Includes bibliographical references and index.

Why we question collapse and study human resilience, ecological vulnerability, and the aftermath of empire / Patricia A. NcAnany and Norman Yoffee -- Ecological catastrophe, collapse, and the myth of "ecocide" on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) / Terry L. Hunt and Carl P. Lipo -- Did the Medieval Norse society in Greenland really fail? / Joel Berglund -- Calamities without collapse : environment, economy, and society in China, ca. 1800-1949 / Kenneth Pomeranz -- Marketing conquest and the vanishing Indian : an indigenous response to Jared Diamond's archaeology of the American Southwest / Michael Wilcox -- Bellicose rulers and climatological peril? Retrofitting twenty-first century woes on eighth-century Maya society / Patricia A. McAnany and Tomás Gallareta Negrón -- Collapse in ancient Mesopotamia : what happened, what didn't / Norman Yoffee -- Advanced Andeans and backward Europeans : structure and agency in the collapse of the Inca Empire / David Cahill -- Rwandan genocide : toward an explanation in which history and culture matter / Christopher C. Taylor -- "Failed" states, societal "collapse," and ecological "disaster" : a Haitian lesson on grand theory / Drexel G. Woodson -- The power of the past : environment, Aborigines, archaeology, and a sustainable Australian society / Tim Murray -- Excusing the haves and blaming the have-nots in the telling of history / Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz -- Sustainable survival / J.R. McNeill.