Van Buren (2001) The Archaeology of El Niño Events and Other “Natural” Disasters

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Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001

The Archaeology of El Nino Events and Other

Natural Disasters

Mary Van Buren1

Archaeological research on disasters has increased substantially since Sheetss1980 review of the topic, and with heightened media coverage and funding forthe study of such events, archaeological interest will continue to grow. This paperexamines how prehistorians have incorporated disasters into their research since1980, using the literature on El Nino as an illustrative case, and assesses this workin relation to geographical approaches to disaster as well as concepts that havebeen developed within the new ecologies.

KEY WORDS: El Nino; hazard research; prehistory; political ecology.

INTRODUCTION

Natural disasters have been part of the explanatory repertoire of prehistorians

since the inception of the field, but systematic investigation of such events began

only a few decades ago with widespread interest in human ecology. Since then,

disasters have been increasingly invoked as the cause of social transformations,

most notably the rise and collapse of complex societies. As media coverage and

funding for the study of disasters grow, archaeological interest in these phenomena

can be expected to increase. How, then, should natural disasters be incorporated

into archaeological thinking about social change? This paper addresses the issue by

first providing a brief overview of research on disasters in contemporary societies

and then examining the ways in which prehistorians incorporate them into their

arguments, using the literature on El Nino events in prehistory as an illustrative

case. While the direct impact of El Nino is limited to the western coast of South

America, it provides a critical case study which sheds light on some of the problems

as well as the potential of archaeological hazard research. This is followed by a

1Department of Anthropology, Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, Colorado 80523; e-mail:[email protected].

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1072-5369/01/0600-0129$19.50/0 C 2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation


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discussion of the challenges faced by archaeologists in their attempts to understand

the role played by natural disasters in past societies, and the ways in which concepts

derived from geographic hazard research and the new ecologies (Biersack, 1999)

might aid in meeting them.

STUDYING NATURAL DISASTERS IN

CONTEMPORARY POPULATIONS

Systematic archaeological studies of disasters are quite recent relative to the

much longer history of investigation in other disciplines, which commenced in

the early twentieth century. Familiarity with research on natural disasters among

contemporary populations is critical for archaeologists with an interest in the topicbecause a great deal of useful information has already been generated. The purpose

of the brief consideration of the field presented here, however, is to gain insight into

some of the conceptual issues and problems that characterize this research domain.

The study of natural disasters is multidisciplinary, involving scholars from

fields as diverse as meteorology and psychology, but rarely has it been interdisci-

plinary or collaborative. Alexander (1997, p. 289) identifies roughly 30 academic

disciplines that are involved in disaster research, many of which are characterized

by different conceptions of the relationship between humans and nature (Palm,

1990). Geography is one of the most important arenas in which disaster researchhas been conducted, and this scholarship is of the greatest relevance to archaeology,

in large part because of its focus on the relationship between human populations

and the environment. It will be the subject of the discussion below, which is based

primarily on Alexanders 1995 and 1997 reviews of the field.

Systematic geographical research on natural disasters began in the 1920s,

and was well established by the 1940s with the work of White and others who

were primarily interested in understanding hazard perception and mitigation in the

United States. During the first few decades of research, disasters were regarded as

extreme phenomena generated by natural forces that were entirely independent of

human societies. However, important changes in geographical conceptualizations

of disaster have occurred over the last 80 years. Investigators recognized that dis-

asters occur only in relation to human well-being and thus must be defined in terms

of their impact on people, a view that was codified by Burton and his colleagues

in their 1978 volume. Two key concepts emerged from this perspective that have

been incorporated into most work on the topic: the difference between hazard and

disaster, and the notion of vulnerability. The first distinction separates an environ-

mental threat to a population from an actual catastrophic event, which potentially

could be mitigated or avoided by human action. Environmental hazards can be

natural events caused by climatic and geological processes such as earthquakes,

tornadoes, and volcanic eruptions, or technological, such as releases of toxic

waste or the detonation of nuclear weapons. A disaster entails a large-scale loss of


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The Archaeology of El Nino Events and Other Natural Disasters 131

life, property, or livelihood, sometimes more broadly defined as an acute disruption

of a socioeconomic system (Alexander, 1997, p. 289). The relatively rapid onset

of a disaster distinguishes it from other forms of environmental change, although

the two processes often form a continuum.The second concept, vulnerability, is defined as the characteristics of individ-

uals or groups that affect their ability to anticipate, contend with, and recover from

a disaster (Blaikie et al., 1994, p. 9). The consequences of a disaster, then, are de-

termined by both the nature of the hazard and the characteristics of the population

at risk. Such a conception is far removed from a notion of linear causality in which

a natural event generated by the environment impinges upon a human community;

in fact, the idea of vulnerability has formed the platform for a more recent radi-

cal critique of disaster studies that reverses traditional notions of causality. This

shift in thinking emerged in the early 1980s with the work of Hewitt (1983) andwas subsequently elaborated by Wisner (1993), Blaikie et al. (1994), as well as

others. These scholars focused on the social, political, and, particularly, economic

causes of vulnerability and redefined disasters as the consequence of the poverty

generated by global capitalism. Such a reconceptualization allowed them to ex-

plain the current distribution of disasterswhich occur with greatest frequency

and loss of life in Africa and Asiaas the result of underdevelopment rather than

the natural distribution of environmental hazards. On a more general level, it re-

focuses attention from the exceptional event to the everyday dynamics of society.

