See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/312088542

Geoarchaeology, Environment, and Societal

Stability: Karl W. Butzer's Legacy

Article in Geoarchaeology · February 2017

DOI: 10.1002/gea.21608

CITATIONS READS

0 78

3 authors, including:

Carlos E. Cordova Arlene M. Rosen

Oklahoma State University - Stillwater University of Texas at Austin
71 PUBLICATIONS 919 CITATIONS 84 PUBLICATIONS 1,759 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

IRON AGE ARCHAEOLOGY IN ISRAEL View project

Neve David excavations View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Arlene M. Rosen on 24 January 2017.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Introduction

Geoarchaeology, Environment, and Societal Stability:

Karl W. Butzer’s Legacy
Carlos E. Cordova,1 ,* Antony G. Brown,2 and Arlene M. Rosen3
1
Department of Geography, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA
2
Paleoenvironmental Laboratory University of Southampton (PLUS), University of Southampton, Southampton, Hampshire, UK
3
Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA

Correspondence books, some of which have become in large part the ba-
* Corresponding author sis for our current understanding of the evolution of hu-
E-mail: carlos.cordova@okstate.edu mans and their environment. As a teacher and advisor he
forged several generation of scholars and researchers, and
Correction added on 12th January 2017 after as a true scholar, he influenced many individual scholars
first online publication: Day of birth that is 19 is and schools of thought around the world.
added to the sentence August 1934 mentioned Karl Butzer was born in Germany on August 19, 1934.
in the second paragraph of this paper. At the age of four he emigrated with his family to England
(landing in Southampton) and then to Canada, where he
Published online in Wiley Online Library
grew up. He received a B.Sc. (honors) degree in Math-
(wileyonlinelibrary.com).
ematics (1954) and a Master’s degree in Meteorology
doi 10.1002/gea.21608 and Geography (1955) from McGill University in Mon-
treal. He went back to his native Germany where he
got his doctor in science degree (Dr. rer. Nat.) in Physi-
cal Geography and Ancient History (1957) at Bonn Uni-
versity, where he worked under the supervision of the
renowned geographer and climatologist, Karl Troll. He re-
mained in Germany for two years as a research member
of the German Academy of Sciences and Literature. His
first academic appointment in the United States was with
the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1959–1966), then
with the University of Chicago (1966–1981 and 1982–
1984). During a year (1981–1982) he was a chaired pro-
fessor at the Swiss Institute of Science and Technology
(ETH) in Zurich. In 1984 he moved to the University of
Texas at Austin as a Dickson Centennial Professor of Lib-
eral Arts and a faculty member at the Department of Ge-
ography and the Environment until his death.

ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETAL

On May 4, 2016, geoarchaeology lost one of its greatest
proponents and founders. Karl Butzer left a vast and stim-
ulating legacy for younger generations of geographers, ar-
chaeologists, Quaternary geologists, and other scholars. A
prolific writer, Karl left dozens of articles, chapters, and
STABILITY: A LIFE-LONG CAREER
From the beginning of his career almost 60 years ago,
Karl W. Butzer devoted his research to studying the
complex interactions between societies and their envi-
ronments in the past. In his numerous studies around
the world he identified these interactions through
correlations between sedimentary archives, archaeolog-
ical and historical data, and background climatic and
paleoclimatic data. In his early career, Karl W. Butzer

