure seems to have the capability, if not the designed purpose, of countering fluctuation and deficiencies in productivity, With their administrative structure, and capacity to allocate both labor and resources, dealing with adverse environmental conditions may be one of the things that complex societies do best (see, for example, Isbell [1978]), It is curious that they would collapse when faced with precisely those conditions they are equipped to circumvent. 

It is entirely possible, of course, that environmental fluctuations or deterioration may occur that existing production systems and social arrangements cannot overcome. Resource depletion theorists, indeed, would have to make just such an argument. Several kinds of information are needed, though, to truly demonstrate that such conditions can cause collapse. The data in question would include climate, population, crop or other resource yields, yearly requirements of the population and of the sociopolitical system, and the adaptive capabilities of the society in question. Such data have not been systematically sought in the study of collapse. 

As it becomes apparent to the members or administrators of a complex society that a resource base is deteriorating, it seems most reasonable to assume that some rational steps are taken toward a resolution. The alternative assumption - of idleness in the face of disaster - requires a leap of faith at which we may rightly hesitate, If the former assumption may be admitted, then new variables enter whose mere existence indicates that the resource depletion argument is inadequate. 

If a society cannot deal with resource depletion (which all societies are to some degree designed to do) then the truly interesting questions revolve around the society, not tIle resource. What structural, political, ideological, or economic factors in a society prevented an appropriate response? This is no idle question, however simple it may seem, for the literature on resource depletion contains some disturbing ambiguities. One study of the Hohokam of the American Southwest, for example, asserts that environmental deterioration caused collapse in one instance (Sacaton to Soho phases), but increased complexity in another (Soho to Civano phases) (Doyel 1981). Elsewhere, J. Hughes (1975) cites deforestation as a cause of the "Roman collapse. Yet Wilkinson (1973) has shown how in late- and post-Medieval England, deforestation spurred economic development and, far from leading to collapse, was at least partly responsible for the Industrial Revolution. Clearly the major factor in understanding these episodes is not that a resource was depleted, but that the respective societies responded in different ways. Why would resource stress lead to collapse in some instances, and to increased complexity and economic intensification in others? Citing resource depletion does no more than scratch the surface of an enormously complex matter. 

Butzer and R. McC. Adams, in awareness of such problems, present scenarios in which environmental, social, and political factors intertwine. Both have developed plausible explanations of collapse in the specific cases they have studied. Yet while the incorporation of political factors in Butzer's and Adams' studies is a strength of their individual efforts, it also betrays a weakness in the broader approach. To the extent that elite mismanagement or miscalculation figures in, for example, the Mesopotamian cases, we are left with a major explanatory lacuna. To suggest that societies collapse because elites act unwisely explains little. Are there conditions under which elites act wisely or unwisely, or is this a random variable? Is it even a definable and measurable factor? At this point we anticipate a later section in which such matters are more appropriately considered. " 

As always, empirical questions can be raised about specific resource depletion explanations. In the Hohokam case, Haury points to an ambiguity in the waterlogging/salt concentration argument: settlements that were not dependent on canal irrigation were simultaneously abandoned (1976: 355). In criticism of Carpenter's drought theory of the Mycenaean collapse, Chadwick points out that Attica, the supposed refuge for desiccated Messenia, has only about half the rainfall of the latter region (1976: 192). Such questions add to the theoretical problems.

New resources 

This theme, decidedly a minority view, presents a reversal of the resource depletion theory. Here the suggestion is that new, bountiful resources lead to collapse. This argument derives squarely from the integration school, which sees complexity as a response to stress conditions, including resource inequities. When such inequities are alleviated, the need for ranking and social control may break down, leading to collapse to a lower level of complexity (Harner 1970: 69). A variation on this is presented by Martin (1969), who argues that South American foragers dropped in complexity following the depopulation attendant upon European contact. Although Martin is vague about causal mechanisms, one route could be alleviation of pressure on resources, leading to the situation Harner envisions. 

Jelinek (1967) argues similarly, that along the Pecos River in New Mexico sedentary horticultural villages were abandoned for mobile bison-hunting when increased moisture between 1250 and 1350 A.D. led to the spread of grasslands , and increased local availability of bison. 

Childe (1942) and Needham ( 1965) followed a variant explanation. Childc suggested that with the introduction of iron, cheaper and easier to acquire than bronze, peasants and barbarians could obtain weapons that allowed them to challenge the armies of civilized states. The Mycenaean and Hittite collapses accordingly followed (ChiMe 1942: 177-8, 191-3). Needham (1965: 93) suggests that in China, the spread of iron in the middle Chou period led to the disintegration of Chou feudalism and the rise of independent stales (although he is less dear than Childe about specific causal mechanisms) .

Assessment 

To an integration theorist, Harner's ( 1970) stress··alleviation argument has some appeal, but much less to a conflict theorist. In any event it is mainly restricted to simpler societies. It has no power to explain the fall of Rome, much less many other cases . 

Catastrophes 

Single-event catastrophes, such things as hurricanes , volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, Of major disease epidemics, are enduring favorites for explaining collapse (e.g., Easton 1965a: 82-3). There is something so appealing in simple solutions to complex processes that it is not likely such ideas will ever go out of fashion. (It is interesting to nole that students of paleontology are as attracted to simple catastrophe theories to explain the disappearance of the dinosaurs; or other life forms, as social scientists are for understanding collapse [e.g. , Gould 1983: 320-4J.) There is no clear-cut dividing point between catastrophe and resource depletion arguments, only a subtle difference in emphasis. 

Catastrophe scenarios are old. Plato's Critias and Timaeus characterize the demise of the mythical Atlantis in such terms. The Biblical flood, and similar stories, fall into this theme. 

Mesoamerica 

Earthquakes , hurricanes, and disease epidemics figure occasionally in studies of the Mayan collapse (summarized in R. E. W. Adams [ 1973a1 and Sabloff [1973a)). Spinden (1928), for example, suspected that the sudden appearance of yellow fever was involved. Mackie (1961) argued that signs of structural collapse at Benque Viejo indicate an earthquake , followed by social upheaval. More recently, Brewbaker (1979) has indicted maize mosaic virus, which he brings to the Maya Lowlands from the eastern Caribbean by hurricane, subsequently causing repeated crop failures. He cites by comparison the 1845 potato blight in Ireland, which led to the death or emigration of half the island's 4,000,000 inhabitants. 

Earthquakes and plagues have also been implicated in the collapse of Teotihuacan (discussed in Katz [1972 : 77]). 

Minoan Civilization 

A well-known explanation for the Minoan collapse was advanced by Marinatos (1939): that it was caused by the immense volcanic eruption of the nearby island of Thera. The effect on Crete was supposedly disastrous, including ash, mud, and tsunamis, while earthquakes before and after the eruption destroyed the inland palaces . Crete received an ' .. .irreparable blow, and from then onwards gradually declined and sank into decadence, losing its prosperity and power' (Marinatos 1939: 437). 

Variations on this proposal have followed. Carpenter argues that the eruption devastated Crete, which was prevented from recovering by aggressive Greek mainlanders, who invaded and established control at Knossos (1966: 32-3). Chadwick brings in no invaders, but proposes that a tsunami following the eruption struck Crete, destroying the Minoan fleet, while ash made eastern Crete barren (1976). Pomerance extends this devastation to the entire eastern Mediterranean ( 1970). 

The Roman Empire 

Malaria has been implicated in the decline of the Roman state. W. Jones (1907) argued that the devastation of Italy by Hannibal's invasion (218-204 B.C.), and ensuing agricultural desertion of large areas, led to the establishment of malaria. Italians, and those who settled in Italy, became infected, and this helped bring down the Empire. The development of extravagance, cruelty, and lack of self-control in the Roman character of the first century A.D. was, under this argument, due to malaria. McNeill, in a more modern theory (1976), indicts the weakening effect of plagues in the Roman collapse. 

Assessment 

As obvious and favored as catastrophe scenarios are, they are among the weakest explanations of collapse. The fundamental problem is that complex societies routinely withstand catastrophes without collapsing . Thus, catastrophe arguments present an incomplete causal chain: the basic assumption, rarely explicated, must be that the catastrophes in question somehow exceeded the abilities of the societies to absorb and recover from disaster. At this point some of the criticisms raised in regard to the resource depletion argument become pertinent: if the assumption is correct, then the interesting factor is no longer the catastrophe but the society. 

As a matter of practicality, though, catastrophe explanations are too simple to accommodate the complexities of human societies and the collapse process. Human societies encounter catastrophes all the time. They are an expectable aspect of life, and are routinely provided for through social, managerial, and economic arrangements. It is doubtful if any large society has ever succumbed to a single-event catastrophe. And the cause of understanding is not advanced by the suggestion that collapse is caused by accidents. 'Accidents,' notes R. M. Adams, 'happen to all societies at all stages of their history ... ' (1983: 5). Too many societies encounter accidents without collapsing. 

The analogies that catastrophe theorists advance to support their arguments actually weaken them. The eruption of Thera, for example, is often compared to the late-nineteenth-century eruption of Krakatoa in the South Pacific. To my knowledge, though, no complex society collapsed under Krakatoa's onslaught. Similarly, Brewbaker (1979) cites the effect of the potato blight in Ireland to bolster his argument that maize mosaic virus could have caused the Mayan collapse. He fails, though, to point out to his readers that Ireland suffered no cessation of sociopolitical complexity as a result of this disaster. 

Empirically, the Thera-eruption argument for the devastation of Crete falters on a dating problem. This eruption is currently dated toward the end of the Late Minoan IA period (ca. 1 500 B.c.), whereas the widespread destruction on Crete occurred at the end of Late Minoan IE (ca. l450 B.C.) (Doumas 1983: 139, 142). The Cretans of ca. 1500 B.C. most likely stopped to watch the eruption of Thera, made whatever preparations were called for, and when it was all over went about their business. And while I am not a geomorphologist, the argument that ash made cast Crete barren seems odd compared with the effects of ash in northeastern Arizona, where the prehistoric eruption of Sunset Crater significantly improved local agriculture (Martin and Plog 1973: 143). 

It should be pointed out that catastrophe explanations, as discussed here, differ from Catastrophe Theory as applied by Renfrew (1979) to modeling the collapse process. The latter is an abstract mathematical theory that specifies no causal mechanisms. 

Insufficient response to circumstances 

The basic factor that unites the rather disparate arguments under this theme is the notion that fundamental limitations of social, political, and economic systems prevent an appropriate response to circumstances, and this makes collapse inevitable . Two of the major views considered here, well known in the history of anthropology, are those of Betty Meggers (1954) regarding environmental limitations to civilization, and Elman Service (1960, 1975) on the 'Law of Evolutionary Potential.' Toynbee's 'Challenge and Response' theory is not included at this point. 

Meggers' argument was simple: more productive environments can produce more complex societies. More specifically, ' ... the level to which a culture can develop is dependent upon the agricultural potentiality of the environment it occupies.' As this potentiality improves ' ... culture will advance' (Meggers 1954: 81 5). Classifying tropical rainforest as inadequate in this regard, Meggers encountered the problem of the Maya. Her solution: Mayan civilization must have been introduced from elsewhere, and the history of Mayan occupation should represent decline or disintegration. Introduce a civilization into an environment that is inappropriate, and ultimately the environment will win. Mayan society could not respond appropriately to its circumstances. 

Despite serious criticism, this argument continues to find expression (occasionally, one suspects, by authors who are unaware of their intellectual linkage to Meggers). Both Sabloff (1971, 1973a) and Webb (1973: 403) present up-to-date variations, linking the Mayan environment with events elsewhere in Mesoamerica as sources of collapse. (These prominent Mayan scholars are, of course, fully aware of Meggers' theory and of recent ideas derived from it.) Stuart and Gauthier (1981: 40) argue similarly for the Chacoan collapse: that the height of Chacoan complexity was impossible to sustain in an arid environment.

A similar view argues (sometimes implicitly) that complex societies are unstable, not just in certain kinds of environments, but inherently. Kent Flannery (1972) and Roy Rappaport (1977) are the best known proponents of this line of reasoning. These authors suggest that more complex societies are more closely interlinked, with greater mutual influences among parts. Self-sufficiency and autonomy of local systems are reduced as specialization increases. As special-purpose subsystems become increasingly differentiated, stability declines. Disruptions occurring anywhere will be spread everywhere, whereas in less complex settings a society would be cushioned against disruptions by less specialization, less interlinkage among parts, and greater time delays between cause and ultimate outcome. Civilization itself (i.e. , great complexity), to Rappaport, may be maladaptive: 'Civilisation has emerged only recently ­ in the past six thousand or so years - and it may yet prove to be an unsuccessful experiment' (Rappaport 1977: 65). 

An intriguing variation on this last theme has been developed by Phillips (1979). In a statement reminiscent of Gibbon's views on the Roman Empire, Phillips suggests that 'In a sense, the problem is not that states collapse (for this happens constantly), but rather that some states last so long . . . ' (1979: 138). Phillips' argument is that it takes time for a newly dominant state to use all its resources efficiently, which he defines as ' ... high output or return per unit investment' (1979: 140). Efficiency (so defined), though, leads to inflexibility in resource allocation. The mechanism is this: a newly dominant state controls a large territorial base, but has not yet developed (or come to depend on) complex institutions that will derive a significant return for this resource base. In such situations, a large proportion of the new resources will always be used in non-critical or low return ways (such as monumental architecture). This has the consequence of creating a hidden resource reserve that can be used for emergencies, for such non-critical activities are suspendable in a crisis. 