As Hewitt argued natural disaster, its causes, internal features and consequencesare notexplained by conditions or behavior peculiar to calamitous events. Rather

they are seen to depend upon the ongoing social order, its everyday relations to the

habitat and the larger historical circumstances that shape or frustrate these matters

(Hewitt, 1983, p. 25, quoted in Varley, 1994, p. 2). This approach is closely tied to

the development of the new ecologies, a set of perspectives that have emerged

in ecology, geography, and anthropology, among other fields, and which share an

interest in the complex, historically constituted interaction between humans and

their environments.

However, despite this reconceptualization of the relationship between the

environment and human societies, which geographers have embraced to varying

degrees, members of the discipline still regularly complain about two related and

persistent problems that affect the field of disaster studies: the overwhelming dom-

inance of technological and physical science research and the relative poverty of

theory. Research, mitigation efforts, and policy development have remained largely

devoted to an approach that privileges the physical sciences and views solutions

in terms of the application of scientific information and technology. Few mul-

tidisciplinary programs that foster the integration of physical and social science

perspectives have been developed, and 95% of disaster research funding is dedi-

cated to the physical and technological sciences (Alexander, 1995). The practical

need for integrated work is suggested by statistics on disaster fatalities which have

been steadily rising during this century (Oliver-Smith, 1986) despite the massive


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increase in hard science research. Alexander suggests that this situation is due to

the temporal precedence of the physical over the social sciences, with the former

developing as academic disciplines a century or so earlier than the latter. However,

Western belief in technological progress, the relative ease with which technicalproblems can be diagnosed and solved relative to issues such as global economic

inequity, and more effective lobbying by the physical sciences for research funds

are probably more important causes.

The paucity of theory in disaster studies is another issue that many scholars

believe is inhibiting the development of disaster research. This may be attributed,

in part, to the devastating effects of disasters that have generated much practical,

applied work in an attempt to alleviate immediate suffering. However, it is also tied

to the disciplinary structure of the field as described above. Theory developed in

the physical and technological sciences is notand was not meant to beusefulfor the understanding of social phenomena.

This nexus of issues in disaster researchconceptualizing the relationship

between humans and nature, the predominance of physical and technological

approaches, andthe impoverishmentof theoryare intimately related andprobably

cannot be resolved in isolation. To what extent do these themes characterize

archaeological studies of disaster? What progress are archaeologists making on

these fronts?

ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDIES OF DISASTER

In 1980 Sheets published a review of archaeological disaster research in which

he documented the different sorts of natural disasters that archaeologists had exam-

ined in the field and traced changes in the general approach to such events. In his ex-

amination of research on the third century A.D. eruption of Ilopango in El Salvador

as well as other prehistoric disasters, Sheets foundnot unexpectedlythat such

investigations tended to be shaped by prevailing theoretical and methodological

interests. In general, earlier work was characterized by the incidental recognitionof specific disasters and a strong focus on single sites, interest in ash falls and

other traces for purely chronological reasons, and the poor integration of physical

scientists into the research process; almost no attention was directed to the social

repercussions of such events. A number of changes resulted from the shift that

occurred in archaeology during the 1960s, most important among them being the

explicit use of human ecology as a theoretical framework for understanding the

impact of disasters, as well as the incorporation of physical scientists in inter-

disciplinary teams. However, theoretically grounded, regionally focused research

projects specifically designed to examine the effects of disasters, such as Sheetssown research on the effects of the Ilopango eruption (Sheets, 1979), remained

rare. Generally, archaeologists continued to approach disasters in an ad hoc fash-

ion and to ignore the burgeoning literature on hazards that was being produced


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by investigators in other branches of social science. In the introduction to his

monograph, Sheets (1980, p. 1) characterized the field in the following way:

Archeological literature is almost devoid of disaster research conducted on a social sciencebasis. That is not because disasters are unknown archeologically; as can be seen below, theliterature of prehistory is replete with cases of disasters. What archeology has contributedso far is empirical and largely incidental. Past disasters are described in the archeologi-cal literature on a case by case basis when they have been encountered and recognizedin site excavation or survey. Almost no projects have been directed at a disaster and itsrepercussions.

In conjunction with the perspective offered by hazard research discussed earlier,

Sheetss assessment of the field provides a baseline against which current archaeo-

logical approaches to disaster can be evaluated. This will be accomplished through

an examination of the literature on the impact of El Nino events on prehistoricsocieties, a body of work that parallels, in many regards, archaeological research

on other types of disaster.

El Nino and Its Effects

El Nino was first recognized as a periodic warming of ocean surface waters

that occurs along the north coast of Peru, usually appearing around Christmas.

During these episodes, the cold, nutrient-rich waters off the coast are overlain by

warmer, nutrient-poor waters; severe events generate precipitation in the normallyhyperarid coastal desert and a sharp decline in many of the species that usually

inhabit the littoral. In the most extreme instances, torrential rains cause flooding

and mass-wasting on the north coast, destroying houses, roads, and agricultural

fields in the process. Assessing the frequency, intensity, and scale of El Nino events

is of great interest to meteorologists and planners, but because of the variability

displayed by such episodes, average cycles are difficult to describe. The geo-

graphic area affected varies in size, as do the environmental consequences. Quinn

et al. (1987) ranked events known from historical and contemporary records from

very weak to very strong, as measured by changes in sea surface temperature,the quantity of precipitation and flooding, the mortality of marine organisms, and

the level of impact on human populations, among other variables. According to

their analysis, the mean interval between all El Nino episodes characterized as

moderate, strong, and very strong is 3.8 years; since 1800 very strong events have

occurred, on average, every 38 years. In addition to differences among El Nino

episodes, rainfall and flooding vary among coastal drainages during the same event

(Caviedes and Waylen, 1987).