Geoarchaeology: An International Journal 32 (2017) 3–5 Copyright 

C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 3
GEOARCHAEOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, AND SOCIETAL STABILITY
recognized the need of many societies to alter geomor-
phic systems and natural cycles for their economic and
social benefit, a process that made societies highly de-
pendent on the landscapes they created. In other words,
societies potentially compromised their own success
with the environment they modified. One example of
this compromise is provided in his 1976 monograph
Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt: A Study in Cultural Ecology.
Modifications to Nile floodplain processes were meant to
accommodate seasonal floods for the irrigation of crops
that were the basis of the Egyptian economy. Although
this powerful economy launched the state to regional
dominance, it created a strong dependency on a geomor-
phic system that, was and still remains, highly vulnerable
(Butzer, 1976). His research in Egypt, and especially his
attempt to collate and synthesise environmental history
of the lower Nile and Delta remains a key inspiration and
starting point for ongoing research in the region.
The legacy of Karl W. Butzer’s research in geoarchaeol-
ogy is hallmarked by his landmark 1982 book, Archaeology
as Human Ecology, in which he emphasized the contextual
and ecological approach to the study of human societies
(Butzer, 1982). The ideas in this book influenced several
generations of archaeologists and geoarchaeologists, to
the point that the text is widely cited and used in univer-
sity courses to this day. Furthermore, Archaeology as Hu-
man Ecology established the path to a more cultural eco-
logical approach in a geoarchaeology, whose basis in pre-
vious years had relied heavily on the earth sciences alone.
Thus, the ideas proposed in the book helped narrow the
gap between a more geological geoarchaeology and a very
anthropological archaeology. On a personal note, the re-
search careers for two of the editors of this special issue,
Cordova and Brown, were diverted by Archaeology as Hu-
man Ecology from geomorphology to geoarchaeology.
Much of Butzer’s research in Mexico highlighted the
growing complexity that resulted from the introduction
and rapid diffusion of nonnative land-use patterns in
the New World (Butzer and Butzer, 1995). These new
land-use forms on a terrain that was partially deserted
by epidemics led to severe soil erosion (see papers by
Borejsza and colleagues and Cordova in this volume.)
However, the most important aspect that Karl W. Butzer
pointed out was that despite widespread land degradation
during the early years of Spanish colonization, the region
had already seen deep transformation and landscape
degradation in Prehispanic times (Butzer, 1992, 1995).
More recently, Karl W. Butzer began to look back into
the issues of the interconnections between social systems
and environmental stability/instability in the context of
complex cultural, political, and economic spheres. In
some cases, he emphasized aspects of sustainability and
management policy, which is in many way similar to
4 Geoarchaeology: An International Journal 32 (2017) 3–5 Copyright 
CORDOVA ET AL.
issues that affect the world today (Butzer, 2012; Butzer
and Endfield, 2012).
Growing interest in the topic of environmental change
and societal stability-instability cycles prompted an
effort to bring together scholars whose work has been
influenced by Karl W. Butzer’s ideas and research. This
opportunity came to fruition in 2014 during the 79th
Annual Meeting of the Society for the American Archae-
ology in Austin, Texas. Although the session and this
special volume were originally meant to be a collection
of papers on the issues of society and environmental
stability on the occasion of his impending retirement, his
sudden death turned it into a volume in his memory.
THE PAPERS
The contributors to this volume comprise geoarchaeolo-
gists of different backgrounds (archaeology, geography,
and geology). All have been inspired by the works of Karl
Butzer. The papers span topics from theoretical and re-
gional reviews to examples focused on small areas and
even single sites. They also vary in time frame, show-
ing the complex relationships between environment and
society from the Neolithic to the 20th century. The Ne-
olithic is noted as a time of growing societal complexity
with increasing capacity to modify the environment. In
the first paper, Steve Rosen, discusses the cycles of set-
tlement boom and decline in the Negev Desert across
various spatial and temporal scales. He explores the so-
called boundaries and stereotypes that are often associ-
ated with desert cultures in the archaeological literature.
The Negev, as well as other desert areas, have been seen
as unfavorable environments, yet the Negev was charac-
terized through time by examples of relatively high pop-
ulation levels and societal complexity.
Environmental challenges are not exclusive to dry ar-
eas; each climatic zone on earth poses different challenges
to society. It is commonly believed that initial clearance
of vegetation for farming, which often occurs with pop-
ulation increase, leads to tremendous soil erosion. This
can be true in principle, but it is not the only cause
of erosion. Often, however, it is the opposite that may
cause more erosion. As explained in Tony Brown’s pa-
per, erosion represents a series of paradoxical scenar-
ios where population decline can be more conducive to
slope erosion and stream modification than population
growth. Three examples in the Old World illustrate this
paradox, particularly in cases where terracing and other
