Demographic and Social Dimensions of the Neolithic Revolution in Southwest Colorado (original) (raw)
Related papers
Long and spatially variable Neolithic Demographic Transition in the North American Southwest
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014
In many places of the world, a Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT) is visible as a several-hundred-year period of increased birth rates coupled with stable mortality rates, resulting in dramatic population growth that is eventually curtailed by increased mortality. Similar processes can be reconstructed in particular detail for the North American Southwest, revealing an anom- alously long and spatially variable NDT. Irrigation-dependent societies experienced relatively low birth rates but were quick to achieve a high degree of sociopolitical complexity, whereas societies dependent on dry or rainfed farming experienced higher birth rates but less initial sociopolitical complexity. Low birth rates after A.D. 1200 mark the beginning of the decline of the Hohokam. Overall in the Southwest, birth rates increased slowly from 1100 B.C. to A.D. 500, and remained at high levels with some fluctuation until decreasing rapidly beginning A.D. 1300. Life expectancy at 15 increased slowly from 900 B.C. to A.D. 700, and then increased rapidly for 200 y before fluctuating and then declining after A.D. 1400. Life expectancy at birth, on the other hand, generally declined from 1100 B.C. to A.D. 1100/1200, before rebounding. Farmers took two millennia (∼1100 B.C. to ∼A.D. 1000) to reach the carrying capacity of the agricultural niche in the Southwest.
Land Tenure, Archaeology, and the Ancestral Pueblo Social Landscape
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 1996
Archaeology relies upon evidence of past human modification of the natural landscape in order to infer past human social dynamics on the site, local, and regional levels. Given the inferential linkages between past landscape use and social relationships, archaeology can benefit from an approach that more explicitly delineates relationships between systems of land use and land tenure, the social means through which people define and assert land use rights. This research outlines a set of methods for modeling prehistoric land tenure systems and developing a middle range theory of land tenure relationships that may assist archaeologists in their investigations of prehistoric resource access systems. Land tenure systems are complex risk-buffering strategies that are conditioned by the labor invested in food production, the size of groups holding direct access to productive lands and resources, and the temporal duration of land access rights. The role of these variables is supported by cross-cultural data from a worldwide sample of food-producing societies. The land tenure model is applied to data from the prehistoric Southwest to help explain local and regional changes in food production, settlement size, and community organization in southwest Colorado between 900 and 1300 A.D.
American Antiquity, 2023
During the Early Agricultural period (2100 BC–AD 50), preceramic farmers in the Sonoran Desert invested considerable labor in canal-irrigated field systems while remaining very residentially mobile. The degree to which they exercised formal systems of land tenure, or organized their communities above the household level, remains contested. This article discusses the spatial and social organization of Early Cienega–phase settlements in the Los Pozos site group, an Early Agricultural site complex located along the Santa Cruz River in southern Arizona. At Los Pozos, the formal spatial organization of seasonal farmsteads suggests that despite continued residential mobility, multihousehold lineages maintained distinct territories. Enduring “house groups”—likely lineal groups—are associated with disproportionately large cemeteries, suggesting the revisitation of ancestral territory through occupational hiatuses. However, variability in the formality and permanence of Early Cienega–phase settlements throughout the region indicates a flexible continuum of occupational mobility. These higher-order affiliations were only expressed in persistent settlements near highly productive farmland, where the relative priority of households over improved land might be contested.
The Organization of Domestic Space in Late Prehistoric Owens Valley Households
scahome.org
Previously, one of us (Eerkens 2004) proposed that between 1500 and 700 B.P. inhabitants in Owens Valley shifted from a village-based, communal living pattern to a smaller-scale nuclear family-based one. This process was linked to a rise in population density and a concomitant increase in privatized resources. We test this proposal by examining the artifact and organic residue evidence from two prehistoric houses in Owens Valley excavated in 2006 and 2007. We examine data from stable isotope ratios (C and N), total C and N, and obsidian and bone densities.
Kiva, 2017
This paper draws on iconographic style, social psychology research, and architectural evidence to suggest that the Procession Panel on Comb Ridge, southeast Utah, provides an accurate depiction of the households within an early Mesa Verde community ca. A.D. 760-800. It argues that the Procession Panel depicts a community in transition, when some households began to reorganize as members of lineages and materialized this relationship by constructing large, multihousehold surface dwellings. However, not all households organized into lineage-scale groups, and these differences between these two kinds of social organization created fault lines where social inequalities could later develop.
Breaking Down the Models: Reconstructing Prehistoric Subsistence Agriculture in the Durango District of Southwestern Colorado , 2007
This thesis investigates the interrelationships between settlement distributions, maize agricultural subsistence, and fluctuations in prehistoric climate in the Durango District of southwestern Colorado between A.D. 650-840, also known as the Basketmaker-III/Pueblo-I period. Previous research in the area indicates that large groups of people migrated into the Durango area around A.D. 760, altering age old settlement patterns and establishing some of the earliest villages in the northern Southwest. My focus is to further understandings of the complex interrelationships between settlement patterns and maize agricultural systems and to determine what role agriculture played in the development of these early villages. Throughout this thesis, I investigate why Basketmaker-III/Pueblo-I peoples chose to live in dispersed or clustered settlement patterns from approximately A.D. 650-840 in the Durango area. This thesis integrates experimentation with dry land and ak’chin farming techniques, excavation and survey data, analysis of Basketmaker-III and Pueblo-I site distributions, modern and paleoclimatic reconstructions, prime agricultural soil and cold air drainage distributions, and aerial photography. I conducted fine-scale research of the agricultural potential around two prehistoric case study communities in the Durango District and then extrapolated my findings onto other communities in the larger area. Finally, I integrate these data into a conceptual model that can aid and direct future research into the prehistoric agroecological and anthropogenic landscapes of the Durango area.
Initial applications of settlement scaling theory focused on measures derived from the built environment, such as house density and settled area. Although this is appropriate, the theory actually focuses on the role of social networks in socioeconomic rates, and thus connects to a variety of artifact-based measures of such rates. In this paper, we develop these connections using data from the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico. We first examine pueblo room areas to show that socioeconomic outputs increased with settlement population. Then, we examine ratios of decorated pottery to cooking pottery to show that consumption rate of decorated vessels increased in the same manner. Finally, we use the ratio of chipped stone debris to cooking pottery to measure investment in production of stone tools, finding an increased efficiency in their production and use. We argue this pattern derives from an expansion in the division of labor that accompanies group size. By extending the scaling framework to artifact-based measures like these, our results show that there is a connection between social networks and artifact accumulation rates in ancient societies. This suggests the scaling framework is useful for understanding a wide array of measures obtainable from the archaeological record.
This study examines the roles of cultural change, social status, and natural resources in influencing both the siting and occupance of prehistoric (10th-12th century) pit house and pueblo dwellings in the Chimney Rock Archaeological Area (CRAA) in south-western Colorado. The study first demonstrates a prominent bimodal clustering of riverine pit house and mesa-top pueblo settlements, and then presents a number of hypotheses to account for the eleventh century pit house to pueblo transition which resulted in these disparate dwelling distributions. It is concluded that: indigenous social factors (population growth and craft specialization) initiated the housing transition; on-going population increase and the arrival of colonists from nearby Chaco Canyon by the mid-eleventh century perpetuated the building of upland dwellings; and the thin soil layer of the mesa top restricted construction to only surface pueblos, which contrasted spatially with the older pit houses of the lower alluvial plain.