In the 1960s scientists discovered that the El Nino cycle was not merely

a local phenomenon, but was related to meteorological and oceanographic shiftsthroughout the tropical Pacific. During normal years the trade winds blow surface

waters to the west, lowering the sea level in the eastern Pacific and allowing

the upwelling of cold water along the Peruvian coast. For reasons that are still


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being debated, these winds slacken during El Nino episodes, which causes warm

surface waters to move eastward, inhibiting upwelling and generating rain along

the western shore of equatorial South America. Bjerknes (1966a,b) recognized that

these changes in sea surface temperatures were related to the Southern Oscillation,a see-sawing of atmospheric pressure between the southeastern Pacific and the area

around northern Australia and Indonesia that was identified by Walker in the early

twentieth century. El Nino events tend to occur when the Southern Oscillation

Indexcalculated as the atmospheric pressure in Tahiti minus the atmospheric

pressure in Darwin, Australiais negative. The term El Nino-Southern Oscillation

(ENSO) is now used to refer to this broader oceanographic-atmospheric process

(see Enfield, 1989; Glantz, 1996 for the history of research on these phenomena,

as well as detailed descriptions of ENSO).

Walker also identified statistical correlations between the Southern Oscilla-tion and climatic anomalies in other parts of the world, work that was initially

dismissed but has since formed the basis for examining meteorological patterns

on a global scale. The study of such teleconnections has accelerated over the

last decade, fueled by interest in global climate change as well as technological

advances that facilitate the study of worldwide phenomena. While many such rela-

tionships have been posited, scientists often disagree about the causes and strength

of the associations.

Over the last 30 years both public awareness and funding have increased

with each of the severe ENSO events that occurred in 19721973, 19821983,and 19971998. While most people in the United States had probably never heard

of El Nino in the 1970s, 74% of the respondents in a 1998 poll conducted for

CNN-Time believed that the area in which they lived had been affected by it

(CNN-Time, 1998), probably because the exceptionally strong 19971998 event

was covered intensively by the media and cited as the cause of almost all inclement

weather and associated ills. Interest in El Nino, though, appears to be related to a

broader concern with natural disasters, as reflected by such diverse phenomena as a

National Geographic photographic spread on the topic, the recent spate of movies

featuring tornados and asteroids, and the designation of the years 19902000 as

the U.N. International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction.

Climatologists have also suggested that heightened El Nino intensity is linked

to global climate change, another issue that has generated well-funded research

programs and broad popular interest. Boehmer-Christiansens analysis of the po-

litical economy of research on climate change reveals the self-perpetuating nature

of the relationship between politics and scientists (Boehmer-Christiansen, 1999);

the research community lobbies to promote its own research agendas, and the of-

ten ambiguous results it produces are used to advance political agendas in which

decisive action on environmental issues can be avoided. Research efforts directed

at understanding, predicting, and analyzing the effects of climatic phenomena,

including ENSO activity, have thus accelerated, and while most are conducted by


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physical scientists, a number of social scientists, such as Glantz of the National

Center for Atmospheric Research and Caviedes, a geographer at the University

of Florida, have written extensively on the topic (Caviedes, 1975, 1984a,b, 1985;

Glantz, 1981, 1987, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997; Glantz et al., 1991). While limited incomparison to the physical sciences and often shaped by their links to them, some

important funding opportunities for studying the relationship between humans and

climatic processes such as El Nino have become available. For instance, 3 of the

11 funding initiatives in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations

Climate and Global Change Program target research on various aspects of the

relationship between humans and climate, including ENSO.

The Study of Prehistoric El Nino Events

Research on prehistoric ENSO events has certainly increased during this pe-

riod as well, but archaeological consideration of El Nino preceded the enormous

surge in public awareness and funding by several years. Interest in El Nino co-

incided with the adoption of human ecology by archaeologists in the late 1960s

and early 1970s; this cyclical climatic phenomenon was viewed as another aspect

of the environment that had to be taken into account in the assessment of pre-

historic coastal adaptations (e.g., Moseley, 1975; Osborn, 1977; Parsons, 1970;

Richardson, 1978). Two of the earliest scholars to address this issue were Parsonsand Moseley who considered El Nino effects on late Preceramic societies on the

north coast of Peru, which combined intensive exploitation of marine resources with

horticulture. Parsons (1970) was the first to explicitly consider this issue. Earlier,

Lanning (1963) had proposed that a major climatic change had occurred around

3000 B.C. and resulted in the dessication of the ephemeral fog meadows that develop

on coastal hills during the winter months. Drawing on the geological work of Craig

and Psuty (1968), Parsons argued against this model of climate change, and con-

tended that El Nino events had been a recurrent feature of the regions climate since

the end of the Pleistocene. She interpreted the apparent reduction in fog meadows

noted by Lanning as the result of meadow expansion during extreme El Nino events

followed by rapid contraction; during severe El Nino episodes populations that nor-

mally relied heavily on marine resources would instead intensify their exploitation

of the increased terrestrial resources generated by El Nino rains. In Parsonss view

ElNino episodes constituted an ongoing cyclical disruption of environmental equi-

librium that posed a challenge to which populations successfully adapted, but one

which prevented them from relying completely on littoral resources.

