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Change is inevitable, but some changes and transformations are more dramatic and fraught with suffering than others. Resilience theory suggests the concept of a \"rigidity trap\" as an explanation for these differences. In rigidity traps, a high degree of connectivity and the suppression of innovation prolong an increasingly rigid state, with the result that the eventual transformation is harsh. Three archaeological cases from the U.S. Southwest (Mimbres, Mesa Verde, and Hohokam) and new methods for assessing transformations and rigidity are used to evaluate this concept. They reveal the expected association between the severity of transformation and degree of rigidity, suggesting that a rigidity trap contributed to the Hohokam decline, which included significant human suffering. Possible causes of rigidity, with implications for today's world, are explored.

[...]we discuss indicators of migration and social diversity in oral traditions and the archaeological record, emphasizing the importance of interplay between social and ecological factors. There was sufficient land and water to support continued occupation of the lower Salt, but as the social and ecological relationships among settlements along canal systems changed, it became increasingly difficult to sustain profitable cultivation near canal intakes. [...]it was not the magnitude of degradation that doomed Classic period irrigation systems along the lower Salt, but the location of those effects in relation to vital system components, attempts to keep these large systems going in a context of declining population, and the arrival of populations with divergent historical traditions and motivations.

[...]although the five illustrated aspects of the Morning Star in the Dresden Codex all wield spear throwers and darts, none are skeletal. According to the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli is counted among the malevolent tzitzimime (Quiñones-Keber 1995: 129, 255).\\n A number of shared themes within this complex include a specific emphasis on an anthropomorphic Venus deity and such aspects as projectiles as stellar rays and elements focusing upon warriors, cold, death and regeneration, maize agriculture, the plumed serpent, the east, and dawn.