Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Establishing ancient population histories and determining how the ancient populations were distributed across the landscape over time constitute two of the most pressing problems in archaeology. Mayanists have traditionally established population numbers using a model of individuals per structure or residential group, but without full agreement on methodology about how to consider time, function of constructions, or family size. In other parts of Mesoamerica, such as in Oaxaca and the Valley of Mexico, population estimates are done differently. Yet no matter how they are accomplished, without comparably established population histories, it is difficult to talk about levels of complexity and organization, carrying capacity and sustainability, and change over time. Indeed, our very interpretations about how ancient societies were structured are to a large degree predicated on how many people lived within a given center or polity. With the application of lidar helping demographic considerations, the creation of new archaeological data relating to households, and larger site survey samples, it is an appropriate time to reevaluate ancient population history. This session hopes to reengage Mesoamerican scholars in formulating new approaches to gaining information on past populations and the modeling that derives from such an exercise.