But through time social and political institutions emerge that use this resource base more fully (in Phillips' terminology, 'efficiently'). Eventually, most resources are allocated to support of 'efficient' institutions (political offices and the like), leaving no reserves or flexibility in resource allocation. The dominant center is then left susceptible to disruptions, so that ' ... historical accident alone is sufficient to touch off major failures' (Phillips 1979: 142). A crisis like a revolt, which a newly dominant state would easily control, becomes an insurmountable problem for a more 'efficient' society that lacks reserves. Although formulated in regard to Mesoamerica, this argument has applicability elsewhere. The later Roman Empire, for example, succumbed to catastrophes the like of which had been overcome by the early Republic. 

This argument is strongly reminiscent of that of Shephard Clough, who suggested that weakness and collapse can be caused by diverting resources from investment in capital to expenditures on art and knowledge. As more resources are devoted to artistic achievement, the share available for creating economic well-being diminishes, as does the society's strength. Thus the elements that define 'civilization' lead to its demise. The collapses of Egypt in the First Intermediate Period, and of Rome, are  explained accordingly(Clough 1951:3-7,52-53,143-159,261). Thus to  Clough and Phillips complex societies are not initially unstable, but eventually become so.

Elman Service's 'Law of Evolutionary Potential' (1960; 1975) has an intellectual history similar to Meggers' ideas: lack of initial acceptance, with occasional later usage, sometimes by authors who either do not recognize or do not note this precursor to their work. The Law states as follows: 'The more specialized and adapted a form in a given evolutionary stage, the smaller its potential for passing to the next stage' (Service 1960: 97). Specific evolutionary 'progress' is inversely related to general evolutionary 'potential' (Service 1 960: 97). Within this view, success at adaptation breeds conservatism; dominant polities are less able to accommodate change (see also Cipolla [1970a: 9]). Successful complex societies become locked into their adaptations, and are easily bypassed by those less specialized. So by having greater flexibility, less complex border states gain an increasing competitive advantage, and are thus able ultimately to topple older, established states (Service 1960: 107, 1975 : 254, 312-14). Service uses this principle to account for the success of barbarians along China's northern frontier, in Mesopotamia, and in Mesoamerica, and for discontinuities in political developments in Peru (1975 : 315-19). In each case, he suggests, newly civilized peripheral populations adopt some competitive advantage (an organizational feature, weapon, tactic, or the like) that the old center is too conservative to adopt, and thereby rise to dominance (Service 1975: 319-20). R. N. Adams follows similar reasoning, and believes this rigidity and conservatism result from investment in controlling major energy sources (1975 ; 200)

Many investigators see competition with less complex neighbors as one of only a number of factors leading to collapse. Service's Law can perhaps be expanded into a more general 'failure to adapt' argument. Several authors make such an argument: that complex societies disappear because of some inability to bring forth an appropriate response to circumstances . Melko (1969), for one, argues (like Service) that once established a civilization's capacities for change become limited . Collapse results from sociopolitical ossification, bureaucratic inefficiency, or inability to deal with internal or external problems. Ho attributes the decline of Ming China to such matters (1970). 

Writing as a sociologist, Buckley argues that rigidity in any social institution must lead to internal upheaval or to ineffectiveness against external challenge (1968: 495). Gregory Bateson suggested that civilizations expire by loss of flexibility, and that flexibility is lost automatically if it is not exercised (1972 : 502-13). 

Norman Yoffee has argued that with the loss of provinces in the Old Babylonian period, the revenues needed for public building, waterworks, and the military declined, but the attempt to sustain these did not. To maintain expenditures, the Crown became so oppressive that the empire quickly decomposed to its constituent elements (1977: 143-9). 'Without a drastic change in the idea of government on the part of the crown,' writes Yoffee, 'the power of the Babylonian state, subject to these negative feedback mechanisms, could only weaken further over time' (1977: 149). In short, a failure to make the correct response to circumstances engendered collapse. 

Gregory Johnson argues that in the Susiana region, administrative breakdown and state fission occurred when administrative demands exceeded capacity in the Middle Uruk period (1973: 153). Again, the basic notion is of an inability to bring about an appropriate response, which in this case would mean increasing administrative capacity.

Randall McGuire (1983) proposes a structural model to account for collapse. Following Blau (1977: 122) he argues that societies organized concentrically inhibit structural change, compared with societies organized by intersection of independent parameters. Concentric organization extends outward from the individual to ever wider social spheres: family, descent group, village, tribe, etc. Intersection refers to social dimensions that cross-cut concentric categories (such as sodality membership or occupation). Concentric organization tends to characterize simpler societies, and vice versa. In concentrically-organized societies, elites impose intergroup connections from above. Groups are played off against each other, rather than integrated into a coherent whole. Since change is rarely in the best interests of the ruling group, and there is lack of cohesion and common interest between groups, no mechanism exists for gradual adjustment to changing circumstances. Pressures then lead to collapse rather than to structural change (McGuire 1983: 117-22).

In the Mayan area, a 'failure to adapt' argument is offered by Willey and Shimkin ( 1971a, 1971b, 1973 : 491). Despite internal stresses and external pressures, they argue, Classic Maya society could bring forth no appropriate organizational or technological response. The bureaucracy was simply unable to deal with an increasingly complex and unstable social situation, and so the society collapsed. Willey also argues, in another context ( 1978 : 335), that the Maya collapsed because they did not ' ... proceed far enough on the ceremonial-center-to-true-city continuum.'

Accounting for the collapse of Teotihuacan, Pfeiffer proposes that this polity had simply reached its maximum integrative capacity without animal transport or wheeled vehicles ( 1975 : 93). Diehl argues similarly for the fall of Tula (1981: 293). For Cahokia, Pfeiffer suggests population pressure on a technology unable to feed both the populace and the bureaucracy (1974: 62). 

Dhavalikar argues that the Chalcolithic cultures of India 'died' because they did not have the technology to cultivate adequately the black cotton soil (1984: 155). Minnis suggests that the Mimbres culture of the American Southwest collapsed following a failure to attempt economic intensification ( 1985: 156).

Various economic explanations for the collapse of the Roman Empire border on the 'failure to adapt' theory (e.g., M. Hammond 1946). These studies postulate deficiencies in Roman social structure and economy, such as: (a) economic stagnation and lack of lower- or middle-class incentives; (b) the formation of large estates using slave or serf labor; (c) lack of regional economic integration; (d) over-taxation and the cost of government; (e) a weak financial system limited by minimal credit arrangements and by the supply of precious metals; and (f) the end of geographical expansion. The Empire, in short, was unable to bring forth the changes necessary for its continued existence. 

In regard to contemporary nations, Deutsch ( 1969: 28-30) suggests that collapse may occur where a government is unable to satisfy its population's demands for public services. Since about 1890 these demands have accelerated far faster than governments' income or ability to respond, leading to increasing dissatisfaction, political bankruptcy, and revolution.

Other  scholars implicate a positive feedback loop in collapse, from which escape is impossible. Colin Renfrew (1979: 488) argues that under stress complex societies lack the option to diversify, to become less specialized. By doing more of what may have caused the problem in the first place, the breakdown of the system is made inevitable.

Guglielmo Ferrero (1914), comparing Rome and America, indicted excessive urbanization as the cause of the Roman collapse. A rapid increase in wealth and commerce associated with the Roman expansion led to the development of prosperous middle-class families who migrated to the cities and, once there, spent lavishly on them. As the countryside was taxed and exploited to sustain urban living, and as the government established a public dole in many centers, the cities increasingly attracted the very peasantry upon whose labors in the countryside they depended. In the second and third centuries A.D. the expenditures of the cities outdistanced the fertility of the countryside, which became increasingly depopulated. With rural depopulation it became harder to find farm labor and army recruits, so that these occupations were finally made hereditary. A situation developed in which the problems of cities were treated with a dose of the very remedy sure to aggravate things: further expenditures on the cities and more taxes on agriculture. Ultimately this system exceeded its tolerance and collapsed. All of this was stimulated by competitive display, between cities, provinces, districts, sects, professions, classes, families, and individuals (see also Widney [1937: 16-21]). 

Robert Sharer (1977) argues that in the Mayan Late Classic both population size and sociopolitical complexity formed an intertwined upward spiral. State control over the economy led to greater efficiency in the production and distribution of food. This then led to larger populations, which in turn required more managerial control . But as population grew, measures taken to increase food production stretched environmental resources to the breaking point. New production systems were vulnerable to climatic shifts, natural disasters, disease/pest problems, and soil exhaustion. The elites compounded the crisis by increasing investment in monumental architecture, thus diverting time and labor from food production . Crop losses due to pests, soil exhaustion, climatic shifts, or some natural disaster, combined with an invasion by non-Mayan neighbors, led to collapse. 

Conrad and Demarest have presented (1984) an important discussion of political and economic weakness in the Aztec and Inca empires. They argue that ideological factors which were beneficial early in the histories of these empires became maladaptive later. For the Aztecs, the cult of Huitzilopochtli demanded human sacrifice to maintain the world, and this spurred militaristic expansion to secure the necessary victims. Among the Inca, property was not inherited by a new emperor. Each ruler continued to be served by his court and retinue, even after death, and to command the lands and resources held during life. Since a new ruler thus ascended to the throne without an endowment, continued conquests were necessary to avoid royal poverty. Both ideologies led to expansion, but became maladaptive when the number of profitable conquests declined. When the ideological system proved difficult to change, civil conflict inevitably followed. 

Friedman and Rowlands ( 1977) propose a model in which competitive feasting in tribal societies gives an incentive for surplus production. By the acquisition of captive external slaves and internal debt slaves, a conical clan forms in which one descent group promotes itself to chiefly rank. The expanding chiefdom, practicing perhaps swidden agriculture, will inevitably collapse due to declining productivity in an economy demanding accelerating surpluses.

Assessment 

By and large, these 'failure to adapt' arguments are superior in one respect to many considered up until this point. Recognizing that an understanding of collapse often depends more on the characteristics of the society than of its stresses, these authors postulate causal mechanisms - such as environmental insufficiency and the Law of Evolutionary Potential - to explain why adaptive responses are not made. This is a significant step. Yet as intriguing as some of these explanations are, they seem as a lot to rely on certain assumptions about the nature of complex societies, assumptions that the authors leave implicit. If these assumptions are made explicit, we will find that they give us cause for hesitation. The assumptions seem to revolve around three models of complex societies. For lack of more elegant terms, I will call them the Dinosaur model, the Runaway Train model, and the House of Cards model. 

In the Dinosaur model, a complex society is seen as a lumbering colossus, fixed in its morphology, and incapable of rapid change. Locked into an evolutionary dead end, it represents an investment in structure, size, and complexity that is awesome and admirable, yet highly maladaptive. When stresses arise, such a society cannot adapt, and so must expire . Complex societies seen thus present a spectacle of power that evokes both wonder and pity. In colloquial terms, they are all pitiful, helpless giants, and are inevitably outcompeted by newer, leaner, more aggressive societies.

The Dinosaur model, as characterized, is coincident with the Law of Evolutionary Potential, as well as with derivative and similar theories. The argument of this 'Law' is that all societies, complex or otherwise, run the risk of adapting so well to existing circumstances that change becomes impossible. Among complex societies this tendency becomes fatal when newer societies acquire capabilities that the lumbering colossus is incapable of adopting. 

The Runaway Train model may be a variant of the Dinosaur model, but it has its own distinct characteristics. A complex society is seen as impelled along a path of increasing complexity, unable to switch directions, regress, or remain static. When obstacles impinge, it can continue in only the direction it is headed, so that catastrophe ultimately results. 

The variety of studies that cite positive feedback mechanisms make precisely this assumption about complex societies. Ferrero's arguments about urbanization in the Roman Empire, Sharer's views about social and economic intensification among the Maya, and Conrad and Demarest's account of the Aztecs and the Inca, all assume that  some factor in these societies made it impossible to deviate from their catastrophic paths. 

The House of Cards model differs from the previous two. It suggests that complex societies, either as a rule or in certain kinds of environments , are inherently fragile, operating on low margins of reserve, so that their collapse is inevitable. Betty Meggers' environmental limitation theory, and Flannery's and Rappaport's maladaptation arguments, fall under this model.

There is much to give one pause in these models. Our present knowledge of complex societies does not allow us to either conclude or assume that they are inherently fragile, or static, or incapable of shifting directions, or that they cannot respond to productivity fluctuations, catastrophes, or other ailments. Indeed, it is not hard to point to societies that have done some or all of these things (e. g. , the Roman resurgence and reorganization following the crises of the third century A.D.; population movements and societal reorganization at various times in Southwestern prehistory; the Late Classic Mayan renaissance following the Hiatus [all to be discussed in Chapter 5]; and various political cycles in ancient China). In other words , our knowledge of complex societies will not support the assumptions such studies make. Complex societies are not simply intractable fossils. Where they do appear incapable of change, that is a matter to be explained. By itself it explains nothing. 