In The Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization (Moseley, 1975),

Moseley contended that the earliest development of social complexity on the north

coast was based on a subsistence system devoted primarily to marine foods. This ar-

gument, termed the maritime hypothesis depended on demonstrating that aquatic


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resources were both abundant and stable enough to sustain large sedentary commu-

nities. He thus acknowledged the disruption caused by extreme El Nino episodes,

but unlike Parsons discounted their effects on Preceramic societies, arguing that

In theory, macrocyclic variation could have been an important factor, but the possibleeconomic impact ofel nino is difficult to assess. It seems early subsistence patterns couldhave been significantly affected only by current disruptions of exceptional magnitude, andthese are very rare events. The archaeological record, as it now stands, reveals no obviousimpact from ninos, and in fact, the record reflects progressive population growth during theCotton Preceramic Stage. This suggests macrocyclic variation in the temporal availabilityof marine resources was not consequential as a demographic leveling device. (Moseley,1975, p. 46)

Since the 1970s two parallel and related bodies of research on the role of ENSO

events in prehistory have developed. Richardson, Sandweiss, and their coworkershave continued the examination of Preceramic coastal societies that engaged in

foraging and horticulture. One of the primary themes of these investigations is

the identification of mid-Holocene environmental change, especially the onset of

conditions that generate El Nino events; ENSO cycles are regarded by some of

these researchers as a potential factor in the emergence of social complexity around

5000 B.P. On the other hand, Moseley and his colleagues have focused on later,

socially complex societies occupying the coast, particularly the Moche and Chimu,

and have generally viewed extreme El Nino events as potential explanations for

agrarian and political collapse.Research on Preceramic El Nino episodes has been closely tied to paleoenvi-

ronmental reconstruction and has involved much interdisciplinary cooperation, as

well as debate, among archaeologists and geologists. One of the primary issues in

this research domain is the assessment of Holocene climatic change. Since coastal

climate is strongly influenced by offshore currents, dating the onset of contempo-

rary oceanographic conditions is a critical research goal. Richardson, Sandweiss,

and their colleagues argue that contemporary conditions have prevailed only since

about 5000 B.P. and provide malacological and geological evidence for a 400 km

shift northward of the cold Humboldt current at this date, a displacement that

Lanning had suggested in the 1960s (Lanning, 1963; Richardson, 1981, 1983;

Rollins et al., 1986; Sandweiss et al., 1996). Such a reconstruction implies that

marine resources were poorer and El Nino events nonexistent prior to 5000 B.P.

Others, notably Wells (1987, 1990), have argued, instead, that geological evidence

for El Nino episodes can be dated to as far back as the terminal Pleistocene.

This debate has important implications for the reconstruction of Preceramic

subsistence patterns, particularly in light of the controversy over the maritime hy-

pothesis proposed by Moseley in 1975. In fact, Sandweiss (1986) and Sandweiss

et al. (1996) have suggested that the onset of the contemporary ENSO cycle ini-

tiated the development of social complexity on the north coast. Osborn (1977)

proposed a similar explanation in his model for the initial exploitation of marine

resources in Peru. While he believed that the Holocene environment had remained


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stable, he suggested that once people had been pushed into the use of aquatic re-

sources by population pressure, the periodic shortages generated by El Nino events

caused the development of social complexity by stimulating resource management,

specifically the storage and redistribution of food and other necessities. This wouldaccount for the distribution of early complex societies along the northern Peruvian

coast, which coincides with the zone most severely affected by El Nino episodes.

More recently Sandweiss and his coauthors (Sandweiss et al., 1999) have

argued that variability in climate during the mid-Holocene, including the onset of

ENSO after about 5800 B.P., is correlated with cultural change around the world

and may be causally related to it. They cite evidence presented at a recent FERCO

International Conference on Climate and Culture at 3000 B.C. that suggests a tem-

poral relationship between climate change and processes such as urbanization in

China, the construction of pyramids in Egypt, and the building of temple mounds incoastal Peru, most of which reflect increasing social complexity. No arguments are

offered, nor evidence presented, regarding the linkages between climate and social

change, and the authors rightly note that the nature of the relationship is unclear.

The actual consequences of El Nino events for prehistoric populations have

been explored in more detail by researchers working on later, complex societies on

the north coast of Peru. Moseleys characterization of the effects of ENSO episodes

on these states contrasts with his earlier treatment of the phenomenon, and, in fact,

he has become one of the strongest proponents of research on the subject both

in terms of his own investigations and his influence on a younger generation ofscholars. The shift in his thinking is probably attributable to a number of factors,

including an increase in scientific information about and interest in El Nino cycles,

the fact that the Moche and Chimu were complex societies that relied on irrigation

technology that was vulnerable to ENSO effects, and the recognition of prehistoric

El Nino events in the archaeological record.

The initial investigation of ENSO episodes by Moseley and his colleagues

(Moseley et al., 1981, 1983; Nials et al., 1979a,b) was conducted under the aus-

pices of the Chicago Field Museums Programa Riego Antiguo that was in place

from 1976 to 1979. The research on El Nino was shaped by a general commitment

to human ecology as well as a specific question that emerged from the examina-

tion of ancient irrigation systems in the Moche and Chicama Valleys: Why had the

area under cultivation contracted by 3040% over the last millennium? Integrat-

ing hydrological, geological, and archaeological data, Moseley and his coauthors

developed a model of agrarian collapse that involved the gradual down cutting of

river beds due to ongoing geological uplift, punctuated by episodes of destabi-

lization caused by earthquakes and massive erosion generated by El Nino events.