soil–water modifications are created in the landscape be-
fore abandonment.
Two other papers in this volume, by Aleksander
Borejsza and colleagues and Carlos Cordova, show sce-
narios of soil erosion on slopes and accumulation in
C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
 CORDOVA ET AL.
stream valleys in the highlands of Central Mexico. Both
papers also point to a very important aspect of alluvial
geoarchaeology, which is the information that can be
extracted from deep alluvial sections, particularly those
which expose deeply buried sites. In both cases, slopes
and streams were managed to a point in which they
could only serve their purpose as long as they were main-
tained by a dispersed rural population. Consequently, the
rapid decline of population that repeatedly occurred in
pre-Columbian times, and after the Spanish Conquest,
led to disastrous consequences as terrace and dam sys-
tems were destroyed by erosion caused by lack of main-
tenance. These two examples support the idea of the soil
erosion paradox discussed for Old World sites in Tony
Brown’s paper, particularly the fact that soil erosion is
not necessarily associated with population growth.
Geoarchaeology is now an indispensable tool in the
search for explanations of the decline of urban and ru-
ral societies in the broad environmental context. One of
the soundest examples is the decline of the Classic Maya,
a phenomenon that has been studied through several
diverse proxy data records. In this volume, the papers
by Sheryl Luzzader-Beach and colleagues, and Nicholas
Dunning and colleagues address the Maya agricultural
environment from a geoarchaeological perspective. In
their paper, Luzzader-Beach and colleagues compare two
sediment stratigraphic records to reconstruct a deep-time
history of land-use in the Maya area beginning in the
late Archaic Period (1500 B.C.) extending throughout
the Maya occupation. This evidence records increasingly
intensive land-use, changes in forest composition, and
landscape alteration with ever-growing social complex-
ity. Thus, also in the Maya region Nicholas Dunning and
colleagues present evidence of human-led changes to the
hydrological systems of the bajos (low swampy areas) in
the northeastern part of the Petén region in Guatemala.
These changes are seen as canals that were partly modi-
fied from the existing natural watercourses possibly for ir-
rigation, fishing, and transportation. Archaeologists have
known of the raised fields in these areas, but calculated
geoarchaeological research combining field and remotely
sensed imagery has suggested the presence of canals,
which adds more complexity to the productive system of
these important areas of the ancient Maya agricultural
realm.
Although geoarchaeology focuses on the reconstruc-
tion of past landscapes, geoarchaeologists possess skills
that can be applied to understanding aspects of land-
scape processes in the recent and contemporary past.
Among other things, archaeology of the contemporary
Geoarchaeology: An International Journal 32 (2017) 3–5 Copyright 
C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
View publication stats
GEOARCHAEOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, AND SOCIETAL STABILITY
past has focused on investigating crime scenes, includ-
ing those concerning war atrocities. In his paper, Joseph
Schuldenrein provides an example of how traditional
landscape reconstruction methods used in archaeology to
study desert Paleolithic sites were critical in an investiga-
tion of recent mass graves in the Iraqi Desert. The results
of this research were crucial for the conviction of Saddam
Hussein for war crimes.
In summary, the cases presented here all converge on
the idea that geoarchaeology has many applications in
archaeology, social history, environmental history, and
sustainability studies, among other areas. All the papers
here take the viewpoint that geoarchaeology is not just
an add-on to traditional archaeology but that it part of
mainstream archaeology/anthropology since all individ-
uals, groups, and societies, past and present, exist in a
web of intimate relationships with their environment. In
addition to this underlying ecological viewpoint many
of methodologies and approaches within these studies
are based on theoretical and methodological approaches
linked directly to Karl W. Butzer’s academic contribu-
tion, and hopefully in their way pay tribute to the cultur-
ally informed, cross-disciplinary, and sophisticated anal-
ysis of eco-human systems that epitomizes the Butzerian
approach.
REFERENCES
Butzer, K.W. (1976). Early hydraulic civilization in Egypt: A
study in cultural ecology. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Butzer, K.W. (1982). Archaeology as human ecology. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Butzer, K.W. (1992). The Americas before and after 1942: An
introduction to current geographical research. Annals of
the Association of American Geographers, 82, 345–368.
Butzer, K.W. (1995). No Eden in the new world. Nature, 362,
16–17.
Butzer, K.W. (2012). Collapse, environment, and society.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109,
3632–3639.
Butzer, K.W., & Butzer, E.K. (1995). Transfer of the
Mediterranean livestock economy to New Spain:
Adaptation and ecological consequences. In B.L. Turner II,
A. Gomez-Sal, F. Gonzalez-Bernaldez & F. Di Castri (Eds.)
Global land use change: A perspective from the Columbian
encounter (pp. 151–193). Madrid: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Cientificas.
Butzer, K.W. & Endfield, G.H. (2012). Critical perspectives on
historical collapse. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 109, 3628–3631.
5