The Runaway Train model , as formulated in the cases of the Aztecs and the Inca, is belied by available data. In both cases, late rulers apparently perceived that further conquest was unprofitable, and took steps to change the politicaL and ideological systems that generated expansion. Conrad and Demarest ( 1984) interpret Aztec and Inca resistance to these changes as a failure of the attempt, but this cannot be known with confidence. The Spanish conquest prematurely terminated the process of change. The attempted reforms of Moctezuma II (Aztec) and Huascar (Inca) can easily be seen as appropriate first steps to curtail abusive systems. Certainly Webb's (1965) account of the overthrow of the kapu system in Hawaii by Kamehameha II indicates that ideologies, even entrenched ones, can be changed when necessary. 

A few additional comments are in order. When Willey argues that the Maya collapsed because they did not ' ... proceed far enough on the ceremonial-center-to-true-city continuum' (1978: 335) some confusion results. Other scholars have seemed to argue that the Maya may have been too far along this continuum, or at least too far for their environmental setting (e.g. , Meggers, Sabloff, Sharer). Mayanists cannot be expected to be more unified in their views than any other archaeologists, but some clarification of this point would be useful. Were the Maya too complex or not complex enough? And how can collapse result from both? 

Phillips' ( 1979) use of the term 'efficiency' carries a whole series of ambiguities. He argues (1979: 140) that societies using resources efficiently (i.e. , fully) experience inflexibility in resource allocation, since with more benefits a particular activity becomes harder to abandon. Here he assumes that activities performed efficiently by a complex society are necessarily beneficial. Conflict theorists will disagree - and we might all wonder. Indeed, the very notion that complexity is required to use resources efficiently is debatable. David Stuart argues the opposite: that complex societies use resources inefficiently, and that this is one of their weaknesses (Stuart and Gauthier 1981: 10-13). Finally, Phillips' assumption, that allocatable reserves decrease with increasing complexity, denies to complex societies any flexibility, and to their leaders any capacity for rational action. Phillips assumes that the levying of resources by a state (a) remains at a constant level, and (b) is not geared to needs. The possibility of increasing resource flow - by increasing taxes and/or by intensification - is ignored.

Other complex societies 

In some scenarios, competition with other complex societies is a cause of collapse, through various causal mechanisms. Lanning (1967: 140), for instance, suggests that competition between empires may have led to the demise of Huari and Tiahuanaco. R. E. W. Adams (l977b: 220) pursues a similar argument for Teotihuacan. Blanton ( 1978, 1983) follows a different tack. He suggests that political centralization at Monte Alban, in the Valley of Oaxaca, was a competitive response to the threat from Teotihuacan. With the collapse of the latter this need vanished. At the same time, growth of population would have led to filling of agricultural land and thus to increased disputes over this resource . The result would be a strain on the adjudicative authorities, including Monte Alban. With declining surpluses for supporting this political center, and its decreasing effectiveness at administration, the population became unwilling to support a political hierarchy that had lost its military role. 

Assessment 

Although there may be too many unverifiable factors in Blanton's argument (land disputes, willingness of a population to support a political center), it will have a certain appeal to integration theorists, although little or none to conflict theorists. Lanning's arguments about competition between empires raises matters that will be discussed in more depth in the final chapter. At this point it will suffice to say that conflict between empires more often leads to expansion of the victor than to the collapse of both. Major instances of collapse, such as that of Rome, cannot be explained by this principle. 

Intruders 

One of the most common explanations for collapse ascribes it to the effects of intruding populations, typically at a lower level of complexity than the society on which they impinge. Such scenarios are common in Europe, the Near East, and China, where literary traditions often refer to barbarian migrations. Intruder explanations are also to be found in the New World (with limited literary allusion), more often in some areas than in others. 

North and South America 

In a major review of theories of the Mayan collapse (as these stood in the early 1960s), George Cowgill ( 1964: 153) listed destruction of reservoirs by intruders as a possible contributor. Jeremy Sabloff, Gordon Willey, and Richard E. W. Adams, based on work in the Rio Pasion region, have constructed a scenario of invasion through this sector as a major factor in the collapse (Sabloff and Winey 1967; Sablorf 1973b; R. E. W. Adams 1971, 1973b). The archaeological characteristics of sites in this area suggest to these authors an occupation by non-Classic Mayan peoples, possibly from the Gulf Coast region. Sabloff, Willey, and Adams have over time modified their ideas about the relationship of this event to the collapse. Sahloff and Willey (1967) initially argued that these invaders sent raiding parties throughout the Peten, were successful against the Maya because of superior weapons (atlatl and spear), and caused regional collapse within 100 years of their arrival . More recent statements downplay the invaders' role (e.g. Willey and Shimkin 1973; Hosler, Sabloff, and Runge 1977). R. E. W. Adams assigns to the invaders a supplememary role in the collapse: that throughout the Lowlands the news of their presence led to loss of morale and to civil wars . With raiding and local production disasters, collapse ensued (R. E. W. Adams 1971: 164, 197, 1973b: 152). Hove (1981) has studied spatial trends in the cessation of stela (stone monument) construction across the Lowlands. He does find some west to east trend (the direction of the postulated invasion), but it is only a weak tendency.

Writing of the Mesoamerican Highlands, Willey ascribes the collapse of the Highland city of Teotihuacan to northern barbarians who acculturated to Teotihuacan civilization, and then destroyed it (1966: 116). Rene Millon, who has conducted the major study of the city, notes that the monumental architecture of the Street of the Dead (temples, pyramids, etc.) was burned in a ritualistic manner, and that in later Mesoamerican history such an act signified political subjugation. He suggests that the city center was destroyed by invaders, with subsequent local uprisings (Millon 1981: 236-8). 

With support from literary traditions (which significantly postdate the twelfth-century event), the collapse of Tula is often ascribed to invading northern barbarians (M. Weaver 1972: 2 13; Davies 1977: 364-5). 

Farther to the north, the Anasazi abandonment of the Colorado Plateau is sometimes attributed to an early invasion by Athabaskan peoples (summarized in Reed [1944: 69], Martin, Quimby, and Collier [1947: 146], and Martin and Plog [1973: 323]). Similar notions have been advanced regarding the end of Hopewell in the Midwest (discussed in Braun [1977: 37]). 

In South America, the collapses or the Huari and Tiahuanaco empires are sometimes blamed on invading barbarians (Lanning 1967: 140).

The Harappan Civilization 

Based on the traditions of the Rigveda, the downfall of the Harappan Civilization is frequently attributed to invading Aryans, who toppled this urban society by virtue of superior military technology (war chariots) (Piggott 1950; Wheeler 1968; Allchin and Ahchin 1968). To Piggott, the invaders found a society already crumbling; ' ... [Civilization . . . was already effete and on the wane 'when the raiders came .. : (1950: 239). 

Mesopotamia 

Less complex societies are frequently implicated in the fall of various Mesopotamian politics, often in Mesopotamian literary accounts. The downfall of Sargon of Akkad,for instance, is attributed to Gutian invaders from the eastern mountains (discussed in Oates [1979: 37]), while the fall of Ur is ascribed to Amorites and Elamites (Diakonoff 1969: 197).

The Hittite Empire 

The collapse of the Hittite Empire, ca. 1200 B.C., is frequently seen as the action of migratory 'Sea Peoples,' who engulfed the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean, and who were stopped only at the gates of Egypt. Some see the collapse as due to a combination of these invaders and the Hittites' traditional enemies, the barbarian Kaskas . Egyptian records speak of the Hittites as having fallen before such invaders (Hogarth 1926; Akurgal 1962; Barnett 1975a, 1975b; Goetze 1975c). An inscription of Ramesses III reads in part 'The isles were restless, disturbed among themselves. No land stood before their weapons, from Khatti [the Hittites], Qode, Carchemish, Arzawa and Alishiya on' (quoted in Carpenter [ 1966: 43]). 

Minoan Civilization 

Various authors assign the Minoan collapse to invading Mycenaean Greeks, themselves only recently the recipients of Minoan Civilization (Carpenter 1966: 32-3; Matz 1973b: 580-1; Chadwick 1976: 10-12; Willetts 1977: 136). Usually, some factor is invoked - the eruption of Thera or a great earthquake ca. 1500 B.C. - that weakened Cretan power and opened the door to mainland invasion. 

Mycenaean Civilization 

The destruction of Mycenaean Civilization by Dorian Greek invaders is the classic example of an intruder theory, and is endorsed by a variety of current scholars (e.g. , Taylour 1964; Vermeule 1964; Mylonas 1966; Desborough 1972, 1975; Stubbings 1975b; Chadwick 1976). 

The Roman Empire 

The role of barbarians in the fall of the Roman Empire has been a subject of debate since the invasions themselves (Mazzarino 1966). It is a topic so well known that there is no need to discuss it in any depth here. 

China 

The susceptibility of the northern frontier to barbarian incursions is a constant theme of Chinese history, and has been well treated by Lattimore (1940). 

Assessment 

Barbarian invasions have a clear attraction to collapse theorists, somewhat like catastrophe explanations. They provide a clean, simple resolution to a distressingly convoluted problem. As a deus ex machina, invasions are an old favorite in archaeological studies, where sudden episodes of cultural change may otherwise be difficult to explain. They have a similar attraction in the study of collapse. In some cases, fear of 'uncivilized' peoples has served to legitimize existing political arrangements, as well as taxation, military expenditures, and behavioral regimentation.

Invasion explanations do not offer global coverage, being irrelevant in such cases as the Ik and Highland Burma. They are unsatisfactory in that a recurrent process - collapse - is explained by a random variable, by historical accident. But the fundamental problem with intruder theories is that they do not clarify much. The overthrow of a dominant state by a weaker, tribally-organized people is an event greatly in need of explanation. It is, standing alone, an acceptable explanation of nothing. Notwithstanding Service's 'Law' of Evolutionary Potential,' complex societies are not dinosaurs , they do not fossilize, and they do not succumb to smaller states due to inertia. The later Roman Empire, as an example, brought forth technical innovations, new applications for old technologies , and effective leaders like Constantine, Julian, and Stilicho (Mazzarino 1966: 186). The assumptions required by the intruder theory are simply unacceptable.

There are so many factual debates regarding intruder theories that it is necessary to discuss only one: the Dorian invasion of Mycenaean Greece. Quite simply, for a people who wrought such devastation, the Dorians have left curiously little archaeological trace (Taylour 1964: 176; Mylonas 1966: 228; Desborough 1975 : 660, 662). Only two artifacts were introduced at this time (the cut-and-thrust sword and the violin-bow fibula), and both were used by the Mycenaeans, not by invaders (Desborough 1975 : 660, 662). Desborough suggests that perhaps the invaders completed their work and then withdrew (1972 : 22) (which notion leaves the historic linguistic distribution unexplained). Rhys Carpenter, in his ever-delightful prose, characterizes the dilemma well:

All in ail, an extraordinary and paradoxical situation, in which there is no sign of the presence of any hostile invader, for whom no route of entry and no passage can be found; yet the native population is deserting its established habitations as though driven by some invisible and nameless terror, 'like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing' (1966: 40). 

Desborough suggestion of destruction and withdrawal raises a point of uncertainty in regard to the Harappan, Mycenaean, and Mayan collapses: if these areas were so worth invading, why then destroy those things that would repay conquest? This and the other ambiguities in the intruder theory tempt one to rename it the Poltergeist model: collapse is caused by mysterious troublemakers, whose behavior is inexplicable, and whose very presence is difficult to show . 

Conflict/contradictions/mismanagement 

Judging by the number of authors whose work falls under this theme, it may be the most popular approach to understanding collapse . There is some variety in the approaches lumped herein - class conflict, Marxian contradictions, and elite misbehavior or mismanagement - but the common underlying theme is antagonism and conflicting goals between social classes. Collapse is thought to result from such conflicts through withdrawal of support and outright revolt by peasant populations , and by elite self-serving and political mismanagement. There are a variety of both general and area-specific applications of these ideas.

General 

Conflict theories date at least to the time of Plato, who believed proper government to be a balance of democracy and despotism, with an excess of either leading to decay (Laws), and Aristotle, who suggested that arrogance and self-aggrandizement in office engender factional conflicts, revolutions, and the destruction of regimes (Politics). Polybius (1979) relied heavily on class conflict in his cyclical theory of political evolution. 

The great Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, in the fourteenth century, developed a cyclical theory of history that falls under this theme ( 1958 [original 1377-8 1]). He argued that dynasties run their course from accession to fall in three to four generations: the founder, who had the personal qualities needed to gain paramount power; his son, who had personal contact with the founder and learned his qualities; the third generation heir, who never knew the founder and must be content with imitation and reliance on tradition; and the fourth, who is inferior in every respect and even despises good qualities. Dynasties thus have a natural life span like individuals . In the course of this progression rulers become ever more addicted to luxuries and security. Taxes are raised to pay for these. Whereas at the beginning of a dynasty large revenues are received from small assessments, at the end of a dynasty this situation is reversed. When taxes are low, the population is more productive and the tax yield is greater. Yet as the dynasty evolves, increased spending on luxury leads to higher taxes. Eventually taxes become so burdensome that productivity first declines, then is stifled. As more taxes are enacted to counter this, the point is finally reached where the polity is destroyed. 

