Going Forward by Looking Back: Archaeological Perspectives on Socio-Ecological Crisis, Response, and Collapse (Catastrophes in Context Book 3)

Catastrophes are on the rise due to climate change, as is their toll in terms of lives and livelihoods as world populations rise and people settle into hazardous places. While disaster response and management are traditionally seen as the domain of the natural and technical sciences, awareness of the importance and role of cultural adaptation is essential. This book catalogues a wide and diverse range of case studies of such disasters and human responses. This serves as inspiration for building culturally sensitive adaptations to present and future calamities, to mitigate their impact, and facilitate recoveries.ISBN : 9781789208641 Going Forward by Looking Back Contents Illustrations, Figures, and Tables Introduction: Framing Catastrophes Archaeologically Section I — Fire Chapter 1 — Do Deep-Time Disasters Hold Lessons for Contemporary Understandings of Resilience and Vulnerability? The Case of the Laacher See Volcanic Eruption Chapter 2 — Risky Business and the Future of the Past: Nuclear Power in the Ring of Fire Chapter 3 — Do Disasters Always Enhance Inequality? Chapter 4 — Political Participation and Social Resilience to the 536/540 CE Atmospheric Catastrophe Chapter 5 — Collapse, Resilience, and Adaptation: An Archaeological Perspective on Continuity and Change in Hazardous Environments Chapter 6 — Continuity in the Face of a Slowly Unfolding Catastrophe: The Persistence of Icelandic Settlement Despite Large-Scale Soil Erosion Chapter 7 — Coping through Connectedness: A Network-Based Modeling Approach Using Radiocarbon Data from the Kuril Islands of Northeast Asia Section II — Water Chapter 8 — The Materiality of Heritage Post-disaster: Negotiating Urban Politics, People, and Place through Collaborative Archaeology Chapter 9 — Mound-Building and the Politics of Disaster Debris Chapter 10 — Catastrophe and Collapse in the Late Pre-Hispanic Andes: Responding for Half a Millenium to Political Fragmentation and Climate Stress Chapter 11 — Beyond One-Shot Hypotheses: Explaining Three Increasingly Large Collapses in the Northern Pueblo Southwest Chapter 12 — Inherent Collapse? Social Dynamics and External Forcing in Early Neolithic and Modern Southwest Germany Chapter 13 — El Niño as Catastrophe on the Peruvian Coast Chapter 14 — A Slow Catastrophe: Anthropocene Futures and Cape Town’s “Day Zero” Conclusion: Rewriting the Disaster Narrative, an Archaeological Imagination Index "Catastrophes are on the rise due to climate change, as is their toll in terms of lives and livelihoods as world populations rise and people settle into hazardous places. While disaster response and management are traditionally seen as the domain of the natural and technical sciences, awareness of the importance and role of cultural adaptation is essential. This book catalogues a wide and diverse range of case studies of such disasters and human responses. This serves as inspiration for building culturally sensitive adaptations to present and future calamities, to mitigate their impact, and facilitate recoveries"-- Provided by publisher