Climate and Migration: Using Radiocarbon Date Frequencies to Identify Population Movement in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

By analyzing radiocarbon date frequencies, it is possible to look at the prehistoric archaeological record on a wider plain, assessing how people dealt with large-scale changes in climate. While radiocarbon date frequencies have often been used to pinpoint time periods of population growth and decline, relatively little is known about how or why these changes occurred. Climate can affect population size, the collapse of civilizations, and/or site abandonment. Five significant population increases and subsequent declines spanning the Holocene have been identified within the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming through previous work by Kelly and associates in 2013. These periods of population change closely follow drought cycles; with the largest declines in population occurring during times of extreme aridity and increased temperatures. This research examines whether declines in population indicate migration events. This is achieved by looking at the frequency of radiocarbon dates through time in adjacent regions using non-parametric statistical analysis. These results are then compared to paleoclimate models for the region in order to determine at what point climatic extremes cause people to leave their familiar landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25794