In the early eighteenth century Giambattista Vico postulated a cyclical theory of history which proceeded from First Barbarian Times to Civil Societies, and back to Returned Barbarian Times . The factors responsible are changing relations of dominance between elites and the populace, class conflict, and pursuit of self-interest. In a civil society, discord fanned by demagoguery leads to the abandonment of civic responsibilities for the pursuit of individual goals. This in turn leads to barbarism: ' ... through obstinate factions and desperate civil wars, they shall turn their cities into forests and the forests into dens and lairs of men' (Bergin and Fisch 1948: 381).

This theme was seconded later in the eighteenth century by C. F. Volney, who was spurred by seeing the ruins of Palmyra to consider why empires decline. His conclusion was that greed and despotism lead to degradation of the populace, and this weakens societies and brings on collapse. In ancient states, as a result of greed and class conflict, 

... a holy indolence spread over the political world; the fields were deserted, empires depopulated, monuments neglected and deserts multiplied; ignorance, superstition and fanaticism combining their operations, overwhelmed the earth with devastation and ruin (Volney 1793: 51). 

Volney's concerns were not solely for the disasters of antiquity, but also for the possibility that a similar fate might befall his own world:  

Who knows if on the banks of the Seine, the Thames , or the Zuyder-Zee ... some traveller, like myself, shall not one day sit on their silent ruins and weep in solitude over the ashes of their inhabitants, and the memory of their greatness? (1793: 25). 

In more recent times, Casson suggested that civilization in his day had already collapsed, and that the responsible factor was increased factional conflict (1937: 202). Julian Steward ascribed the collapses of ancient civilizations to a causal sequence in which empires, irrigation works, and population all grew in concert, but where overexploitation of the population led to rebellion, reversion to smaller states, and dark ages (1955: 24). Karl Wittfogel, discussing hydraulic societies, suggested that decay occurs when elites anogate to themselves an increasing portion of the national surplus (1955, 1957: 171). 

Among less complex societies, excessive demands and abuse by paramount individuals are known to lead to withdrawal of support (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940: 11; Leach 1954: 204; Sahlins 1963, 1968). Friedman (1975) offers a generalized model in which competitive feasting between lineages leads to differential ranking. Accelerating demands for surpluses lead in turn to ecological degradation, weakening the hierarchical structure. Friedman's model has been applied by Pearson (1984) to account for cyclical collapses in the Iron Age of Jutland, and for the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain . 

Erwin suggests that civilizations gain ' ... stamina according to how widely they diffuse operational responsibility' (1966: 1193). The Indus Civilization concentrated power in a few, and crumbled. 

Claessen and Skalnik (l978b: 634) argue that in the evolution of early states a point is reached where the state organization becomes an instrument in the hands of members of a landed class which has monopolistic control over the means of production. At this point , which marks the end of the early state, it may no longer be possible to prevent fission. Haas suggests that investment in police forces for social control is costly and destabilizes a regime (1982: 211-12). Service implicates quarrels between levels of a hierarchy as leading to centrifugal tendencies (1975: 300-1). 

Political scientists have made similar points, most especially through the major work of Eisenstadt (1963, 1978). He notes that the major difficulties in empires have tended to be: (a) pressure on resources caused by the extravagance of the elites; (b) faulty administration in dealing with concrete problems; (c) the distribution of power among groups and regions; and (d) crises in relations of rulers and elites, or competition between elites (Eisenstadt 1963: 237). Rulers have often pursued policies favoring immediate fiscal and personnel needs, to the detriment of long-term economic development, and at the cost of depleting or alienating the support population (Eisenstadt 1963: 318). As resources come to be depleted and peasantry alienated, taxes are often increased, and power delegated to local authorities. Feudal systems emerge that undermine central authority. Societies in such conditions are susceptible to collapse (Eisenstadt 1963: 318-19, 327, 343, 349-50, 1978: 96). The driving factor throughout is the leadership's pursuit of costly political goals. 

Mancur Olson's (1982) thesis is that, in complex societies, special interest groups promote their own welfare above that of the state. The resulting damage leads to national economic weakness.

Mesoamerica 

Conflict theories have a distinguished history in Mesoamerican research, especially in the Mayan area, where 'peasant revolt' models (and variations thereon) have enjoyed long currency (e.g., Morley 1956: 68-9). Sir Eric Thompson is most closely associated with this view, having argued that increased demands for services, construction, and food led to a peasant revolt that toppled Mayan civilization (1966: 105). Hamblin and Pitcher argue that intensive cultivation resulted in the displacement of peasants from their land, turning them into an agricultural proletariat (1980: 251). They cite graphic representations of elites dominating peasants, and the post-Classic mutilation of elite sculpted faces (but not those of commoners), in support of the peasant revolt scenario. 

More recent studies have concentrated on managerial theories, such as Willey and Shimkin's ideas about inadequate bureaucratic response to the Late Classic stresses ( 1973 : 491), ideas which are followed by other scholars (e.g. , Hosler, Sabloff, and Runge 1977). Webb cites the resource strains attendant upon elite attempts to participate in long-distance trade (1973). Cowgill implicates Late Classic militarism and inter-polity competition, which led to population growth, over taxation, and destructive wars (1979: 61). Lowe argues that agricultural degradation weakened the population at the same time that elite demands intensified (1985: 1 87-8, 231). 

Katz involves internal unrest in the external overthrow of Teotihuacan (1972: 78-9). Millon, as noted, also invokes internal discord (1981). Blanton's (1983) idea of Oaxacan dissatisfaction with the Monte Alban administration has already been discussed. Cowgill (1977: 1 89-90) compares the breakdown of Teotihuacan to the Chinese dynastic cycle, with larger and more inefficient bureaucracies allocating resources to themselves, leading to lower state revenues, exploitation of peasantry, and ultimately fall and restoration. 

Beyond the northern Mesoamerican frontier, DiPeso assigns the destruction of the center of Casas Grandes to local revolt against foreign rulers (1974 (2): 320-1). 

Peru 

Lanning (1967: 140) and Katz (1972: 247) both suggest peasant revolt for the collapse of the Huari Empire. 

China 

Chinese political thought (seconded to a great extent by current historical research) has long seen conflict and mismanagement as the sources of dynastic collapse (i.e., since at least the Warring States period and the Confucian era) (Lattimore 1940: 45; Creel 1953, 1970; Fairbank et al. 1973: 72-3). All great dynasties began with initial prosperity and peace, as land was brought back into production. Palaces, roads, canals, and walls would be built, and costly defensive lines maintained. But as imperial relatives, nobility, and the bureaucracy increased in numbers and grew used to luxury, more resources were allocated to the ruling class, and less to administration. Because of increased expenditures, and often a slightly declining income; each dynasty experienced serious financial diffIculties within a century of its founding. Official self-serving and corruption would worsen, administrative efficiency would decline, and there would be more factional quarrels at court. Potential rivals of the imperial family became more independent. Burdens on the peasantry were increased at the same time that dikes and canals were allowed to fall into disrepair. Famines that previously would have been met from government granaries now would lead to starvation, banditry, and peasant uprisings. Inadequately maintained frontier defenses crumbled. Provincial officials and their armies began to defect. The resulting wars would clear the slate for a new dynasty (Fairbank et al. 1973 : 72-3; Lattimore 1940; 531).

Within this broader process, Lattimore has implicated a social system that emphasized large families while the economic system provided no activities for surplus labor. Agrarian depression was the inevitable result (Lattimore 1940; 45), Boserup argues the contrary view, that there was insufficient labor to maintain irrigation systems, peasants were consequently overworked, and upkeep of investments was thus neglected (1981: 87). 

Mesopotamia 

Norman Yoffee (1979) argues that in the Old Babylonian period, losses of conquered territories and revenues were met by intensification within the remaining territories, and by proliferation of new offices and ranks. This may have been an attempt to administer the crown lands more intensively, but only aggravated the problem. Yoffee suggests that collapse was due to a failure to integrate ' traditional, locally autonomous controls within and among city-states within the larger sociopolitical organization' (1979: 14).

Struve ( 1969) and Tyumenev (1969) argue that the development of slave economies in Mesopotamia led to economic weakness, and made societies like Akkad, Ur, and Babylon susceptible to collapse. Diakonoff suggests that the Gutian invasion of Akkad led to a popular rising, but that the Gutians themselves ultimately developed a burdensome rule (1969: 193). 

Jankowska (1969) constructs a scenario where trade within the neo- Assyrian Empire (ca. eighth century B.c.) and tribute imposed on subject countries brought advantage only to Assyria: any goods bought from subject countries were purchased with their own tribute. The subject countries then had to seek alternative trade routes, avoiding Assyrian commercial centers. Increasing economic differentiation of regions was in 'contradiction' to the predatory policy of the Assyrian Empire. As this contradiction grew there came to be more traffic along new trade routes, and less along old ones. Jankowska concludes: 

It seems that the explanation of the law of inverse ratio between the dimensions of political entities of the type of the Assyrian Empire and their stability is to be sought in the steadily growing aggravation of this contradiction (1969: 276). 

Jacobsen and Adams' (1958; R. McC. Adams 1974, 1978, 1981) arguments regarding political intensification, mismanagement, and agricultural disaster on the Mesopotamian alluvium have been summarized previously (see also Gibson [1974] and Waines [1977]).

The Roman Empire 

Interpretations of conflict and mismanagement abound in Roman studies (e.g., Wason 1973 ; Westermann 1915; Bernardi 1970; Guha 1981: 64-7), and can be traced to the later Empire itself. Ammianus Marcellinus, for example, attributed Roman decadence to growth of the bureaucracy, and to excessive taxation (Mazzarino 1966: 54). Gibbon, although he cited a variety of causes for the Roman collapse in his classic work (Christianity, decline of martial spirit, ignorance of dangers), indicted poor leadership as frequently as any other factor ( 1776-88). 

Frank ascribed the Roman failure to lack of vision on the part of the landed gentry: the willingness during the Republic to betray the peasantry for large slave estates, and to accept the monarchy for personal safety (1940: 304). Caudwell indicted soil impoverishment by large estates and the general demoralization of the exploited class (1971: 55). Boak and Sinnigen single out the fact that 

Rome failed to develop an economic system that could give to the working classes of the Empire living conditions sufficiently advantageous to encourage them to support it devotedly and to reproduce in adequate numbers (1965 : 522). 

Dill also cited the economic weakness of the Roman class system, but believed that collapse was due to the ruin of the middle class and of the municipalities (1 899: 245). 

Childe noted a contradiction of Hellenistic and Roman economy - the lack of adequate development or extension of productive forces, leaving the peasantry static or declining. The resulting low standard of living restricted internal markets, and when the economy could no longer grow by spatial expansion, it began to decline. By A.D. 250 prosperity was gone and the Empire was economically dead (Childe 1942: 280-5 ; see also Heitland [1962]). 

Isaac (1971) suggested that multiple factors were responsible for the Empire's demise, but like Gibbon he seemed regularly to focus on poor management. West ( 1933: 103) cited a number of factors he believed were responsible for the collapse of the Empire. Most are economic in nature, but seem to involve mismanagement: (a) slavery; (b) introduction of barbarians into the Empire; (c) waste of precious metals and capital in domestic luxuries; (d) export of precious metals to pay for imported luxuries; (e) increasing state authoritarianism; and (f) increasing taxation and expenditures . Brown suggests a novel idea: that the Senatorial aristocracy and the Catholic Church in the West had disassociated themselves from the army, and unwittingly sapped its strength (1971 : 119). C. Northcote Parkinson, true to the theme of his other writings, blamed over-taxation ( 1963 : 121). 

In one of the fundamental works of Marxist theory, Engels singled out Roman exploitation of the provinces as bringing on impoverishment, declines in commerce and population, the decay of towns, and lower agricultural activity ( 1972 : 208-9). 

Rostovtzeff (1926) developed one of the most unusual class conflict explanations, especially of the crisis of the third century A.D. The peasant army, to Rostovtzeff, was resentful of the privileged in cities. The power of the military led to increased pay and ruinous costs under the Severan dynasty (early third century A.D.). These emperors militarized the government, staffed it with peasants, and eliminated the traditional upper classes from the army and the administration. Civil strife between military contenders weakened defenses and allowed barbarian incursions. This in turn led to the regimentation of the population, and to the rigid system of Diocletian and Constantine. There came to be little inducement to betterment, for then one would merely be forced to work for the state. When the state was threatened, it named itself the prime economic beneficiary (Rostovtzeff 1926: 208), 

A different interpretation of the role of the military has been offered by writers who blamed decline on the end of compulsory service, and consequent employment of barbarians (e . g., Piganiol 1962; Salmon 1970). 

An alternative class conflict view has been offered by Ste. Croix (1981), who believes that the wealthy classes depressed the political and legal status of almost all others to the slave level. Many were exploited for the benefit of a few, and increasingly so through time. Conflicts and tensions between classes amounted to societal contradictions . By the Severan period the legal rights of the poorer classes were practically gone. With nothing to restrain the greed and ambition of the propertied class except the Emperor, the support base for the Empire was ruined (see also Walbank [1969, 1970]). 

