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Archaeology is increasingly becoming a part of contemporary decision-making because of the insights that its long-term and comparative perspective can provide. As we enter that arena, we have a responsibility to bring with us an understanding of the lives of the people who experienced the past we study. Resilient societies persisted and rigid ones transformed, but what was it like to live in those societies? Was a “collapse” actually a welcome end to a difficult situation? Did persistence or resilience come at the cost of human suffering?

We are addressing these questions from a broad comparative perspective based on two multi-case projects. The Long Term Vulnerability and Transformation Project (LTVTP http://ltvtp. shesc. asu. edu/) focuses on the US Southwest and Northern Mexico, and the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO http://www. nabohome. org/) focuses on the North Atlantic. This is the first published account of our comparative work. So far, much of the work by both projects focused on major transformations–sometimes considered collapses–but we are also studying cases of continuity. In doing so, we address the usually implicit assumption that continuity is better than collapse by focusing specifically on the human and environmental costs of both.