Joseph A. Tainter is project leader of Cultural Heritage Research, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has taught anthropology at the University of New Mexico, and is the author or editor of many articles and monographs. His book The Collapse of Complex Societies develops a long-standing research interest in the evolution of socioeconomic complexity. His work has been recognized in several fields, and has led to invitations to lecture to organizations as diverse as the Getty centre for the History of Art and the Humanities and the International Society for Ecological Economics.Bonnie Bagley Tainter is an archaeologist, poet, editor, and private consultant. Her academic interests range from vertebrate and invertebrate evolution to Southwestern archaeology, and include historic preservation planning for her home community of Corrales, New Mexico. She previously contributed to the editing of several papers for the book Effects of War on Society, and has done research on the architecture of Hovenweep National Monument and on prehistoric settlement changes in the Albuquerque area.

• About the Santa Fe Institute -- Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity -- Introduction: Prehistoric Societies as Evolving Complex Systems -- Demography, Environment, and Subsistence Stress -- Notes on Economic Uncertainty and Human Behavior in the Prehistoric North American Southwest -- Hunting, Gathering, and Health in the Prehistoric Southwest -- Technological Strategies Responsive to Subsistence Stress -- Risk, Anthropogenic Environments, and Western Anasazi Subsistence -- The Calculus of Self-interest in the Development of Cooperation: Sociopolitical Development and Risk Among the Northern Anasazi -- Risk, Reciprocity, and the Operation of Social Networks -- Variability in Food Production, Strategies of Storage and Sharing, and the Pithouse-to-Pueblo Transition in the Northern Southwest -- Models and Frameworks for Archaeological Analysis of Resource Stress in the American Southwest

Joseph A. Tainter is project leader of Cultural Heritage Research, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has taught anthropology at the University of New Mexico, and is the author or editor of many articles and monographs. His book The Collapse of Complex Societies develops a long-standing research interest in the evolution of socioeconomic complexity. His work has been recognized in several fields, and has led to invitations to lecture to organizations as diverse as the Getty centre for the History of Art and the Humanities and the International Society for Ecological Economics.Bonnie Bagley Tainter is an archaeologist, poet, editor, and private consultant. Her academic interests range from vertebrate and invertebrate evolution to Southwestern archaeology, and include historic preservation planning for her home community of Corrales, New Mexico. She previously contributed to the editing of several papers for the book Effects of War on Society, and has done research on the architecture of Hovenweep National Monument and on prehistoric settlement changes in the Albuquerque area.

• About the Santa Fe Institute -- Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity -- Introduction: Prehistoric Societies as Evolving Complex Systems -- Demography, Environment, and Subsistence Stress -- Notes on Economic Uncertainty and Human Behavior in the Prehistoric North American Southwest -- Hunting, Gathering, and Health in the Prehistoric Southwest -- Technological Strategies Responsive to Subsistence Stress -- Risk, Anthropogenic Environments, and Western Anasazi Subsistence -- The Calculus of Self-interest in the Development of Cooperation: Sociopolitical Development and Risk Among the Northern Anasazi -- Risk, Reciprocity, and the Operation of Social Networks -- Variability in Food Production, Strategies of Storage and Sharing, and the Pithouse-to-Pueblo Transition in the Northern Southwest -- Models and Frameworks for Archaeological Analysis of Resource Stress in the American Southwest