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QUESTIONING COLLAPSE: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire. Edited by Patricia A. McAnany and Norman Yoffee. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. xvi, 374 pp. (Tables, figures, maps, graphs, B&W photos.) US$90.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-521-51572-6.
It is refreshing to come across a work that articulates in a clear and accessible manner the critiques and concepts that I use regularly in the classroom and in talking to public audiences about the role that archaeological and historical anthropological perspectives can play for understanding human-environment relationships. Questioning Collapse is a collection of essays that were written initially as part of an American Anthropological Association symposium and a subsequent advanced seminar responding to two of Jared Diamond's farreaching and remarkably popular works, Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Collapse (2-3). The book focuses on three main questions: Why are ancient societies often portrayed as "successes" or "failures" in the popular media? How are people living in the aftermath of empire characterized? How can current environmental issues be linked to what we know about past societies? (5).
The book is organized as a series of case studies in three parts flanked by an introductory chapter explaining the impetus for writing the book...