Toynbee's (1965) views were along similar lines, although not so overstated, and relied on a different mechanism, Toynbee argued that the destruction of the Italian countryside and peasantry during the Hannibalic war led to decline of subsistence production and the formation of large estates producing for market sale. The subsequent expansion of Rome brought ruin to the peasantry, power and wealth to the elites. A professional army replaced that formerly composed of peasants. The consequences overall were far-reaching, and condemned the Roman Empire, in advance, to be short-lived (Toynbee 1965: 9). 

The Byzantine Empire 

Charanis (1953) argued that the eleventh-century decline of the Byzantine Empire resulted from the triumph of the landed military aristocracy, and the decline of the soldier-peasantry. As great landowners absorbed small holdings, free peasant proprietors began to disappear. Conflict between emperors and the rising aristocracy brought on civil wars. Manpower and resources were drained at a time when new enemies appeared. A mercenary army was adopted, while overtaxed, alienated peasants lost all concern for the welfare of the state.

Spain 

Economic weakness, managerial ineptitude, and a lack of inclination to economic development are routinely cited in explaining the Spanish imperial decline (e.g., Vives 1970; Elliott 1970). 'The state,' claims Vives, 'neglected to develop the country's interests and trampled on the ethic which should have ruled its relations with its subjects' (1970: 166). 

The Netherlands 

High taxes are implicated by many writers as among the factors that led to the eighteenth-century Dutch economic decline (e.g. , Wilson 1969: 116-22; Boxer 1970). 

The Harappans 

If the Harappans were not after all done in by mud, there is no end to ingenious explanations of their collapse. Miller believes there was a contradiction between a Harappan ideology that refused to acknowledge change and human aspirations, and an inevitable tendency toward individual and group aggrandizement, heresy, and innovation. This contradiction could only manifest itself in the revolutionary overthrow of the state (Miller 1985: 64). 

Easter Island 

The great statue-carving period on Easter Island, writes Englert (1970), ended when two population segments came into conflict over agricultural development. With the subsequent political disintegration, conditions became everywhere unsafe. 

Assessment 

Conflict explanations achieve one remarkable thing: they appeal to the spectrum from Marxists to capitalists. The former's view has been treated in the preceding pages. The latter's is exemplified in the following quote: 

In a word, the poor and the army [of Rome] had eaten up the capital of the thrifty, and the western half of Europe sank into the dark ages, from which it did not emerge until the thrifty and energetic could again safely use their abilities in wealth-producing activities (West 1933: 106). 

Few explanatory themes are so flexible in application. 

The basic objections to conflict explanations of decreasing complexity largely mirror those given in Chapter 2 to conflict theories of increasing complexity. There are, however, additional considerations. Attention here will be on general considerations, and on the two major themes of elite mismanagement and exploitation, and disaffection/revolt among the populace. 

Class conflict theories must at some point make the argument that complex societies come ultimately to violate one of the tenets of their existence. One consequence of the administrative capacity to control labor and allocate resources is the ability to deal with natural and social adversities. Since both the population and the administrators of a complex society benefit from this capability, it must achieve some recognition in both integration and conflict theory. Conflict theorists, in particular, will have to acknowledge that any rational dominant class, however oppressive, must make some provision for the welfare of the populace on which they rely. Any suggestion that complex societies fail because of a characteristic - control of labor and resources - that is both intrinsic to their nature and crucial to their survival, simply leaves too many questions unanswered. Not the least of these is why some complex societies fail as a result of overtaxing their populations, and some don't. 

Since elementary self-interest will dictate that a dominant elite look after their support population (as they would any vital resource), the few instances where this may not have happened (later Roman Empire, later phases of Chinese dynastic cycles) urgently require explanation . Failure to resolve this matter when citing elite misbehavior as a cause of collapse ultimately reduces the explanation to a dichotomous psychological variable: some elites behave rationally and some don't. It need hardly be pointed out that this dichotomy is not illuminating. Until some theory is developed concerning the expression of elite rationality vs. collective suicide, we may confidently dismiss the elite mismanagement argument as unproductive. 

In a similar vein, the use of greed and self-aggrandizement (e.g. , among landed gentry or entrenched bureaucrats) as explanations for economic weakness and collapse really take us nowhere. Both are psychological factors whose expression, to the extent that it is variable, needs explanation . We cannot cite collapse as a function of greed if greed itself is not fully understood. To the extent that elite self-aggrandizement is controlled by social, political, and economic factors (as in the later phases of Chinese dynasties), then it is these social, political, and economic factors that are relevant to understanding collapse. Greed and self-aggrandizement are symptoms and contributors, but not final causes. Many conflict theorists, fortunately, are well aware of this point, but perhaps even more of those reviewed herein show no indication that they are. Too many authors begin their arguments under the assumption that self·aggrandizement is an independent, controlling factor. 

Two points are in order regarding elite exploitation and mismanagement. These are: 

1. exploitation is a normal cost of stratification; and 

2. bad government is a normal cost of government. 

Clearly these points cannot be regarded without controversy. The argument is that these things occur with such expectable regularity, and are so difficult to predict, that a society finding it necessary to invest in stratification and/or government must expect exploitation and/or misgovernment as a normal cost of that investment. It seems difficult, from the experience of history, to argue otherwise (see, e.g. , Tuchman 1984). 

If exploitation and misadministration are normal aspects of hierarchy, then it is difficult to see these as sources for the collapse of hierarchies. Moreover, if these are regular and recurrent, then by themselves they cannot easily account for collapse, which is an occasional event. If the Roman elite class, for example, was corrupt and exploitative by the first century B.C. (as many argue), and if this led to the collapse,why then did the Western Empire survive until the fifth century A.D.? As Guha has noted, social conflict ' .. . is the price of the existence of society itself; and since man cannot survive without society, it is hardly something that can be described on balance as dysfunctional' (1981: 11).

Additional considerations apply to the 'peasant revolt' scenario. Peasants are frequently disaffected, but they rarely revolt. They are usually passive spectators of political struggles. Peasants often harbor a sense of injustice, but this needs to be given shape and expression. Thus peasant wars are generally initiated by a fusion of disaffected intellectuals or military leaders, and rural supporters. Moreover, peasantry will rarely join an uprising until the superior military forces of the rulers have been neutralized (Wolf 1969). More often the chief weapons of peasants are to turn to large landowners for protection, and/or to increase their passivity and indifference to the success of a regime (Eisenstadt 1963: 209), both of which happened in the later Roman Empire. Revolutions usually aim at a transformation of regime, or at restoration with modification (Kann 1 968), not at sociopolitical collapse. A new hierarchy is always implicit in the alliance between intellectuals and peasants. 

These brief notes indicate that the archaeological reliance on the peasant revolt explanation of collapse, which is so favored in some areas, greatly requires more attention to the known dimensions of peasant political action. 

It is appropriate to close this section by noting that not all misadministration is exploitative. Certainly there are cases where problem solving is well meaning but inept. The popular media, for example, recently carried an article suggesting that a large Southwestern pueblo was abandoned because the populace devoted excessive energy to ritual control of the environment, and too little time to actual farming (Brovsky 1985). This idea seems most appropriately characterized as the Neronian model: the Anasazi prayed while the corn was spurned.

Social dysfunction 

This is a vague theme that requires little discussion. Its essence is that societIes collapse due to mysterious internal processes whose nature cannot be specified. Martin, Quimby, and Collier, for example, listed integrative deficiencies of Puebloan social organization as one source of collapse and abandonment in the American Southwest (1947: 147). Melikishvili proposes that societies fall due to (a) violation of systemic connections in the economic core, and (b) external influences (1976-7: 32). Friedman argues that 'If social forms fail, it is because they have laws of their own whose purpose is other than making optimal use of their techno 'environments' (1974: 466). 

Assessment 

Popular writers like to think in terms of social dysfunction, and often expound vaguely about unraveling of the fabric of society. This clearly should be known (as suggested to me by Bonnie Bagley Tainter) as the Warp and Woof model of collapse. 

In a more serious vein, these studies alike offer neither sources of stress nor causal mechanisms that can be analyzed in any objective manner. They are thus unsatisfactory as explanations for collapse.

Mystical factors 

Mystical explanations are second in popularity to those that postulate class conflict (an interesting fact in this age supposedly dominated by rational science). Their essence is that they contain no reference to empirically knowable processes, and often make value judgements about particular societies. Mystical explanations rely on concepts like 'decadence,' 'vigor,' or 'senility' ; societies are ranked according to these subjective factors, and collapse is explained accordingly. 'Decadent' societies, in this view, are seen negatively, and are axiomatically liable to disintegrate. Many, many such theories have been developed, of great diversity, indeed often of diametrically opposite  views . They are united in their lack of concern with empirically knowable or observable factors, and in their reliance on an author's subjective assessment of individual societies. 

In contrast to the themes discussed to this point, mystical explanations are presented more often as universal theories than as case-specific scenarios. There are plenty of the latter to be sure, but for once they need not dominate the discussion. The best known of such accounts arc those of Spengler and Toynbee, but these authors are merely the most prominent of a crowded field, a field with a long history indeed. 

Mesopotamian historiography contains what must surely be one of the oldest explanations of collapse. In considering the fall of Sargon of Akkad and of the Third Dynasty of Ur, the decline of empires Was ascribed by Mesopotamian writers to the impiousness of rulers, and to marauding enemies sent by the gods as punishment. Cities flourish under good kings, but suffer under impious ones (discussed in Yoffee [1982]).

Plato observed that in his day thousands of states had come into existence and perished (Laws), He asserted a biological analogy that has never disappeared from collapse studies: ' ... since all created things must decay, even a social order. .. cannot last forever, but will decline' (Plato 1955: 315). The controlling dynamic, to Plato, was that there is a right and a wrong time for human reproduction, If the right time is not met, ' ... the children will be begotten amiss' (Plato 1955: 316). The appropriate time is controlled by a mystical numerology. The frequency with which it is missed leads to poor leadership, to war, hatred, and strife, and to conflict between those interested in either profit or virtue. Class oppression results.  

Polybius, in a remarkable second-century B.C. anticipation of the Roman collapse some six centuries later, continued the biological analogy: 'Every organism, every state and every activity passes through a natural cycle, first of growth, then of maturity and finally of decay . . . ' ( 1979: 345). The victory of Rome over Carthage was accounted for by the fact that Rome was ascending this cycle, and Carthage declining , at the time of their conflict. Rome was then at its zenith, but changes for the worse were sure to follow. 'This state ,' wrote Polybius, ' ... will pass through a natural cycle to its decay' (1979: 310). 

The decline of Rome was a source of speculation from the second century B.C. until the final collapse (Mazzarino 1966). Sallust ascribed Roman 'decadence' to loss of virtue and the biological cycle: ' ... everything that is born dies' (in Mazzarino [1966: 27]). To Seneca the Elder the decline of Italian agriculture was a sign of sociocultural age (Mazzarino 1 966: 32-3). 

Such thinking became commonplace with the onset of true crisis in the third century A.D. Cyprian's views on the matter have been quoted earlier in this chapter. To Ammianus Marcellinus in the fourth century, Rome had gone through a phase of childhood, with wars in her immediate vicinity, adulthood, when she crossed the Alps and the sea, youth and manhood, the time of great triumphs, and was now declining into old age (1939: 37). Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, and Vegetius, both contemporaries of Ammianus Marcellinus, seconded the theme of decadence (Mazzarino 1966: 53, 55). 

To pagans of the era the blame for Rome's troubles was to be placed on Christians, and to Christians, the barbarians and other troubles were the judgements of God for Roman sins and transgressions (Mazzarino 1 966: 56, 58, 65). Saint Augustine wrote his City of God in response to the pagan charges (completed 426 A.D.). Augustine's theory was that there were two kinds of persons, the good inhabitants of the City of God, who would be purified and improved by the troubles, and the evil, who loved worldly things, and would be overwhelmed. 

In the fourteenth century Petrarch explained the fall of Rome by the disappearance of great men. Later, what was apparently the first 'decline and fall' was written by Flavio Biondo ( 1392-1463). His Historiarum ab Inclinatione Romanorum Imperii Decades Tres ( 1453) covers the years 412-1441 (R. M. Adams 1983: 19). To Flavio Biondo the collapse was attributable to the persecution of the Christians, the deterioration of moral life, and the arrival of inferior types of humanity. Leonardo Bruni Aretino ( 1441) was similar on this last point: the government was transferred into the worst hands, and so fell (Mazzarino 1 966: 77-84). 

To Antonio Agostino, a fifteenth-century Bishop of Lerida, and to most Renaissance thinkers, the Roman decline was due to abandonment of ancient manners. Machiavelli (Discourses on Livy) argued that the Romans won their early wars by their virtue, but when later this virtue was lacking and the armies had lost their ancient valor, the Western Empire was destroyed. Rome came to this condition when it was corrupted by its colonies. A great power becomes dependent on its colonies, and thus a colony itself (Mansfield 1979: 211-12, 215). 