The net result would be the continual contraction of irrigable lands and occasional

instances of rapid, El Nino induced destruction of agricultural infrastructure. The

archaeological record revealed flood deposits and architectural damage that were

attributed to two specific ENSO events that had broader social implications: one,

dated to approximately A.D. 600, apparently destroyed much of the Moche capital


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and was later deemed responsible for the citys abandonment as well as the col-

lapse of the Moche empire (Moseley and Richardson, 1992). The second event

occurred about A.D. 1100 (Nials et al., 1979a), and Moseley (1990) and others

(e.g., Craig and Shimada, 1986; Donnan, 1990; Shimada, 1990), have related it tothe 30 day flood that was associated with the fall of the Naymlap dynasty and the

incursion of the Chimu into the Lambayeque Valley as reported in Colonial oral

histories. Flood deposits in the Moche and Casma Valleys have also been dated to

approximately A.D. 1300 (Pozorski, 1987; Wells, 1990), and, according to Moseley

(personal communication 1999) may reflect either a well dated episode called the

Miraflores event that occurred in A.D. 1360 or ENSO activity that occurred at some

time between A.D. 1100 and 1360.

The focus of Programa Riego Antiguo was clearly on the interface between

humans and the physical world, the technology that allowed them to adapt toan Andean environment that was characterized as exceptionally prone to natural

disasters. That the authors view such hazards as being intertwined with human

activity is reflected in the discursive context of these publications: a number of

them conclude with a commentary regarding the value of contemporary indigenous

adaptations and the foolishness of building crises into the environment through the

application of inappropriate western technology such as the construction of large

dams (Moseley et al., 1981, 1983; see also Moseley, 1999). In a detailed exposition

of the relationship between tectonics and agrarian collapse, Moseley (1983, p. 794)

even states explicitly that

Earth movements can never replace human causality or social explanation of a cultural col-lapse, any more than glaciation in and of itself can explain the Pleistocene archaeologicalrecord. In this vein, the hypothesis of agrarian collapse is not intended to be an exercisein environmental causality. Rather, it is an exposition of mechanical principles underlyingchanging hydrological regimes that agricultural endeavors must adjust to.

Thus, while geological determinism is clearly rejected, research on the relationship

between El Nino events and agrarian collapse on the north coast is heavily weighted

toward identifying and modeling the effects of ENSO and other environmental con-

ditions on irrigation systems; intervening processesthe linkages between El Nino

episodes and social changeare not systematically examined. While two such

linkages have been suggested by these authors, famine (Nials et al., 1979a) and a

crisis of faith in the prevailing politicoreligious leadership (Moseley, 1990), nei-

ther their archaeological correlates nor the information needed to adequately model

them have been investigated. In fact, Moseley (1983, p. 779) argues that . . . social

causality can never be proven until all potential sources of natural causality are first

disproven. To proceed otherwise would be to confuse things that behave according

to physical principles with things that behave according to social norms.

The initial examination of prehistoric ENSO episodes on the north coast has

informed the work of a number of other scholars who have become involved in such

research to varying degrees. For instance, Craig and Shimada (1986) and Donnan


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(1986) have recognized archaeological traces of ENSO events at the eleventh

century A.D. sites of Batan Grande and Pacatnamu, respectively. Burger (1988,

pp. 141, 142), on the other hand, has suggested that an extreme El Nino may have

triggered the development of the Chavn phenomenon at the end of the Initial Pe-riod. In his scenario such an event, followed by a period of climatic deterioration,

may have destabilized coastal polities along with the highland communities with

which they interacted, leading to the emergence and spread of a crisis cult that

archaeologists recognize as the Chavn horizon. Burger is careful to add, how-

ever, that internal contradictions within these societies, and not solely externally

generated environmental perturbations, would have to be understood in order to

fully account for these developments.

Thus far the only attempt to actually trace the response of a prehistoric state

to a specific El Nino episode is Moores examination of the fourteenth century A.D.site of Quebrada Santa Cristina in the Casma Valley (Moore, 1991). On the basis

of warm-water mollusk remains that suggest occupation immediately following an

El Nino event, as well as the nature of the artifact assemblage and proximity to

agricultural fields, Moore argues that this settlement was established by the Chimu

state in order to reclaim flooded and waterlogged land. In a discussion of state re-

sponses to ENSO conditions, he contends that in addition to expansion into adja-

cent valleys and the reconstruction of canals, the Chimu apparently created raised

fields to augment productivity while they repaired the agricultural infrastructure

damaged by El Nino flooding. In addition, Moores data indicate that the workerswho occupied the site continued to rely heavily on maritime resourcesalthough

they consumed different species than did populations prior to the eventinstead of

switching to terrestrial foods. Rather than emphasizing the wholesale destruction

caused by an ENSO-related disaster, this perspective sheds light on the range of

responses employed by the Chimu state to contend with such an event and suggests

a greater level of flexibility on the part of prehistoric populations than do earlier

studies.

The most detailed investigations of the effects of extreme El Nino events

on prehistoric agriculturalists are reported in three dissertations produced by doc-

toral students working on the south coast of Peru under the auspices of Programa

Contisuyu. While adopting very different perspectives and methods, all three con-

sider the effects of the Miraflores event, which was caused by ENSO-generated

debris flows and destroyed the Chiribaya settlement of Miraflores as well as other

sites in the lower Moquegua drainage at about A.D. 1350.

