Late Holocene Human Population Dynamics in Eastern North America: Lessons from Site and Artifact Records in DINAA and Beyond

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Climate-Human Population Dynamics During the Late Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Population trends in Eastern North America are explored using the incidence and distribution of diagnostic artifacts and components, using continental scale datasets like DINAA and PIDBA, and as developed by researchers at the locality, state, or regional level. Such research has a long history in the region, but only recently have sample sizes and geographic coverage been sufficient to permit fairly fine grained exploration of questions related to human demography, settlement range, interaction, adaptation, and movement. Site and artifact data are thus useful proxy measures complementing the radiocarbon record, which is also being used locally to examine these subjects. Together, these approaches offer insights as important about how the archaeological record was shaped in the present as they do about lifeways in the past. The evaluation of how visible and representative the extant site and artifact record actually is a critical part of this endeavor. Large-scale population fluctuations and movements, reflected in concentrations and abandonments of sites and artifacts, are common in the later prehistoric and early historic periods. The data also indicate similar trends occurred throughout the span of human occupation in the region, back to the Pleistocene, and these were neither uniform over space nor unidirectional in time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Global Perspectives on Climate-Human Population Dynamics During the Late Holocene   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23999