The result of long-term environmental and human interaction is a variety of potential human responses to major natural crises: population aggregation or dispersal, changes in economic strategies and land-use patterns, restructuring of social organization, increase in the incidence of conflict and warfare, and, in some instances, urban abandonment and cultural collapse. In the context of pre-industrial societies, two social processes with the greatest potential impact on the environment and on changing human-environmental interaction are urbanization and the development of diversified, regional-scale production systems such as intensive agriculture, pastoralism and exploitation of maritime resources. This paper employs archaeological and geological data from the Jequetepeque and Zana valleys on the north coast desert of Peru to study: (1) the specific responses of Moche, Chimu and Inca societies (c. ad 250–1553) to major episodes of drought, El Niño flooding, and desertification; (2) the social processes of urban-rural relations and economic diversification; and (3) how these processes interacted within the dynamic arid north coast. Our research focuses on changing palaeoenvironmental regimes, agricultural infrastructures and domestic occupations to explore the complex interplay of cultural and natural forces that shaped the variable human responses and the history of urban-rural systems. Understanding the problem of how pre-industrial systems were sustained or failed in the context of interrelated social and environmental crises is an interdisciplinary objective, one that requires the integration of analytical techniques and theoretical frameworks of both the natural and social sciences as delineated in this study.
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