Satterlees primary goal is to ascertain the magnitude of the Miraflores event

and to determine if it caused the demise of Chiribaya culture (Satterlee, 1993).

His investigation focuses on the physical impact of the debris flow on irrigation

systems and settlements, and his data are primarily geological in nature. Neither the

literature on contemporary hazards nor broader theoretical concepts drawn from

the social sciences are addressed, and while he touches on some aspects of culture


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change that resulted from the event, he generally characterizes the disaster as being

of such cataclysmic proportions that cultural extinction was nearly inevitable.

Satterlee notes, however, that some evidence for rebuilding was uncovered, and

suggests further investigation of the surviving population, a topic that Reycraftpursued in his dissertation just a few years later.

Reycraft (1998) is one of the few archaeologists who explicitly employs con-

cepts developed by hazard researchers to understand the effects of an extreme

El Nino event on a prehistoric population, and to consider this information in

terms of the variability of human response to environmental threats. Drawing on

this body of literature, he specifies the parameters of natural hazards as well as

the relevant characteristics of affected societies that must be taken into account in

order to understand reactions to such events. Perhaps more importantly, however,

he provides a detailed examination of how the Chiribaya population responded tothe disaster, and considers multiple lines of evidence that shed light on changes in

settlement patterns, subsistence practices, sociopolitical organization, and ethnic

identity. This fine-grained focus on a single, relatively small-scale society also al-

lows him to begin addressing an issue long-ignored in prehistoric disaster research,

the variability of response within a society, in this case based on differences in

geographic location, subsistence strategies, and, to some degree, social status.

The most ambitious treatment of disasters in prehistoric Andean societies

is Williamss examination of the role of such events in the Moquegua Valley

(Williams, 1997). He proposes a model of disaster-induced social change thatdraws on hazard research and archaeological theories of social evolution for the

examination of Moquegua history over the last 1500 years. More specifically, he

tests the proposition that in the long- term, prehistory is best characterized in terms

of punctuated equilibrium, with periods of continuity occasionally interrupted

by catastrophic events, including El Nino episodes, that generate rapid social

change. This idea was originally applied to Andean prehistory by Moseley (1987).

He suggested that the traditional chronology, which consists of periods of local

development alternating with brief horizons during which rapid change occurred,

could be understood in terms of cultural stasis punctuated by the movement of

ethnic groups in response to extreme ENSO events.

Although, like other researchers, Williams focuses primarily on agricultural

infrastructure, a key notion in his analysis is the concept of social vulnerability,

which allows him to examine the relationships among technology, social organi-

zation, and natural hazards. While some might disagree with Williamss assertion

that catastrophes are the primary motor of social change, or with his equation of

a wide range of social processes with natural hazards, his analysis is the most

sophisticated treatment of prehistoric disasters in the Andes thus far.

Finally, a global approach to ENSO-related climatological disasters has been

offered by Fagan (1999) in a recent book directed at a popular audience. In terms

of scope, it is not unlike the claim by Sandweiss et al. (1999) regarding the re-

lationship between mid-Holocene climate and culture change, but Fagan focuses


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on specific disasters that resulted in the collapse of ancient states. Using cases

such as the fall of the Moche and the disintegration of centralized political order

in Old Kingdom Egypt as illustrative examples, he argues that complex societies

with rigid bureaucracies and populations approaching carrying capacity are mostvulnerable to natural hazards. Both the logic of his thesis and his appeal to contem-

porary concerns regarding overpopulation and global climate change are similar

to arguments put forth by archaeologists 20 years ago when popular interest in

ecology was on the rise (e.g., Culbert, 1974; Hoffman, 1980).

Toward the Political Ecology of Prehistoric Disasters

As the above review demonstrates, archaeological investigations of disastershave become increasingly sophisticated since Sheets first assessed the field. Pre-

historians have made progress on all of the issues raised by him, but to varying

degrees. While post hoc treatments of accidentally encountered evidence still oc-

cur, substantial bodies of literature have developed, not just on ENSO activity,

but on other sorts of natural disasters affecting prehistoric populations as well.

These are generated as a result of interaction among researchers investigating cer-

tain types of events, such as volcanism (e.g., Mothes, 1999; Sheets and Grayson,

1979), or social transformations that occurred during a specific time period or in

a particular region and which may be attributable to disasters or abrupt climatechange (e.g., Dalfes et al., 1997; Peiser et al., 1998). Many of these investiga-

tions have been shaped by research designs produced specifically to identify the

occurrence, magnitude, or effects of such events.

One of the major successesas well as, perhaps, an important pitfallof

disaster research conducted by archaeologists is the close collaboration that has

developed between them and physical scientists, particularly geologists, hydrol-

ogists, and climatologists. The expertise of these scholars has been particularly

useful in establishing the nature and timing of disasters and assessing their mate-

rial consequences, particularly for subsistence activities. Archaeologists have also

made some substantial contributions to the scientific literature on climatic anoma-

lies (e.g., Richardson, 1983; Sandweiss et al., 1983, 1996). However, the problems

raised by geographers with regard to the predominance of physical science in con-

temporary disaster studies is mirrored in the field of archaeology; we have learned

much more about the geophysical parameters of prehistoric natural hazards than

we have about their relation to and impact on past societies. In addition, the de-

velopment of a variety of proxy paleoclimatic indicators, some of which offer fine

temporal resolution, has tended to promote interest in correlating periods of rapid

social change with evidence of severe climatic shifts. So, for example, the pub-

lication of cores from the Quelccaya ice cap that reflect precipitation patterns in

highland Peru over the last 1500 years (Thompson et al., 1985) resulted in a spate

of publications suggesting a causal relationship between El Nino events, drought,


