Fetching Firewood: Access to fuels as a constraint for prehistoric settlement

Summary

In arid, topographically variable desert environments, resources important to humans are typically distributed heterogeneously. This variability required prehistoric humans to evaluate trade-offs over accessing spatially distinct patches. A potentially important and largely unexplored resource in these trade-offs is firewood. This work examines the distribution of archaeological sites along the watershed of the Dolores River of southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah. With new archaeological survey data, I offer an analysis examining the distribution of sites against different types of vegetation communities to explore the importance of access to firewood, paying particular attention to the potential multiple uses of plants and other factors that may strongly influence prehistoric site choice.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage