The human experience of social transformation: Insights from comparative archaeology
Archaeologists and other scholars have long studied the causes of collapse and other major social transformations and debated how they can be understood. This article instead focuses on the human experience of living through those transformations, analyzing 18 transformation cases from the US Southw...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6264852 2023-05-15T17:33:48+02:00 The human experience of social transformation: Insights from comparative archaeology Hegmon, Michelle Peeples, Matthew A. 2018-11-29 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6264852/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30496250 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208060 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6264852/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30496250 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208060 © 2018 Hegmon et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2018 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208060 2018-12-23T01:10:21Z Archaeologists and other scholars have long studied the causes of collapse and other major social transformations and debated how they can be understood. This article instead focuses on the human experience of living through those transformations, analyzing 18 transformation cases from the US Southwest and the North Atlantic. The transformations, including changes in human securities, were coded based on expert knowledge and data analyzed using Qualitative Comparative Analysis techniques. Results point to the following conclusions: Major transformations, including collapses, generally have a strong and negative impact on human security; flexible strategies that facilitate smaller scale changes may ameliorate those difficulties. Community security is strongly implicated in these changes; strong community security may minimize other negative changes. The relationships among the variables are complex and multi-causal; while social transformation may lead to declines in human securities, declining conditions of life can also push people to transform their societies in negative ways. Results show that some societies are better able to deal with difficulties than others. One important policy implication is that community security and local conditions can be instrumental both in helping people to cope with difficulties and in staving off some of those difficulties. A multi-scalar approach is essential as we face the increasing problems of climate change in the decades ahead. Text North Atlantic PubMed Central (PMC) PLOS ONE 13 11 e0208060 |
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Research Article Hegmon, Michelle Peeples, Matthew A. The human experience of social transformation: Insights from comparative archaeology |
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Research Article |
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Archaeologists and other scholars have long studied the causes of collapse and other major social transformations and debated how they can be understood. This article instead focuses on the human experience of living through those transformations, analyzing 18 transformation cases from the US Southwest and the North Atlantic. The transformations, including changes in human securities, were coded based on expert knowledge and data analyzed using Qualitative Comparative Analysis techniques. Results point to the following conclusions: Major transformations, including collapses, generally have a strong and negative impact on human security; flexible strategies that facilitate smaller scale changes may ameliorate those difficulties. Community security is strongly implicated in these changes; strong community security may minimize other negative changes. The relationships among the variables are complex and multi-causal; while social transformation may lead to declines in human securities, declining conditions of life can also push people to transform their societies in negative ways. Results show that some societies are better able to deal with difficulties than others. One important policy implication is that community security and local conditions can be instrumental both in helping people to cope with difficulties and in staving off some of those difficulties. A multi-scalar approach is essential as we face the increasing problems of climate change in the decades ahead. |
format |
Text |
author |
Hegmon, Michelle Peeples, Matthew A. |
author_facet |
Hegmon, Michelle Peeples, Matthew A. |
author_sort |
Hegmon, Michelle |
title |
The human experience of social transformation: Insights from comparative archaeology |
title_short |
The human experience of social transformation: Insights from comparative archaeology |
title_full |
The human experience of social transformation: Insights from comparative archaeology |
title_fullStr |
The human experience of social transformation: Insights from comparative archaeology |
title_full_unstemmed |
The human experience of social transformation: Insights from comparative archaeology |
title_sort |
human experience of social transformation: insights from comparative archaeology |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6264852/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30496250 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208060 |
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North Atlantic |
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North Atlantic |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6264852/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30496250 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208060 |
op_rights |
© 2018 Hegmon et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208060 |
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