This is a tricky one. But might I suggest New Orleans in the wake of 
'Katrina'. That was a sudden loss of resource after a catastrophe, albeit in 
a small area. The resultant challenges were huge and have still not been 
addressed, especially in the education sector. I happen to have a relative 
who was sent in to troubleshoot this sector and look at the schools as a 
material resource. This was of course subjected to all sorts of political 
games with regard to which schools to keep and which to leave and these were 
set against a background of what parts of the city need rebuilding first, 
etc etc. Maybe you could do a little comparison study with other disaster 
areas from the First or Second World Wars.
I might be able to put you in contact with people involved in the rebuilding 
since 'Katrina', can't promise though.

Some left-field thinking. Can it be a non-natural resource? (I sow the seed 
through work, I harvest it every month and I re-plant it by spending it most 
weekends!), I'm thinking about money or more accurately cash, and 
specifically the removal of lots of cash from seaside resorts through the 
closing of branch lines by the British Government and Richard Beeching's 
report in the 1960s. Couple this with cheap holidays to Spain, and suddenly 
there is a sharp loss of 'resource' in many British resorts. There has been 
a lot of work done on this recently but none comes to mind right now, 
however, a proper in-depth PhD paper might be what's needed. I told you it 
was left-field!

Good luck.

Paul



Paul Trickett
Managing Director
KIMBER BATTLEFIELD TOURS
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "dan Hicks" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 7:12 PM
Subject: Re: SV: running out


Hi Cornelius -- Yes, that's right -- but his interest (which I did not 
express properly, and
as I understand it) is in how changes in (esp global) material resources may 
bring very
great changes in certain places, but not others -- ie the unevenness of 
impacts of
material change, to which one might imagine archaeologists might have 
particular access,
which may sometimes lead to sudden change.

D



On Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:01:32 +0100, Cornelius Holtorf 
<[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>We are not of course _suddenly_ running out of oil at all. As the resource 
>gets more
scarce the price goes up and other resources are becoming increasingly 
viable
alternatives. This is already happening with alternative energy sources incl 
ethanol etc.
The changeover from oil to alternatives is not sudden but slow, has already 
begun, and I
do not think it is going to be catastrophic in any way. In fact, I suspect 
that the next
generation will not even really notice much of this transition taking place 
at all.
>
>A different matter may be the effects of true catastrophes like volcano 
>eruptions or
earthquakes etc. and their impacts on certain natural resources. That then 
would be a
sudden lack of certain resources after a catastrophe... - which is the 
opposite from what
your colleague enquired about.
>
>Cornelius
>
>________________________________
>
>Från: Discussion List for Contemporary and Historical Archaeology genom dan 
>Hicks
>Skickat: on 2009-01-14 15:48
>Till: [log in to unmask]
>Ämne: running out
>
>
>
>A colleague in Contemporary History, who is working on catastrophes after 
>the sudden
lack
>of a resource (he's thinking mainly of oil), has asked me for examples of 
>similar sudden
>lacks/running out of essential resources that may have been studied by 
>historical
>archaeologists. I was hard pushed to think of anything much, although this 
>would seem
to
>be the kind of thing that we should have thought about as a discipline --  
>does anyone
have
>suggestions of published studies on this general theme from the archaeology 
>of the
modern
>period?
>
>Dan
>
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for announcements relating to the CHAT conference group.
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