Economy and Environment in Complex Societies: A Case Study from Bronze Age Sardinia.

Abstract

This dissertation proposes a synthetic framework of the economic processes that underlie the formation and growth of social complexity, with specific emphasis on the recursive relationships among the mobility of non-elites, natural resource availability, elite strategizing, and the environment. Non-elites in a complex society have little motivation to overproduce beyond their own needs, and they have an interest in maintaining the long-term productive capacity of their territory. In contrast, elites may be more concerned with the immediate goal of increasing production to support competitive displays. If elites can enforce their own goals over those of non-elites, or if they can convince non-elites to participate in their strategies of competition, resource degradation may occur. However, if non-elites can use mobility to resist elite demands, elites may be forced to find other ways to support competitive displays, including raiding, taking slaves, refining craft production, and making greater use of the symbolic resources of distance and time. This theoretical framework is used to interpret the relationship between the political economy and environmental change at a Middle Bronze Age Nuragic settlement (ca. 1700-1450) on the Siddi Plateau in south-central Sardinia. Excavation and survey evidence suggests that incipient elites had difficulty controlling non-elite labor due to low population densities and the availability of mobility as a form of resistance. Elites were forced into strategies of motivation and reward to secure the cooperation of non-elites, which led to agricultural extensification. The leaders of the Siddi Plateau settlement system increasingly focused their production on foods that were water-intensive to raise - wheat and pigs – and the Siddi Plateau community had to travel at least two kilometers to reach the nearest streams. The Mediterranean climate may also have become drier during the Middle Bronze Age, making water-intensive agriculture even more difficult. The settlement system of the Siddi Plateau was abandoned at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, and the productive capacity of the Siddi Plateau region does not appear to have been damaged. The abandonment of the plateau should be seen as a compromise between elites seeking higher agricultural productivity and non-elites resisting higher labor demands.