“Questions concerning regional abandonment and migration of agricultural societies loom large throughout all of North America. Cable has provided the first book-length topic on this issue as it applies to anywhere in eastern North America, and it will clearly set the tone for future efforts along these lines in the Southeast.”
—Charles R. Cobb, author of From Quarry to Cornfield: The Political Economy of Mississippian Hoe Production
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“Until recently, archaeologists have been reticent to invoke climate change models to account for abandonments, disjunctions, migrations, and transformations in the ancient world. John Cable’s Megadrought in the Carolinas contravenes this trend by providing a comprehensive and overwhelming body of large data sets, solid documentation, and well-reasoned arguments for regional-scale climate change and related issues, including epidemic diseases, polity coalescence, population migration, and site abandonments.”
—Southeastern Archaeology
“[Megadrought in the Carolinas] is indeed an excellent study that gives careful attention to chronological and settlement details and addresses a crucial problem in the past with relevance for the present. As such, I feel it deserves to be widely read and will undoubtedly serve as a model for the archaeological study of abandonment and coalescence during times of pronounced droughts for many years to come.”
—Journal of Anthropological Research
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