Modeling cultural responses to volcanic disaster in the ancient Jama-Coaque tradition, coastal Ecuador: A case study in cultural collapse and social resilience

The cultural impacts of catastrophic Late Pleistocene and Holocene volcanism are characteristically variable throughout the world due to a wide range of factors such as magnitude of the eruptive event, proximity to the eruption, the geographic and ecological settings of the eruptive footprint, and relative social and political complexity of the societies affected. The reasons why one society succumbs to a volcanic disaster while another may recover are complex and not subject to invariant laws. Likewise, even in cases where recovery is possible, different pathways may be followed depending on a host of contingent factors. In archaeological cases, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between cultural developments that may be caused by volcanic disasters and those that are merely coincidental with these events, but not all volcanic eruptions lead to cultural collapse. Archaeological research in the Jama Valley of coastal Ecuador has revealed evidence of three volcanic eruptions emanating from the northern Ecuadorian highlands some 200 km to the east, all three of which represent major stratigraphic breaks in the regional archaeological record. The third of these volcanic events, now thought to have occurred at ∼90 AD, significantly affected the Muchique Phase 1 chiefdoms of the Jama-Coaque tradition that occupied much of northern Manabí province. And like the first two eruptive events in the Formative Period that led to centuries-long valley abandonment, this eruption also resulted in valley abandonment for several centuries. But it also ushered in a new ceramic phase (Muchique Phase 2) of the Jama-Coaque tradition, and a notable change in settlement hierarchy, ceramic figural sculpture, evidence for warfare, agricultural intensification and diversification, surplus storage facilities, and new forms of political complexity and chiefly authority. This paper offers a model of differential human response to catastrophic volcanism that focuses attention on human-resource imbalances resulting from such events and identifies a series of contingent circumstances in which complex chiefdoms may cope, and even flourish, in the aftermath of disaster.