The Social Response to Environmental Change in Early Bronze Age Canaan

Abstract The collapse of Early Bronze Age society in the southern Levant (at ca. 2200 B.C.) coincided with a severe shift toward a drier climate. This significantly altered the hydrological regime and undermined the intensive agricultural system, leading to decreased agricultural yields. However, we cannot assume that the collapse of a social system is an automatic and unavoidable response to climatic degradation, especially since later preindustrial states functioned within this same drier environmental setting. It is more productive to examine some of the explanations for the failure to adapt to the new environmental conditions. These might have included the combined factors of overspecialization in agricultural production, elite control over surplus resources, removal of labor from the agricultural sector, slow response time in the perception of catastrophe, the ability of the elite to profit from short-term environmental stress, and the direction of energy toward increased religious activity, rather than technological innovations.