Interesting diversions from this tradition were provided by Rheticus and Jean Bodin. Rheticus, a disciple of Copernicus, proposed ( 1540-3) a Copernican explanation of collapse: the rise and fall of monarchies was tied to the terrestrial orbit and the sun's eccentricities. To Jean Bodin ( 1566) the birth and death of states was deterministically regulated by the perfect number 496 (Mazzarino 1966: 90). Bodin's tradition has been continued into recent times by at least two authors. Quetelet wrote in 1848 that five ancient empires each lasted an average of 1461 years, which in Egyptian numerology is the life span of the phoenix (in Kroeber 1957: 111). Lawler (1970) believes that history is cyclic, following a 1470-year rise and fall pattern. Each such pattern contains 2 sub-patterns of 735 years, in turn broken down into 10 phases. The collapse of the United States is predicted by 2040 (Lawler 1970: 249). 

Montesquieu's major work on the rise and fall of Rome continued the morality argument. Roman power derived from Roman virtue, and when this declined the Romans weakened. Under the emperors the populace became a vile mob. Campaigning beyond Italy led to a decline in civic spirit among the soldiers. Epicureanism undermined the moral order. Rome gradually declined until collapse came under the emperors Acacias and Honorius (ca. 400 A.D.) (Montesquieu 1968). 

Gibbon ( 1776-88) cited a number of factors in the Roman collapse, including relaxation of military discipline, Christianity, ignorance of dangers, bad emperors, and the decline of martial spirit with prosperity.

Herder (1968 [original 1784- 911) believed that all human structures are transitory, and become oppressive within a few generations. Rome would in the end have been destroyed by class conflict or the military, but the proximate cause was the importation of luxuries leading to depraved, indolent living, vices, divorce, slavery, and tyranny toward the best persons. The population declined in numbers, stature, and 'vital energy' (Herder 1968: 250). 

Hegel's Philosophy of History ( 1956) originated as a series of lectures in 1830 and 1831. Hegel believed that a polity is well constituted when the private interests of the citizens are one with the common interests of the state. But since material cravings, instincts, and self-interest present themselves first, some time is needed to achieve this point. A nation is moral and virtuous while pursuing its grand objects, but once these are realized, once opposition vanishes, the supreme Interest also vanishes, and the spirit of the people disappears. A nation lives the same kind of life as an individual, passing from maturity to an old age in which there is satisfaction at accomplishment. This customary life brings on natural death, and a people then perish. 

Curious perspectives on disintegration were offered by the Adams brothers, Brooks and Henry (distinguished historians and descendants of American presidents). Brooks Adams (1896) believed that the properties of the mind are strongly hereditary. Human societies vary in respect to how nature has endowed them with 'energetic material' (B. Adams 1896: ix). When a race is so richly endowed with energetic material that not all is expended in the daily struggle, the surplus may be stored in the form of wealth, Capitalism may result therefrom, as well as emphasis on economic and scientific intellect. Class stratification is inevitable, and can lead to collapse. In Rome, a martial, energetic race was exterminated by the usurers and landowners. The Romans were 'ill' fitted to endure the strain of the unrestricted economic competition of a centralized society' (B. Adams 1896: 1). The energy of such a race becomes exhausted, and the survivors must await the infusion of barbarian blood.

Henry Adams' thesis (1919) was that human thought has passed through a series of phases. Thought is analogous to an electric current, and obeys laws of inertia. Phases of thought accelerate through time at a rate equal to the square root of the time of the previous phase. The evolution of thought has now passed its apex, and is in retrograde. Thought, he predicted, would reach the limits of its possibilities in 1921, or barring that, in 2025.

Otto von Seek's theory of the Roman collapse was a biological one: massacres of the residents of Italy in the last centuries of the Republic led to elimination of the best parts of the population, and subsequent governance by the remainder (characterized in Woodward [1916: 96-7] and Mazzarino [1966: 123]; for a revival of dysgenic thinking see Shockley [1972 : 303]). Georg Hansen in 1889 developed a similar theory based on Roman marriage patterns (in Mazzarino [1966: 124-30]). Tenney Frank believed that racial change in Italy brought a people lacking energy, enterprise, foresight, and common sense (1970). Burckhardt (1949 [original 1852]) threw his weight behind the senescence-and-corruption explanation of the Roman collapse. 

Elliot Mills, writing anonymously in 1905, predicted the demise of the British Empire based on the prevalence of urban life and a consequent decline in agriculture, literary and dramatic taste, and intellectual and religious life (see also R. M. Adams [1983 : 111]). 

The Egyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie also entered this field (1911). The ' ... real nature of human progress,' argued Petrie (1911: 105), is expansion followed by collapse. Democracy is a regular feature of decaying civilizations. Moreover, 'The phase of civilization is inherent in the people, and is not due to the circumstances of their position' (Petrie 1911: 113). When a democracy is established, the destitute consume the capital of the wealthy, and the civilization must then decay until invasion destroys it. Petrie suggested, in curious anticipation of Toynbee, that 'There is no advance without strife,' and that 'The harder a nation strives the more capable it will be' (1911: 125).

This perusal of the history of the mystical theme, in its various forms, brings us to its flowering in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although the names of Spengler and Toynbee are most readily identifiable in this flowering, there are any number of other theorists, and at least one precursor, whose works merit attention. 

Spengler is most surprisingly anticipated by the Russian Nikolai Danilevsky, whose Russia and Europe was published in 1869, but apparently not read by Spengler until his Decline of the West was finished (H. Hughes 1952: 53). There is a remarkably fortuitous convergence in their thinking. Danilevsky was a biologist, and a promoter of Slavic nationalism. His model of civilization was a distinctly organic one: 

The course of development of historico-cultural types is similar to the lifecourse of those perennials whose period of growth lasts indefinitely, but whose period of blossoming and fruit bearing is relatively short and then exhausts them once and for all (quoted in Sorokin [1950: 60]). 

Each civilization emerges, goes through a fixed span of childhood, youth, maturity, and old age, and then passes away. Civilization is the last phase of a culture-historical type, and ends because ' ... every people is eventually worn out and exhausted creatively . . . ' (quoted in Sorokin [1950: 57]). Danilevsky anticipated in this vision the decline of Western European civilization, and the rise of a Slavic one. 

We come at last to Spengler, whose Decline (1962 [original 1918, 1922]) is one of the  truly significant works of the twentieth century. For Spengler, as for 'so many others, ' ... the notions of birth, death, youth, age, lifetime, are fundamentals .. .' in the understanding of history (1962 : 3). Spengler had a supremely mystical view of human cultures: each has ', .. its own idea; its own passions; its own life, will and feeling, its own death .. .its own new possibilities of self-expression which arise, ripen, decay, and never return' (1962: 16-17 (emphases in original]). Cultures are ', .. sublimated life essences which grow with the same superb aimlessness as the flowers of the field' ( 1962 : 17). Civilization, in turn, is the inevitable destiny of a culture, the 'organicological sequel, fulfillment and finale .. .' (1962: 24), This civilizational phase is undesirable: 'Civilizations are the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed humanity is capable' (1962: 24). Civilizations are dominated by intellect, and ' ... as a historical process, consist in a progressive exhaustion of forms that have become inorganic or dead' ( 1962 : 25). Cities are a symptom of this state, with their populace that is ' ... parasitical, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful! (1962: 25). The Classical world of the fourth century A, D., and the Western of the nineteenth, exemplify this phase (hence the title of his work), For the latter, Spengler saw the symptoms of decline everywhere: in urban life, in art, in mathematics. 'What is practiced as art today,' he asserted, ', . .is impotence and falsehood' (Spengler 1962: 157-8). 

Spengler's poetic imagery is renowned, and one passage in particular summarizes both his theory and his mysticism.

A Culture is born in the moment when a great soul awakens out of the proto-spirituality of ever- childish humanity, and detaches itself, a form from the formless, a bounded and mortal thing from the boundless and enduring, It blooms on the soil of an exactly definable landscape, to which plant-wise it remains bound. It dies when this soul has actualized the full sum of its possibilities in the shape of peoples, languages, dogmas, arts, states, sciences, and reverts into the proto-soul . But its living existence, that sequence of great epochs which define and display the stages of fulfillment, is an inner passionate struggle to maintain the idea against the powers of Chaos without and the unconscious muttering deep down within ... The aim once attained - the idea, the entire content of inner possibilities, fulfilled and made externally actual -­ the Culture suddenly hardens, it mortifies, its blood congeals, its force breaks down, and it becomes civilization, the thing which we feel and understand in the words Egypticism, Byzanticism, Mandarinism. As such it may, like a worn-out giant of the primeval forest, thrust decaying branches towards the sky for hundreds or thousands of years, as we see in China, in India, in the Islamic world.

This - the inward and outward fulfillment, the finality, that awaits every living Culture - is the purport of all the historic 'declines,' amongst them that decline of the Classical which we know so well and fully, and another decline, entirely comparable to it in course and duration, which will occupy the first centuries of the coming millennium but is heralded already and sensible in and around us  today - the decline of the West. Every Culture passes through the age-phases of the individual man. Each has its childhood, youth, manhood and old age. It is a young and trembling soul, heavy with misgivings, that reveals itself in the morning of Romanesque and Gothic ... Childhood speaks to us also - and in the same tones - out of early-Homeric Doric, out of early-Christian (which is really early Arabian) art and out of the works of the Old Kingdom in Egypt that began with the Fourth Dynasty. A mythic world-consciousness is fighting like a harassed debtor against all the dark and daemonic in itself and in Nature, while slowly ripening itself for the pure, day-bright expression of the existence that it will at last achieve and know. The more nearly a Culture approaches the noon culmination of its being, the more virile, austere, controlled, intense the form  language it has secured for itself, the more assured its sense of its own power, the clearer its lineaments. We find every individual trait of expression deliberate, strict, measured, marvelous in its ease and self-confidence, and everywhere, at moments, the coming fulfillment suggested. Still later , tender to the point of fragility, fragrant with the sweetness of late October days, come the Cnidian Aphrodite and the Hall of the Maidens in the Erechtheum, the arabesques on Saracen horseshoe-arches, the Zwinger of Dresden, Watteau, Mozart. At last, in the grey dawn of Civilization, the fire in the soul dies down. The dwindling powers rise to one more, half-successful effort of creation, and produce the Classicism that is common to all dying Cultures. The soul thinks once again, and in Romanticism looks back piteously to its childhood; then finally, weary, reluctant, cold, it loses its desire to be, and, as in Imperial Rome, wishes itself out of the overlong daylight and back in the darkness of proto-mysticism, in the womb of the mother, in the grave (Spengler , 1962 : 73-5 [emphasis in original]).

One is reminded by such imagery of Hughes' assessment: 'In Germany, a book that is not hard to read is scarcely considered worth reading' (H. Hughes 1952: 66). 

Although often lumped with Spengler's Decline, Toynbee's A Study of History (1962) is of a very different nature, and indeed Toynbee was critical of Spengler therein. In twelve volumes, the Study is a life-work (1939-61), and shows expectable evolution and change in the author's views. Yet some basic premises and assumptions are present throughout. Toynbee's view of the development of civilization was his famous 'challenge and response': a society encounters a succession of problems, each a challenge to undergo an ordeal (e .g., the challenge of the Nile swamps to the early Egyptians). A challenge leads to economic development: ' ... ease is inimical to civilization' (1962 (II): 31). By surmounting such challenges civilizations develop. The collapse of a civilization in turn entails a loss of 'creative power,' a 'failure of vitality' (Toynbee 1962 (1): 336). So the Maya collapsed, while Egypt didn't, because later generations of Mayans had ceased the exertions needed to maintain mastery over nature (1962 (II): 3-4). 

In contrast to Spengler, Toynbee saw civilization as a ' ... fresh dynamic movement .. .' (1962 (IV): 128) that might be ' ... full of ... meaning .. .' (1962 (V): 3). Its expansion ' .. .is to be commended for being slow but sure' (1962 (V): 200) . An accumulation of unmet challenges, though, can be the beginning of cultural collapse . This is an internal process: ' . ,. the ultimate criterion and the fundamental cause of the breakdown of civilizations is an outbreak of internal discord through which they forfeit their faculty of self-determination' (1962 (V): ] 7), Such an outbreak leads to conflicts between geographically segregated communities, and to schisms between socially segregated classes. The result is a division of society into three opposed classes: a 'dominant minority,' who develop philosophies and establish 'universal states' (i.e. , empires), an 'internal proletariat' who establish a 'universal church,' and an 'external proletariat,' who become barbarian war bands ( 1962 (V): 17-2 1, (VI): 32 1 -2). Thus went the Roman Empire, the universal state of Hellenic society. Horizontal schisms represent ' ... an increasing disintegration of the soul' ( 1962 (V): 21).

The breakdowns of civilizations ' ... are failures in an audacious attempt to ascend from the level of Primitive Humanity, being the life of a social animal, to the height of some superhuman kind of being in a Communion of Saints ... ' ( 1962 (VI): 5). This involves, as noted, a ' .. .loss of creative power in the souls of the creative individuals, or the creative minorities ... ' (1962 (IV): 5). These compensate for the loss of creativity by resorting to coercion, which leads to the establishment of an imperial universal state. In civilizations, ' ... geographical expansion and spiritual growth' vary inversely (1962 (III): 141). Major geographical expansion is then a sign of 'social disintegration' (1962 (IV): 4), And yet 

In this conflict between a proletariat and a dominant minority ... we can discern one of those drastic spiritual encounters which renew the work of creation by carrying the life of the Universe out of the stagnation of autumn through the pains of winter into the ferment of spring (Toynbee 1962 (I): 336). 