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142 Van Buren

and the collapse of Andean states (e.g., Kolata, 1996, pp.195199; Moseley, 1987;

Shimada et al., 1991), while the Greenland ice cores have had a similar effect on

investigations of European Bronze Age societies (see Buckland et al., 1997 for a

critique of this literature).An important consequence of this line of research is the predominance of

disaster scenarios in the academic literature and especially the popular press. As

Buckland and his colleagues note (Buckland et al., 1997, p. 581) catastrophes

ancient and modernare headline news. This type of cumulative effect is re-

flected in Table I, which indicates many of the prehistoric social processes for

which El Nino has been cited as an explanation. When considered separately most

of these claims seem reasonable, though often inadequately supported, but when

viewed as a whole the effect is disheartening, particularly since no author men-

tioned here is an environmental determinist, and many explicitly reject such aposition. However, El Nino has been implicated in a broad range of events, and

the social factors involved in these processes have been systematically investi-

gated only rarely. The same trends can be seen in the more recent incorporation of

drought into archaeological explanations of social change in the Andes, particu-

larly the Titicaca Basin (Binford et al., 1997; Erickson, 1999; Kolata and Ortloff,

1996; Shimada et al., 1991). As Burger (1988, pp. 141, 142) implied a decade ago,

El Nino could easily become the deus ex machina of archaeological explanation

in the Andes, although it is now vying with drought as a prime mover.

Both collaboration with physical scientists and engagement with issues ofcontemporary concern, such as climate change, can positively affect archaeolog-

ical research on hazards by providing critical information regarding their timing

and nature, as well as funding opportunities and public support. However, these

approaches can also exact a cost, primarily by diverting attention from the unglam-

ourous and methodologically messy process of investigating the historical condi-

tions that promote disaster and the specific social repercussions that ensue once

such an event occurs. These are problems that increased interaction with natural

scientists, which has been advocated by a number of archaeologists as a means of

enhancing the investigation of prehistoric hazards, cannot help resolve.

One strategy for gaining a better understanding of the diverse variables that

are involved in generating and responding to disasters is to incorporate and develop

concepts drawn from the newer ecological approaches used in anthropology today,

rather than relying on an older equilibrium model derived from the version of

human ecology that was initially adopted by archaeologists. Erickson (1999) has

begun this process in an important critique of the prevailing explanation for the

collapse of the Tiwanaku state, which is attributed by a number of archaeologists

to a lengthy drought that exceeded the environmental threshold, or normal range

of climatic variation to which the culture could adapt. Erickson contends that

such a scenario is based on an understanding of ecosystem stability that has been

called into question by the New Ecology. This approach, which initially emerged


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Table I. Social Processes Attributed to El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Events

Social process Reference

Development of social complexity during latePreceramic Period on north coast of Peru Osborn (1977)

Increased social complexity in Pacific Basin andelsewhere during the mid-Holocene due to onsetof ENSO cycle and associated climate change

Sandweiss et al. (1999)

Emergence and spread of Chavn cult as a responseto crisis induced by an ENSO event

Burger (1988, pp. 139143)

Abandonment of Moche capital and collapse ofempire due to ENSO event, perhaps inconjunction with an earthquake and drought

Moseley and Richardson (1992)

Collapse of Moche state, Old Kingdom Egypt, andClassic Maya due to ENSO related climatic

effects

Fagan (1999)

Destruction of Chiribaya culture on the south coast ofPeru by catastrophic rains and mudslides causedby an ENSO event

Satterlee (1993)

Political collapse and radical alteration of Chiribayaculture on the south coast of Peru due tocatastrophic rains and mudslides caused byan ENSO event

Reycraft (1998)

Collapse of Chiribaya culture as a result of drought,competition for water with up-valley polities,and ENSO associated rains and mudslides

Williams (1997)

Alternation of periods of local development and

horizons in Peruvian archaeological record,the latter resulting from the movement andinteraction of ethnic groups set in motion byENSO events

Moseley (1987)

Colonization of Easter Island by Polynesiannavigators using anomalous westerly windsprecipitated by impending ENSO event

Caviedes and Waylen (1993)

as a result of mathematical research demonstrating the lack of stability in systems

and the development of nonequilibrium theory, casts doubt on the existence of

normal environmental parameters to which a population is adapted (Scoones,

1999), a model that was developed, for the most part, in well-vegetated, temperate

environments (Sullivan, 1996). Such a perspective has important implications for

the study of the social consequences of El Nino activity, whose salience as a

causal variable changes significantly depending on whether it is regarded as a

continuously occurring process of variable intensity or as a rare anomaly with

disastrous effects. On the most general level, it calls the frequent characterization

of the Andes as a particularly harsh and hazard prone environment into question.

More specifically, regarding El Nino as an integral part of the system (Sullivan,

1996) would redirect attention to the strategies people regularly deployed to cope

with these phenomena, and could provide insight into the reasons why some of


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144 Van Buren

these events became actual disasters. This is particularly important because hazard

research on modern populations indicates that disasters often exacerbate social

trends that are initiated prior to the catastrophic event (Oliver-Smith, 1996).

