Emergence and Collapse of Early Villages

by Kohler, Timothy A.; Varien, Mark D.

• ISBN13: 9780520270145
• ISBN10: 0520270142
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-04-10
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Ancestral Pueblo farmers encountered the deep, well watered, and productive soils of the central Mesa Verde region of Southwest Colorado around A.D. 600, and within two centuries built some of the largest villages known up to that time in the U.S. Southwest. But one hundred years later, those villages were empty, and most people had gone. This cycle repeated itself from the mid-A.D. 1000s until 1280, when Puebloan farmers permanently abandoned the entire northern Southwest. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book examines how climate change, population size, interpersonal conflict, resource depression, and changing social organization contribute to explaining these dramatic shifts. Comparing the simulations from agent-based models with the precisely dated archaeological record from this area, this text will interest archaeologists working in the Southwest and in Neolithic societies around the world as well as anyone applying modeling techniques to understanding how human societies shape, and are shaped by the environments we inhabit.

Author Biography

Timothy A. Kohler is Regents Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Washington State University. Mark D. Varien is Research and Education Chair at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	p. ix
Contributors	p. xi
Emergence and Collapse of Early Villages in the Central Mesa Verde an Introduction	p. 1
The Study Area and the Ancestral Pueblo Occupation	p. 15
Low-Frequency Climate in the Mesa Verde Region: Beef Pasture Revisited	p. 41
Simulation Model Overview	p. 59
Modeling Paleohydrological SystemStructure and Funtion	p. 73
Modeling Agricultural Productivity and Farming Effort	p. 85
Modeling Plant and Animal Productivity and Fuel use	p. 113
Supply, Demand, Return Rates, and Resource Depression: Hunting in the Village Ecodynamics World	p. 129
How Hunting Changes the Vep World, and How the Vep World Changes Hunting	p. 145
Exercising the Model: Aassessing Changes in Settlement Location and Efficiency	p. 153
Simulating Household Exchange With Cultural Algorithms	p. 165
Tools-Stone Procurement in the mesa Verde Core Region Through Time	p. 175
Population Dynamics and Warfare in the Central Mesa Verde Region	p. 197
Characterizing Community-Center (Village) Formation in the Vep Study Area, A.D. 600-128O	p. 219
The Rise and Collapse of Villages in the Central Mesa Verde Region	p. 247
	p. 263
	p. 275
Bibliography	p. 289
Notes on Contributors
Index	p. 327
Color insert follows page	p. 84
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