ABSTRACT
This final chapter examines the collapse of complex societies (not coincidentally, the title of a monograph by Joseph Tainter, published in 1988). Archaeologists and ancient historians have long had an interest in how and why societies decline, both in specific cases and in comparative study. Multiple episodes of collapse, sometimes within a single geographical region, have been presented in this book, as collapse is nearly as common as complexity, though it is not limited to stateorganized societies. Yet complexity and collapse are completely separate phenomena; no cause for the rise of complexity can be cited as the reason for a society’s collapse (Adams 1988). At the same time, complexity (as seen in this book) is an expensive strategy of political centralization and integration, with costs stemming from labor, military, resource, and ideological expenditures (Cowgill 1988; Tainter 1988: 92). For this reason, it is worthwhile to look at the dissolution of such societies in greater detail.