Toynbee's emphasis on moral and spiritual values found prior expression in the work of Albert Schweitzer (1923). Schweitzer argued that if an ethical foundation is lacking, a civilization collapses. Civilization exist"; in the effort to perfect humanity, and originates when a population is inspired to attain progress and to serve. Schweitzer characterized Western civilization of the early 1920s as showing signs of collapse.[2020 must have rolling over in his grave with his hair standing straight up DC]

A volume published in the same year as Schweitzer's shows one peculiar extreme of thought. It should be read only by persons who have a firm sense of the historical relativity of knowledge. To Towner , civilization has a basis in pliable biology: with civilization, 'The nervous system is augmented, the intellect develops, the spiritual stature increases' ( 1923: 9). Towner never clearly defined what he meant by 'augmented nervous organization,' but it figured prominently in his theory. Whatever it is, he equated it with sexual frigidity, and suggested that women who have such 'nervous organizations' tend to produce geniuses. As such women in civilizations are less often forced into maternity, the proportion of genius progressively declines, and civilizations wither away. 

Christopher Dawson's work ( 1956 [original 1921-55]) was considerably less bizarre, if also less unified in its perspective. He cited several factors in the weakness and collapse of civilizations. Increasing complexity and centralization present perils:

Hellenic civilization suffered the degradation of the 'Greek type'; in Rome, a material revolution broke down ' ... the organic constitution of society'; European civilization is currently weak because it ' ... no longer possesses vital rhythm and balance' (Dawson 1956: 56, 59-60, 63-4, 66). 

Writing during imprisonment in Ahmadnagar Fort in 1944, Jawaharlal Nehru proposed that India's decline had been due to internal decay, that in the twelfth century ' ... India was drying up and losing her creative genius and vitality' (1959: 125). 

Franz Borkenau was a contemporary of Spengler and Toynbee, and like them believed that civilizations rise and fall He sided with Toynbee in regard to the precedence of spiritual and religious over material factors in history, but demurred from Toynbee's view that some wickedness or sin causes civilizations to fall (pointing out that terrible crimes repeatedly occur among developing civilizations) (Borkenau 1981). 

Civilizations, to Paul Valery, are inherently fragile (1962 : 23). Moral qualities are intrinsically related to this. He likened Europe after World War I, with its intellectual and moral confusion, to the ages of Trajan or the Ptolemies. The global domination of Europe was accounted for by superior characteristics of the European population (which he identified as drive, curiosity, logic, skepticism, and mysticism). Yet the seeds of destruction are contained in this imbalance. Mass production today makes commodities universally available, so that in the future population and geographical size will become the major determinants of power, and Europe will consequently suffer. 

The third of the major twentieth-century theorists of rise and decline was Alfred Kroeber (1944, 1957). Kroeber had a definite attitude about cultural phenomena. He wrote of 'higher cultural values and forms' (1944: 8), and of 'climaxes.' Egyptian civilization rose and fell four times ' ... before it exhausted itself' (1944: 663). It further had ' ... a fairly high idea-system' (1944: 700). Cultural patterns can be of 'high value' or of 'lower-grade' (1944: 763). Within the context of such evaluations, Kroeber analyzed cycles of creativity in such areas as art, science, and philosophy. All seem to show a common pattern: centuries of rising development, then long ages of repetition, imitation, and decline.

Two anthropologists following in Kroeber's tradition were Coulborn (1954, 1966) and Gray (1958). Coulborn extended Kroeber's concept of exhaustion in art and philosophy to any activity. The rise and fall of a civilization is characterized by a process of rise, elaboration, and exhaustion of a pattern. After the Roman collapse, ' ... the entire culture fell very low' (Coulborn 1954: 213). Any society passes through the cycle of an Age of Faith, an Age of Reason, and finally an Age of Fulfillment. In this latter state there may be decline ' ... from the very special excellence reached in every civil society' (Coulborn 1966 : 415). Religion may be the source of decline, for a society maintains its strength while its religion is vigorous, and loses it when religious commitment weakens (1966: 430). 

Charles Gray ( 1958) saw Classical history as a series of superimposed cycles. The major cycle is Formative, Developed, Florescent, and Degenerate. Each of these phases had its own creative and degenerate periods. Superimposed on this were two great epochs: city-states and super--states. Gray is not bashful about evaluating cultural periods: the Formative Archaic was 'crude,' the Roman period 'degenerate' (1958: 14, 19). Degeneracy leads to political decay, while the ' ... higher the degree of civilization .. .' attained in any period, the more rapid its transit (Gray 1958: 22).

Pitirim Sorokin was a sociologist, and a scholar of Kroeber's stature . His Social and Cultural Dynamics (1957 [original 1937-41]) is a landmark. In it he defined two cultural modes: the Ideational culture, wherein reality is perceived as nonmaterial, and the Sensate culture, where reality is only as presented to sensory organs. The shift between the two in any society is intrinsic . Since each alone is incomplete, populations swing from one to the other. Totalitarian states rise and fall with Sensate culture. Sensatism increased in Rome after the second century B .C., and the state became totalitarian. Yet in the fifth century A.D. the Ideational culture of Christianity became dominant, and the Roman state disintegrated. 

Finally there is David Ormsby-Gore (1966), who follows Toynbee, and is largely concerned about the fate of Western Civilization. His chief causes of decline or collapse are internal decay, manifesting itself in internecine warfare, exposure to ' ... a superior form of society,' military stagnation, and economic or demographic inferiority (Ormsby-Gore 1966: 41). The rise and the fall of civilizations are directly attributable to the making of right or wrong decisions, collectively by large numbers of people. He concludes that the West need not decline. 

Specific applications of mystical themes span a segment of the intellectual spectrum that matches the more general formulations . Dennis Puleston ( 1979) argued that the Maya were done in by believing in their own cyclical calendar. When one point in this cycle witnessed a great volcanic emption, and the next return of the same point experienced the vague event archaeologists call. the Hiatus, Mayan prophecy foresaw doom for the third occurrence . As it approached, panic turned the affair into a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Writing of the American Southwest, but with reference to complex societies in general, David Stuart argues that as complex societies increase in size, rates of production, and rates of energy expenditure, they arc impelled to the point where they simply 'burn out' (Stuart and Gauthier 1981: 10). Cultural systems are likened in this way to locust swarms (Stuart and Gauthier 1981: 11). And in a strictly Kroeberian formulation, James Griffm once suggested that the decline of Ohio Hopewell could be ascribed to 'cultural fatigue' (1952: 361). 

Melko (1969) reflects Kroeber's view that once established a civilization's capacities for cultural change are limited, and so development continues until the 'pattern' culminates. Collapse follows from ossification, bureaucratic inefficiency, and the inability to deal with internal or external problems. In apparent echo of Sorokin, Melko projects the end of Western Civilization due to loss of interest in technological problem-solving, and change to a spiritual world outlook (1969: 164). 

Assessment 

Although complex societies are not really like plagues of locusts, it sometimes seems as if theories of their collapse may be. To make any sense out of the foregoing it is necessary to focus on a few basic themes. The reader will be spared major attention to ideas that clearly do not merit serious consideration. There will thus be little discussion of mystical numerology, or of reproductive patterns, or of theories that compare complex societies to swarms of insects or to lumps of coal. It is well to point out, though, that what separates these theories from those that will be discussed is only a matter of degree.

The works of Spengler and Toynbee have been reviewed for so long and so thoroughly (e.g. , H. Hughes 1952; Montagu 1956), that little can be added that is really new. This will make the present assessment (compared with the overview just completed) mercifully short. It is nonetheless necessary to cover certain points to round out my critique of collapse studies, and this I shall do without concern for whether my objections are novel. In all, I find the work of Spengler's and Toynbee's critics much to the point, and will use it as a springboard. 

The mysticism and value-laden nature of Spengler's writing fully validate Hughes' estimate of it as ' ... a massive stumbling-block in the path of true knowledge' (H. Hughes 1952: 1). Hughes echoed the feelings of many who have read Spengler: ' ... the Decline reeks with unpardonable exaggerations, delivered in a tone of dogmatic certainty' (1952: 53). 'Spengler's metaphysical passages ... achieve the not unusual combination of being murky and superficial in the same breath' (1952: 155). Spengler's prejudices are ' ... narrow and hateful' (1952: 156). ' ... All cyclical theorists ... play the role of intuitive seers' (Hughes 1952: 162). 

Toynbee's critics have been scarcely kinder: 

[Toynbee metes] out rewards and punishments like a divine schoolmaster, a silver cup to Primitive Christianity, consolation prizes to the churches, and six with the cane to contemporary western agnostic and materialist civilisation (Stone 1956 : 112). 

[Toynbee has the] inability to distinguish unverifiable presuppositions and subjective value-judgements from empirical deductions from the facts ... (Stone 1956: 112). 

He compares himself with the prophet Ezekiel; and certainly, at times, he is just as unintelligible (Trevor-Roper 1956: 122). 

For Mr. Toynbee, history and the techniques for studying it are a curious blend of science and fiction (K. Thompson 1956: 201). 

Toynbee, like Jeremiah, is sure of his ground (Boer 1956: 240). 

[Toynbee's subjectivism is] a normative system based on a very private interpretation of the course of human destiny (Altree 1956 : 271). 

Despite the differences in approach between Spengler and Toynbee, these quotes could be interchangeably used for either author. 

It seems almost unsporting to treat Spengler and Toynbee so severely, but these quotations introduce most of the problems in mystical explanations. These problems are: (a) reliance on a biological growth analogy; (b) reliance on value judgements; and (c) explanation by reference to intangibles. 

The biological growth and decay analogy, as has been seen, is an ancient one (and it continues in use to this day [e,g. , Haussig 1971: 13 , 14]). Its essence has been stated in the previous pages: complex societies mimic organisms in a path of birth, growth, decay, and death. Organisms, though, follow such a path through a scientifically knowable process that involves such things as genetic coding, biological clocks, solar cycles, and the progression of the seasons. For human societies , as most social scientists recognize, the biological analogy can identify no such controlling mechanisms. It is necessary then to fall back on arguments that are openly vitalistic ­ that some mysterious, internal, dynamic force leads to the 'flowering and decay' of civilizations. Vitalistic arguments of this form are indefensible, for any such internal force is inherently unknowable, unspecifiable , unmeasurable, and unexplainable. This analogy, like so many of the explanatory themes discussed previously, does not advance the cause of understanding. It explains a mystery by reference to a mystery, and so explains nothing. 

Alfred Kroeber, a master of the growth and senescence analogy, objected to such criticisms (1958: 33). His point was that it is not fabe to speak of cultures 'growing,' that the term is a metaphor. One is forced to use it due to limitations of language. Granting Kroeber this insight, one still has reservations , for it is not at all clear that many others perceive the matter as he did. Too many of the authors reviewed here seem to believe that cultures really do sprout, flower, wither , and die. 

Value judgments are another matter altogether. A scholar trained in anthropology learns early on that such valuations are scientifically inadmissible, detrimental to the cause of understanding, intellectually indefensible, and simply unfair. A student of other cultures acquires a deep .. seated. aversion to statements indicating that various cultural phenomena are good/bad, better/worse, superior/inferior. One is either an impartial social scientist or a social critic, and the latter should not masquerade as the former. Cultural relativity may be one of the most important contributions anthropology can make to the social and historical sciences, and to the public at large. One would like to think that historians, sociologists, political scientists, economists, and others who study collapse could learn from anthropology in this regard, But then along come Kroeber, Coulborn, and Gray, anthropologists all and among the worst offenders . 

The works reviewed under the mystical theme revert to value judgements to such an extent that they must be a necessary part of this approach. One could argue that this is so: since biological analogies cannot specify any measurable dimensions of change, it is necessary to fall back on subjective evaluations . This the mystical theorists do with zest. Thus Spengler wrote of cultures hardening and mortifying, of art forms that are false, of cities with inhabitants that are parasitical. Toynbee, as a previous critical quotation points out, sat like the great judge of civilizations and cultural phases, approving some, dismissing others. Toynbee's civilizations are fresh and dynamic, are to be commended , make audacious attempts , but their creative minorities ultimately lose such powers . Kroeber ,was perhaps the most unblushing in the subjective evaluations he dished out. Egypt had a high idea-system, France a high cultural luster. Cultural patterns in general could be of high value or lower-grade. Coulborn continued this tradition: post-Roman culture fell very low, civil society possessed special excellence. Gray was not at all behind his colleagues: cultures are occasionally crude or degenerate, but there may also be high degrees of civilization. Many other authors could be indicted on this count.

Terms that are commonplace in mystical explanations further the aura of subjectivism. 'Decadence' is a notable one, frequently applied to the Roman Empire. Even seemingly innocuous words like 'rise,' 'fall,' 'decline ,' and 'vigor' imply value judgements: we all approve of things that have vigor, and conversely. As discussed earlier, the term 'civilization' itself falls into this trap. 

