Harvey Weiss is an archaeologist who teaches at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

Biography

Weiss received his B.A. from The City College, CUNY in 1966, and his Ph.D. degree from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 1976. Weiss has directed the Yale University Tell Leilan Project's excavations and surveys in northeastern Syria since 1978. His most recent contribution to environmental archaeology has been his hypothesis that abrupt, century-scale, climate changes altered prehistoric and ancient West Asian societies' developmental trajectories, such as the

abrupt climate change An abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to transition at a rate that is determined by the climate system energy-balance, and which is more rapid than the rate of change of the external forcing, though it may include sud ...

4,200 years before present that reduced agricultural production in northern Mesopotamia, forced regional abandonment and habitat-tracking, disrupted Akkadian imperial revenues, and thereby forced the political collapse in southern Mesopotamia.Weiss, H., ed., 2012 ''Seven Generations Since the Fall of Akkad''. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz; Kaniewski, D., E. van Campo, H. Weiss 2012 "Drought is a recurring challenge in the Middle East," ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'' 109.10: 3862-3867; Staubwasser, M. and H. Weiss 2006 "Holocene Climate and Cultural Evolution in Late Prehistoric-Early Historic West Asia," ''Quaternary Research'' 66.3: 372-387; Weiss, H. and R. Bradley 2001 "What Drives Societal Collapse?" ''Science'' 291: 609-610; Weiss, H. 2000 "Beyond the Younger Dryas: Collapse as Adaptation to Abrupt Climate Change in Ancient West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean." In ''Environmental Disaster and the Archaeology of Human Response.'' Edited by G. Bawden and R. M. Reycraft. Albuquerque, NM: Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, pp. 63-74; Dalfes, H. N., G. Kukla, H. Weiss, eds., ''Third Millennium BC Climate Change and Old World Collapse.'' NATO ASI Series, Global Environmental Change, vol. 49. Berlin: Springer; Weiss, H., et al., 1993 "The Genesis and Collapse of North Mesopotamian Civilization," ''Science'' 291: 995-2008.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Weiss, Harvey American archaeologists Living people University of Pennsylvania alumni Yale University faculty Year of birth missing (living people)