Unfortunately nonequilibrium theory has not received much attention fromsocial scientists (Scoones, 1999), but, as Erickson points out, a number of other

ideas emerging from the New Ecology share important points of convergence with

the various new ecologies that are being developed by social scientists (Biersack,

1999; Hoffman and Oliver-Smith, 1999; Scoones, 1999). Together, these offer con-

ceptual tools for overcoming some of the problems with current archaeological

approaches to hazards. Two of the most important points of agreement are the

reconceptualization of the relationship between humans and culture as a complex,

dialectical interaction, and the argument that historical processes play a critical

role in social and ecological change. This stance entails a rejection of the idea thatsocial change is caused by adaptation to an externally generated environmental

shift, or that similar perturbations in the environment will result in similar social

outcomes. Instead, culture and nature change together as a result of diverse inter-

actions, and the outcome is historically contingent. Archaeologists are particularly

well equipped for this kind of approach, which involves the diachronic, multidis-

ciplinary analysis of landscapes (e.g., Balee, 1998; Crumley, 1994; Crumley and

Marquardt, 1987; Fisher and Thurston, 1999; Kirch and Hunt, 1997), similar in

method, if not perspective, to the kind of research that prehistorians have long been

conducting on ENSO events, for example. Additionally, it requires the expansionof temporal and geographical scales, so that long-term change can be traced re-

gionally, and a holistic perspective that inhibits reliance on simple correlations

between environmental and social variables.

While all these factors would improve archaeological research on hazards, a

fourth concept, drawn from political ecology, is especially critical to understanding

the consequences of disasters. Political ecology combines the concerns of ecology

and a broadly defined political economy . . . [which] encompasses the constantly

shifting dialectic between society and . . . resources (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987,

p. 17 quoted in Peet and Watts, 1996, p. 3). The term was first used by Wolf (1972)

in his analysis of the relationship between land-use and the global economy, and it

continues to be applied primarily in a development context. However, the intersec-

tion of environment, resource use, and politics characterizes all societies, although

the nature of these relationships will obviously vary. Most societies are composed

of distinct groups with differential access to resources, and competition for these

often occurs both within and between polities. Thus, the relationship between a

society and the environment is not unitary, but is characterized instead by a va-

riety of interactions that involve different kinds of people, motivations, resources,

places, and outcomes. Furthermore, since resources are exploited for social pur-

poses and within social contexts, the emphasis remains sociocentric rather than

ecocentric (Biersack, 1999; Nyerges, 1996).


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Political ecology encompasses the notion of vulnerability that is already being

used by some archaeologists in examining the conjunction of social and geophys-

ical factors that resulted in prehistoric disasters. However, while its application

has the potential for generating more holistic research, it should be treated asan empirically testable model rather than an organizing principle of future work.

Both political ecology in general, and the more specific notion of vulnerability

developed out of dependency theory and constituted an attempt to understand en-

vironmental crises and conflicts in the context of the modern world order. Whether,

for example, the distribution and impact of prehistoric disasters can be construed

in precisely the same way is unlikely, since recent research on prehistoric disasters

suggests that differently organized societies responded to hazards in distinct ways

(Fagan, 1999; Sheets, 1999). A related problem with the concept of vulnerability

is that it is not particularly useful for understanding long-term transformations setin motion by specific disasters or by interaction with a hazardous environment. As

Sheets (1980) noted 20 years ago, modern hazard research is concerned primarily

with the short-term consequences of disasters as well as ways in which to prevent

them. Archaeologists, in fact, could make important contributions with respect to

these issues, but they would have to develop their own means for addressing them.

Hazard research on modern populations, however, has demonstrated the most

basic principals of political ecology; environmental crises affect the component

groups of society differently and often, in fact, promote the emergence of new

political relations, particularly between states and affected groups (Blaikie et al.,1994; Oliver-Smith, 1996). Prehistorians, then must be sure to identify the axes of

variation within a society, including, for example, gender, class, political factions,

ethnicity, and occupation, in order to assess the ways in which varied groups

contended with environmental variability and coped with disaster. As Erickson

(1999) makes clear in his analysis of drought in the Titicaca Basin, prehistoric

populations were not simply victims of climatic shifts, but were, instead, creative

and resourceful actors who deployed a variety of strategies for thriving in or just

plain surviving complex and dynamic environments. These strategies, though,

were shaped and constrained by their position in society at a particular place and

time in history. If archaeologists want to understand both why disasters occurred

and how ancient societies were affected, they must be able to identify constitutive

groups, assess the different ways in which they interacted with the environment

and each other, and trace their varied responses to extreme phenomena.

Archaeologists have already begun to adopt a number of concepts from ge-

ography and the new ecologies in their analysis of disasters. These fields offer

important tools for meeting some of the challenges posed by hazard research. By

reconceptualizing the relationship between humans and the environment as di-

alectical, continuously fluctuating, and historically contingent archaeologists can

continue to explore the nature and effects of prehistoric disasters without generat-

ing the deterministic explanations of social change that they profess to reject.


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146 Van Buren

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to Mike Moseley, Payson Sheets, Dimitris Stevis, Susan

deFrance, and the editors, Jim Skibo and Cathy Cameron, for reading and of-fering constructive criticism on the first version of this paper. Mike Moseley, in

particular, provided important insights into the history of research on natural disas-

ters in the Andes. All opinions, omissions, and errors of fact are, of course, solely

the responsibility of the author.

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Documents

Van Buren (2001) The Archaeology of El Niño Events and Other “Natural” Disasters