Values, of course, vary culturally, socially, and individually, Herein lies the problem, so obvious that one feels embarrassed for authors who overlook it. What one individual, society, or culture values highly another does not, so that subjective ratings of cultural phenomena can never be scientifically standardized. Most of us approve, in general, of that which culturally is most like or most pleasing, or at least most intelligible, to us . The result is a global bedlam of idiosyncratic value systems, each claiming exclusive possession of 'truth.' No scientific theory can be raised on such a foundation, for the attempt will lead only to confusion and contradiction. Thus while most authors seem to approve of civilizations, Spengler detested them (as may Rappaport). Where Toynbee disapproved of empires, Kroeber counted Egyptian expansion as a period of success (Kroeber 1944: 664). Reliance on subjective value judgements is not only logically inadmissible, it can produce no consistent results. 

The 'decadence' concept seems particularly detrimental. Although enjoying a patina of long use (Mazzarino 1966), it is notoriously difficult to define. Decadent behavior is that which differs from one's own moral code, particularly if the offender at some former time behaved in a manner of which one approves. There is no clear causal link between the morality of behavior and political fortunes. With the so-called decline of Roman virtues, for example, it is not clear (Polybius notwithstanding) that lack of such virtues early on would have forestalled Roman expansion, nor that their presence later would have held the barbarians at bay. R. M. Adams has phrased the problem well: ' ... each society known to history will be able to display a healthy proportion of decadent individuals' (1983: 11). Furthermore, 

... we cannot seriously suppose that major political structures disintegrate from anyone's indulgence in excessive food, drink, or sex. No, the mechanisms of social disintegration have to be somehow proportionate to the dimensions of the resulting downfall (R. M. Adams 1983: 149-50). 

Explanation by reference to intangibles is the third problem with mystical explanations. It is closely linked with the first two. Mystical explanations simply fail to identify any isolatable, observable, measurable factor controlling cultural change. In the few instances where this is attempted (e .g. , by reference to human biology) it is not clear how the controlling mechanism leads to the observed outcome . The Adams brothers' theories are perhaps worst in this regard, but they are not atypical. Thus, Brooks Adams cited biological 'energetic material,' while Henry likened thought to an electric current . Towner was not far behind when he ascribed the rise and fall of dvilizatiom to 'augmented nervous organizations' and sexual frigidity. Yet while these may be the most audacious, they grade into more respectable views . Spengler believed cultures could have ideas, passions , and will, that they are 'sublimated life essences.' Civilizations to Toynbee were communions of saints and might possess souls. Dawson decried European civilization because it no longer possesses vital rhythm and balance. Sorokin conceived of Sensate vs. Ideational value systems, Puleston believed the Maya frightened themselves to death, Stuart likens complex societies to insect swarms , and Griffin blamed cultural fatigue. None has isolated a causal mechanism that provides any grounds for building a scientific theory. This problem is inherent in mystical theories, and indeed is the single criterion that readily identifies an explanation as mystical.

Chance concatenation of events 

The great Classical historian J. B. Bury (1923 (I) argued that there was no general explanation for the fall of Rome, that it resulted from a series of contingent events. The irruption of the Huns drove the Visigoths into the Illyrian provinces. The Roman government mismanaged this problem, and so lost the disastrous battle of Hadrianople (A.D. 378). Federate barbarian nations were then settled within the empire, a bad precedent. A series of weak emperors ascended to the throne in the West. Germans were elevated to high positions in the Empire. There was the treachery of Stilicho, and dependence on barbarians to man the army (Bury 1923 (I): 311-12).

Other authors bring chance concatenations into more general explanations. Willey and Shimkin on the Maya (1973), and Butzer on Egypt (1980, 1984), emphasize concurrent outbreaks of clusters of problems and weaknesses in their respective cases. Charles Diehl argued that a combination of events led to the decay of Byzantium: loss of agricultural lands , the formation of large estates, and unsuccessful economic competition with the Venetians (1970). 

Assessment

Chance concatenation arguments by definition provide no basis for generalization, and so fail to satisfy the need for a global understanding of a recurrent process. Explanation by reference to historical accident furthermore has some logical failings .  It is argued by some that all history is a chance concatenation of events. This argument goes too far, but there is some validity to the notion that random factors influence all processes. To the extent that random factors occur with some statistical regularity over time, they cannot account for a phenomenon far more limited in its occurrence,

Economic explanations

Economic explanations are the last to be considered. They occur in a variety of forms, but consistently exhibit a limited number of themes, Among these are: (a) declining advantages of complexity; (b) increasing disadvantages of complexity; or (c) increasing costliness of complexity. 

A scenario that illustrates these points has been developed by Lewis (1958) to account for the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans in the sixteenth century reached the limits of their geographical expansion, and thereafter began to fall behind in military science, in the professional standards of their army, in administration, in manpower and revenue, and in resources. With global European expansion the eastern Mediterranean quickly became a backwater. As trade routes bypassed it, the region was increasingly impoverished. When Europe was flooded with Spanish/American gold the Ottoman economy was ruined. Used to currency shortages, the leadership dealt with abundance by the same strategies: devaluation, coin-clipping, and debasement. 

Against this backdrop of economic weakness the government had to embark on a great expansion in its salaried personnel and expenditures in coin. In previous monetary crises the government had lowered the number of paid soldiers and increased the proportion of cavalry. Cavalrymen were rewarded with fiefs rather than with coin. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries changes in warfare made this impossible. The greatly increased use of firearms and artillery required a larger paid army, and reduced the importance of cavalry.

The price of this was staggering. Increasing expenditures had to be based on a depreciating currency. Civil, religious, and military personnel had a harder time making ends meet, with inevitable effects on honesty, prestige, and recruitment. With the disappearance of the cavalryman the Ottoman agrarian system collapsed. Cavalrymen had resided on or near their fiefs . Now fiefs were acquired by palace favorites and speculators. As the bureaucracy became more inefficient and venal, the effectiveness of the tax system declined. Tax farmers were employed, but these tended to intercept revenue, which added to the number of neglected estates. So the shrinking economy of the Empire had to support an increasingly costly and cumbersome superstructure. Lewis characterized the palace, bureaucracy, and religious hierarchy, the army, and the class of absentee landlords and tax farmers as more costly than any hierarchy medieval states or even the Roman Empire had tried to support, and based on an agricultural system that was no more productive. Traders, bankers, and merchants tended to be non-Muslims and so second-class citizens. Political and ideological factors thus militated against conditions favorable to commerce, or to a solid structure of banking and credit. 

Lattimore (1940: 45-6) characterized the Chinese dynastic cycle as one of rising and falling returns. A new dynasty would increase returns by concentrating people in favorable areas in order to organize for water control and agriculture on a large scale. As production reached its peak, the economy provided no support for surplus population. Agrarian depression contrasted intolerably with the life of the rulers and bureaucrats, and led to uprisings that destroyed a dynasty. 

Johnson argues, in a general vein, that processes that facilitate or inhibit cost benefit efficiency in political organization lead to social continuity or collapse (1978: 98-9). This seems similar to the approach taken by R. McC. Adams (1981) in his  discussion of the weaknesses induced by Sassanian intensification and expansion into marginal agricultural lands. Culbert (n.d.) adapts this model to an account of the Mayan collapse . 

Blanton and Kowalewski (1981), as discussed earlier, ascribe collapse in the Valley of Oaxaca to declining benefits in supporting a hierarchy. Turnbull, in a discussion of the Ik ( 1978), and Laughlin and Brady in a more general discussion (1978), produce arguments that arc similar to Blanton and Kowalewski, but apply to less complex societies. To these authors, prolonged deprivation in tribal societies leads to a situation where the advantages to co-operation decline, and social institutions of cooperation and reciprocity accordingly disappear. In a reverse situation of abundant resources, Harner's (1970) model of collapse is logically similar.

Assessment 

There are many historians and social scientists who are not enamored of economic explanations. Yet even for such skeptics there are aspects to the structure and logic (if not the full content) of these explanations that makes them superior to those considered before . Among these aspects arc the following: 

1. The discussion of some previous explanations (e.g. , Resource Depletion, Catastrophes, Intruders, Insufficient Response) implicated characteristics of societies, rather than simply their environments, as instrumental in collapse. 'Why, it was asked, do societies not produce a sufficient response to circumstances? Debate can rage endlessly about whether the specific economic interpretations just discussed adequately account for weakness. They do, though, have one characteristic that makes them preferable: they recognize this need to identify internal factors of weakness, and set out to do so. 

2. In contrast to some explanatory themes (e.g. , Class Conflict, Social Dysfunction, Mystical), economic explanations identify a specific mechanism or event controlling change. 

3. In contrast to several of the studies discussed, economic models identify a definite causal chain between the controlling mechanism and the observed outcome. Again, those causal chains can certainly be debated for the studies just discussed, but these are logically and structurally preferable because the causal chain is there. 

These economic studies, of course, are not without weaknesses . None of these authors has attempted to generalize beyond an individual case, although there is great potential to do so. When Lewis cited religious and ethnic prejudice (1958: 122-3, 125-6) for the lack of Ottoman economic development, it is disappointing that he did not better account for Ottoman inflexibility in this matter. He simply stated that later Islam Was not willing to learn from others, which clarifies nothing . R. McC. Adams' (1981) study of Mesopotamian intensification admirably outlines the processes that led to collapse, but does not fully account for elite mismanagement. And Lattimore can cite no reason for surplus labor in China, other than the needs of the elite. It is worth pointing out that the logical weaknesses to these explanations occur at precisely the point where the authors depart from an economic scenario.

Summary and discussion 

The evaluations of the various approaches to explaining collapse can be summarized as follows: 

1. Resource depletion. Dealing with resource uncertainties is a common activity of complex societies, and may be one of the things that they do best. Where this is not the case, research has to focus on the characteristics of the society that prevent an appropriate response, rather than exclusively on the characteristics of the depleted resource. 

2. New resources. This theme has some attraction to integration theorists, but none to conflict theorists. Its usefulness is mainly restricted to simpler societies. societies. 

3. Catastrophes. Complex societies regularly provide for catastrophes, and routinely experience them without collapsing. If the society cannot absorb a catastrophe, then in many cases the characteristics of the society will be of greater interest, obviating the catastrophe explanation. 

4. Insufficient response to circumstances. The assumptions made in this theme about the nature of complex societies - that they are inherently fragile, or static, or incapable of shifting directions - simply cannot be supported. Where complex societies may display such characteristics, that is a matter to be explained. 

5. Other complex societies. Major cases, such as the Roman one, cannot be accounted for by this theme. Conflict between states more often leads to cycles of expansion and contraction than to collapse. 

6. Intruders. The overthrow of a dominant state by a weaker one is an event to be explained, not an explanation in itself. Empirically, intruders are often difficult to detect archaeologically where they have been postulated. It is difficult to understand why barbarians would destroy a civilization if it was worth invading in the first place. 

7. Conflict!/contradictions/mismanagement. The capacity to control labor and allocate resources is intrinsic and necessary in complex societies. Collapse cannot easily be explained by factors so vital to survival, at least not without raising many more questions than are answered. Elite mismanagement and self aggrandizement, to the extent that these are detrimental to the survival of a society, are matters to be explained. Exploitation and misadministration are normal, regular aspects of complex societies, and by themselves cannot account for an occasional event, collapse. Peasants rarely revolt except when allied with other social strata, and their rebellions are not typically aimed at collapse. 

8. Social dysfunction. These explanations offer neither sources of strain nor causal mechanisms that can be analyzed in any objective way. 

9. Mystical. Mystical explanations fail totally to account scientifically for collapse. They are crippled by reliance on a biological growth analogy, by value judgments, and by explanation by reference to intangibles. 

10. Chance concatenation of events. This theme provides no basis for generalization. Collapse is not well explained by reference to random factors. 

11. Economic explanations. These are structurally and logically superior to the others, at least as these others have been formulated to date. They identify characteristics of societies that make them liable to collapse, specify controlling mechanisms, and indicate causal chains between controlling mechanisms and observed outcome. While economic explanations are not universally accepted in the social and historical sciences, such scenarios remedy the logical deficiencies of the other approaches. Existing economic models often suffer from incomplete forays into political and social explanations, but this is not an intrinsic flaw. The major drawback to economic explanations, for present purposes, is failure to develop an explanatory framework that is globally applicable. 

With the exception of mystical explanations, which are without scientific merit, none of these explanatory themes fails entirely. Indeed, the economic theme comes dose to success - in logic, if not in specifics - but does not go quite far enough. Except for mystical explanations, these approaches are not necessarily wrong or misguided. They are simply inadequate as presently formulated. They require assumptions that cannot be unquestioningly accepted, and fail frequently in their logic. Yet they also point to relevant variables and processes. Societies do encounter resource shortages, class interests do conflict, catastrophes do happen, and not uncommonly the response does not resolve such problems. A general explanation of collapse should be able to take what is best in these themes and incorporate it. It should provide a framework under which these explanatory themes can be subsumed, so that one can account for what is worthwhile in each. A general explanation should make these themes dearer in application than each would be standing alone . 

In the next chapter an explanation of collapse will be developed that follows the economic theme. After delineation and testing (Chapter 5), space will be devoted in Chapter 6 to showing how other explanatory themes can be subsumed under it.

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Understanding collapse: the marginal productivity of sociopolitical change

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