Glossary

Akkadian Empire The state that grew up around the city of Akkad north of Sumer, reaching its greatest extent under Sargon of Akkad.

Collapse The loss - sometimes quite abruptly - of a significant degree of extant sociopolitical complexity.

Harappa An ancient fortifed city, which was part of the

Cemetery H culture and the Indus Valley Civilization, the ancient city existed from about 3300 BCE until 1600 BCE near the former course of the Ravi River.

Indus Valley Civilization An ancient riverine civilization that flourished in the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra river valleys in what is now Pakistan and northwestern India.

Mesoamerica An archaeological culture area within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas.

Mesopotamia The region now occupied by modern Iraq, eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and Southwest Iran, often referred to as the ‘Cradle of Civilization,’ since it was here that the first literate societies developed in the late 4th millennium BC, using a highly sophisticated writing system in the context of the emergence of the first cities and complex state bureaucracies.

Mohenjo-daro Literally meaning ‘mound of the dead’, it was a city of the Indus Valley Civilization built around 2600 BC and is now located in the Sindh Province of Pakistan.

Tikal It is the largest of the ancient ruined cities of the Maya civilization.

Scholars and laypeople alike have long been captivated by the ‘ruins’ of ancient civilizations (Figure 1). Nevertheless, the romantic appeal of crumbling buildings and fallen monuments has rarely translated into focused efforts to understand what caused the various ‘collapses’ that have been documented in places such as Mesopotamia, Mycenaean Greece, Rome, Han China, South Asia (Indus civilization), Southeast Asia (Angkor Wat), Mesoamerica (the Maya, Teotihuacan, and Monte Alban), and the Andes (the Moche and Tiwanaku). The questions that immediately emerge when one considers these various examples of collapse include: Why did a particular state collapse when it did? Why did some early states collapse, whereas others did not? What made some states more vulnerable to collapse than others?

The examination of the various instances of collapse is important for two main reasons. For one, the study of early states has tended to emphasize stability, expansion, and the irreversible nature of evolutionary progress. In contrast, the study of collapse requires scholars to deal with the opposing concepts of societal flux, contraction, and the concomitant reversibility of fortunes. As such, one of the reasons that collapse studies have such value is because they force us to look at early states in ways that are more often than not directly opposed to our traditional viewpoint. Collapse studies can therefore bring a more balanced perspective to our understanding of the character of early state formations.

In broader terms, our current interest in the collapse of early states is not simply tied to our innate attraction to romantic mysteries. By studying the collapse of early states it is also hoped that archaeologists will be able to illustrate some of the mistakes that were made in the past, and in doing so, provide lessons that are useful for contemporary society.