List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Notes on the Contributors

Climate, History, and Human Action

Roderick J. McIntosh

Joseph A. Tainter

Susan Keech McIntosh

Part 1 Climate, Environment, and Human Action

Climate Variability During the Holocene: An Update

Robert B. Dunbar

Complexity Theory and Sociocultural Change in the American Southwest

Jeffrey S. Dean

Part 2 Social Memory

Environmental Perception and Human Responses in History and Prehistory

Fekri Hassan

Social Memory in Mande

Roderick J. McIntosh

Memories, Abstractions, and Conceptualization of Ecological Crisis in the Mande World

Tereba Togola

From Garden to Globe: Linking Time and Space with Meaning and Memory

Carole L. Crumley

Chinese Attitudes Toward Climate

Cho-yun Hsu

Part 3 Cultural Responses to Climate Change

Three Rivers: Subregional Variations in Earth System Impacts in the Southwestern Maya Lowlands (Candelaria, Usumacinta, and Champoton Watersheds)

Joel D. Gunn

William J. Folan

The Lowland Maya Civilization: Historical Consciousness and Environment

David Freidel

Justine Shaw

Social Responses to Climate Change Among the Chumash Indians of South-Central California

John R. Johnson

Part 4 History and Contemporary Affairs

Global Change, History, and Sustainability

Joseph A. Tainter

Land Degradation as a Socionatural Process

S. E. van der Leeuw

Index