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From Collapse to Regeneration Glenn M. Schwartz In the 1960s and 1970s, comparative studies of early complex societies in anthropological archaeology focused overwhelmingly on the emergence of the first states and urban societies.1 Prime movers, primary states, and the earliest urban systems were the subject of intensive investigation and theorizing. An investigation of the origins of civilization is certainly an appropriate task for archaeology, since the formation of the new institutions, technologies, and modes of thought inherent in that process represents one of the most important transformations in human history. Moreover, archaeology can preside in near-total isolation over the topic, since textual evidence is likely to be minimal or absent until states are well ensconced. But by at least the 1980s, dissatisfaction with the emphasis on civilization ’s rise had emerged. On the one hand was the critique levelled against processual archaeology and its reliance on the band-tribe-chiefdom-state evolutionary model. On the other was the problem that a focus on origins assumed that there was little else to learn about complex societies once they appear; it implied that social evolution was complete when cities and states emerged. But the more the workings of early complex societies were exposed , the more apparent it became that these were not smoothly functioning machines that ran perfectly once their engines were turned on. Complex societies could be unstable phenomena, prone to episodes of fragility and collapse. As a result, the study of collapse in early complex societies has become a research focus of considerable significance. Among the studies devoted to collapse are Yoffee and Cowgill 1988 and Tainter 1988, not to mention discussions of specific episodes of collapse such as that of the Classic Maya (Culbert 1973a, 1988; Webster 2002), the Indus civilization (Kenoyer 2005; Possehl 1997), and Near Eastern urban systems of the late third millennium bc (Courty and Weiss 1997; Wilkinson 1997). 1 4 Glenn M. Schwartz The recognition that early complex societies were prone to episodes of falling and rising has led to the advancement of a cyclical model in which societies oscillate from periods of urbanism and sociopolitical centralization to intervals of ruralism and local autonomy (Yoffee 1979). Such a model departs from traditional neo-evolutionist assumptions of linear progression, allowing for the possibility of decreasing as well as increasing sociopolitical complexity. The goal of this book is to push the investigation one step further. A focus on rise and collapse still leaves the consideration of social evolution unfinished; what happens after collapse? In this volume, our emphasis is on the reappearance of societal complexity after periods of disintegration. How do “second generation” states form in regions that experienced political disintegration? How do they differ from or resemble the states that preceded them? And why are urban systems and states reestablished in some regions but not in others? Compared to the interest in the emergence and collapse of civilizations , the regeneration of societal complexity is a relatively neglected topic. Models of societal birth, growth, and death—well known from the ideas of scholars such as Edward Gibbon, Oswald Spengler (1918‒22), and Arnold Toynbee (1933‒54)—have been echoed in more recent work in archaeology and elsewhere, but revival and resurrection are largely excluded from attention. As Joyce Marcus (1989:201) has commented,“most scholars have devoted more attention to the ‘rise and fall’ of civilizations than to the processes that subsequently led to a reorganization of the population remaining in their territories. And relatively few archaeologists have studied the processes of dissolution, recovery, and reorganization, preferring instead to study the‘golden ages’ of ancient civilizations, when those societies were‘in full flower.’” Despite this neglect, the study of the regeneration of complex societies is an especially appropriate subject for archaeology as opposed to text-based history, since written texts are likely to be meager or totally lacking in “dark ages” after collapse, in the absence of central authorities, bureaucratic administrations, and scribal installations. While narratives of the collapse period might have been produced in subsequent eras, their frequently propagandist character and chronological remove from the period in question renders their utility limited (Renfrew 1979).2 I became interested in the question of regeneration as a consequence of my fieldwork at Tell Umm el-Marra in Syria (Curvers and Schwartz 1997; Schwartz, Curvers, Gerritsen et al. 2000; Schwartz et al. 2003), where excavations have yielded a sequence of occupations spanning periods of early [18.191.5.239] Project MUSE (2024-04-23 16:07 GMT...

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