On June 13th, 2008, Thomas Baerwald (NSF, Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences) announced that the collaborative proposal, Development and Resilience of Complex Socioeconomic Systems: A theoretical Model and Case Study from the Maya Lowlands [NSF Proposal# 0827275] would be funded for three years at a level of $900,000. The project team includes the following five Principle Investigators and institutions:

Kevin G. Cannariato (U of Southern California)

Douglas Kennett (U of Oregon; lead Institution)

Keith Prufer (U of New Mexico)

Bruce Winterhalder (U of California – Davis)

Rebecca Zarger (U of South Florida)

A short abstract and the full text of the proposal follow.

HSD 0827275 Abstract

Societies marked by administrative hierarchies, rulers and high degrees of integration developed in multiple locations around the world beginning 8000 years ago. The process was episodic and marked by frequent economic failure and political disintegration, in some instances in the context of abrupt climate change. Researchers engaged in this interdisciplinary project will develop a human-landscape-climate model for the emergence and resilience of complex socioeconomic systems, and apply and test the predictions of the model with extant data and new research in the tropical Maya lowlands of southern Belize. The primary goal is to model human behavioral responses to environmental transformation, abrupt or gradual, by linking together processes of settlement, resource exploitation, agricultural intensification, competition, and polity stability. The main product will be a general theoretical model that integrates population density and distribution, environmental suitability as a function of economic intensification and endogenous environmental change, and political exploitation. A secondary goal is to test this model at Uxbenká, a Maya polity that formed in southern Belize between 4000-1500 BP.

Archaeological work in the region suggests that integrated, spatially extensive societies formed in the context of demographic expansion, agricultural intensification, environmental degradation, and eventual fragmentation. The available paleoclimatic data also indicate that an abrupt decrease in rainfall played a role in the disintegration of certain polities between 2100-1800 BP. This episode was followed by the reintegration and proliferation of yet more complex societies after 1800 BP. Many of these collapsed completely at 1000 BP, again within the context of abrupt climate change. Extant data from a century of research in this region, complemented by new paleoenvironmental, archaeological and ethnographic investigation in southern Belize will guide the construction and appraisal of models meant to capture the causes of these events

Climate change in the context of human-induced environmental degradation is an acute problem facing our increasingly inter-dependent global community of nearly six billion. It presents difficult policy issues of great importance for contemporary societies. Climatic variability on multiple timescales can elicit a range of human responses that depend on the distribution and density of human populations, their modes of production, effects on environment, forms of political integration, and control via coercion or ideological manipulation by administrative hierarchies. General models capable of incorporating these complex interactions are essential for exploring the stability and vulnerability of complex socioeconomic systems, including our own.

Southern Belize provides a well-researched environmental and cultural context for the inter-disciplinary, empirical studies necessary to build and test such models, and appraise effective and ineffective responses. Along with academic and popular publications, the research team will develop education modules for primary and secondary schools in the U.S and Belize, provide teacher workshops and community outreach for sustainable development, and offer project-based interdisciplinary experiences for university students in the US and Belize. Project data, analyses and models will be made available through an on-line archive.