Sunk-cost effects and vulnerability to collapse in ancient societies

Current Anthropology

Volumn 44, Issue 5, 2003, Pages 722-728

  Janssen, Marco A ^a   Kohler, Timothy A ^b   Scheffer, Marten ^c  

^a INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 4243109115     PISSN: 00113204     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/379261     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. ARKES, HAL R., AND PETER AYTON. 1999. The sunk cost and Concorde effects: Are humans less rational than lower animals? Psychological Bulletin 125:591-600.
2. ARKES, HAL R., AND CATHERINE BLUMER. 1985. The psychology of sunk cost. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 35:124-40.
3. BOEHM, CHRISTOPHER. 1996. Emergency decisions, cultural-selection mechanics, and group selection. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 37:763-93.
4. BOYD, ROBERT, AND PETER J. RICHERSON. 1985. Culture and the evolutionary process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
5. BRETERNITZ, DAVID A., CHRISTINE K. ROBINSON, AND G. TIMOTHY GROSS, COMPILERS. 1986. Dolores Archaeological Program: Final synthetic report. Denver: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation.
6. HODELL, DAVID A., JASON H. CURTIS, AND MARK BRENNER. 1995. Possible role of climate in the collapse of Classic Maya civilization. Nature 375:391-94.
7. JANIS, IRVING. 1972. Victims of groupthink. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
8. JANSSEN, MARCO A., AND MARTEN SCHEFFER. 2003. Overexploitation of renewable resources by ancient societies. MS.
9. KANE, ALLEN E. 1986. "Prehistory of the Dolores River Valley," in Dolores Archaeological Program: Final synthetic report. Compiled by D. A. Breternitz, C. K. Robinson, and G. T. Gross, pp. 91-204. Denver: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation.
10. KOHLER, TIMOTHY A. 1992. Prehistoric human impact on the environment in the upland North American Southwest. Population and Environment 13:255-68.
11. -. 2000. The final 400 years of prehispanic agricultural society in the Mesa Verde region. Kiva 66:191-204.
12. KOHLER, TIMOTHY A., AND MEREDITH H. MATTHEWS. 1988. Long-term Anasazi land use and forest reduction: A case study from Southwest Colorado. American Antiquity 53: 537-64.
13. KOHLER, TIMOTHY A., JANET D. ORCUTT, ERIC BLINMAN, AND KENNETH LEE PETERSEN. 1986. "Anasazi spreadsheets: The cost of doing agricultural business in prehistoric Dolores," in Dolores Archaeological Program: Final synthetic report. Compiled by D. A. Breternitz, C. K. Robinson, and G. T. Gross, pp. 525-38. Denver: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation.
14. KOHLER, TIMOTHY A., MATTHEW W. VAN PELT, AND LORENE Y. YAP. 2000. "Reciprocity and its limits: Considerations for a study of the prehispanic Pueblo world," in Alternative leadership strategies in the Prehispanic Southwest. Edited by Barbara J. Mills, pp. 180-206. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
15. KUCKELMAN, KRISTIN A., RICKY R. LIGHTFOOT, AND DEBRA L. MARTIN. 2002. The bioarchaeology and taphonomy of violence at Castle Rock and Sand Canyon Pueblos, southwestern Colorado. American Antiquity 67:486-513.
16. LEKSON, STEPHEN H. 1984. Great Pueblo architecture of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. National Park Service, Chaco Canyon Studies, Publications in Archeology 18B.
17. LIPE, WILLIAM D. Editor. 1992. The Sand Canyon Archaeological Project: A progress report. Crow Canyon Archaeological Center Occasional Paper 2.
18. LIPE, WILLIAM D., JAMES N. MORRIS, AND TIMOTHY A. KOHLER. COMPILERS. 1988. Dolores Archaeological Program: Anasazi communities at Dolores: Grass Mesa Village. 2 vols. Denver: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation.
19. MUIR, ROBERT J., AND JONATHAN C. DRIVER. 2002. Scale of analysis and zooarchaeological interpretation: Pueblo III faunal variation in the northern San Juan region. Journal of Anthropological Anthropology 21:165-99.
20. NELSON, MARGARET C., AND MICHELLE HEGMON. 2001. Abandonment is not as it seems: An approach to the relationship between site and regional abandonment. American Antiquity 66:213-35.
21. ORCUTT, JANET D. 1987. "Modeling prehistoric agricultural ecology in the Dolores Area," in Dolores Archaeological Program: Supporting studies: Settlement and environment. Compiled by K. L. Petersen and J. D. Orcutt, pp. 649-81. Denver: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation.
22. PETERSEN, KENNETH L. 1986. "Climatic reconstruction for the Dolores Project Area," in Dolores Archaeological Program: Final synthetic report. Compiled by D. A. Breternitz, C. K. Robinson, and G. T. Gross, pp. 311-24. Denver: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation.
23. RENFREW, COLIN. 2001. Production and consumption in a sacred economy: The material correlates of high devotional expression at Chaco Canyon. American Antiquity 66:14-25.
24. RINALDI, SERGIO, AND MARTEN SCHEFFER. 2000. Geometric analysis of ecological models with slow and fast processes. Ecosystems 3:507-21.
25. ROSE, MARTIN R., WILLIAM J. ROBINSON, AND JEFFREY S. DEAN. 1996. Dendroclimatic reconstruction for the southeastern Colorado Plateau. Tucson: Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona.
26. SALZER, MATTHEW W. 2000. Dendroclimatology in the San Francisco Peaks region of Northern Arizona, USA. Ann Arbor: UMI.
27. SCHEFFER, MARTEN, AND ROB J. DE BOER. 1995. Implications of spatial heterogeneity for the paradox of enrichment. Ecology 76:2270-77.
28. SCHEFFER, MARTEN, STEPHEN R. CARPENTER, JONATHAN A. FOLEY, CARL FOLKE, AND BRIAN H. WALKER. 2001. Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems. Nature 413:591-696.
29. SCHLANGER, SARAH H. AND RICHARD H. WILSHUSEN. 1993. "Local abandonments and regional conditions in the North American Southwest," in Abandonment of settlements and regions: Ethnoarchaeological and archaeological approaches. Edited by C. M. Cameron and S. A. Tomka, pp. 85-98. New York: Cambridge University Press.
30. STAW, BARRY M. 1997- "The escalation of commitment: An update and appraisal," in Organizational decision making. Edited by Zur Shapira, pp. 191-215. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
31. TAINTER, JOSEPH A. 1988. The collapse of complex societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
32. TEGER, ALLAN I. 1980. Too much invested to quit: The psychology of the escalation of conflicts. New York: Pergamon.
33. VAN WEST, CARLA R. 1993. Modeling prehistoric agricultural productivity in southwestern Colorado: A GIS approach. Washington State University, Department of Anthropology Reports of Investigations 67.
34. VARIEN, MARK D., CARLA R. VAN WEST, AND G. STUART PATTERSON. 2000. Competition, cooperation, and conflict: Agricultural production and community catchments in the central Mesa Verde region. Kiva 66:45-65.
35. WEISS, HARVEY, AND RAYMOND S. BRADLEY. 2001. What drives social collapse? Science 291:609-10.
36. WHYTE, GLEN. 1993. Escalating commitment in individual and group decision making: A prospect theory approach. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 54:430-55.
37. WILLS, W. H. 2001. Ritual and mound formation during the Bonito phase in Chaco Canyon. American Antiquity 66:433-51.
38. WINDES, THOMAS C., AND DABNEY FORD. 1996. The Chaco Wood Project: The chronometric reappraisal of Pueblo Bonito. American Antiquity 61:295-310.