Papers presented at a symposium held during the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Milwaukee, April 2003. From collapse to regeneration / Glenn M. Schwartz -- The demise and ...

Collapse, resilience, and transformation in complex societies : modeling trends and understanding diversity / Ronald K. Faulseit -- Why collapse is so difficult to understand / Joseph A. Tainter -- ...

ANCIENT Egypt, the Roman Empire, the Maya, China’s Qing dynasty – these civilizations all shone brightly in their time. Yet, in every case, the glory days were followed by societal collapse. This ...

I wrote recently about the collapse of great nations throughout history, as they become rigid, politicized, over-committed, and dominated by special interests. I drew on Joseph Tainter’s very ...

Historian Arnold Toynbee once observed, “Great civilizations are not murdered; they take their own lives.” More often than not, societies unravel from within—through a slow accumulation of political, ...