Socioecological Dynamics of Forager to Farmer Transitions in Southern Utah

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Fifty Years of Fretwell and Lucas: Archaeological Applications of Ideal Distribution Models" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The specific ecological and social processes that structure the spread of agriculture into regions occupied by hunter-gatherers remain elusive. Drawing on ideal distribution models from population ecology, we evaluate whether the spread of agriculture in southern Utah was driven by free, despotic, or some other dispersion mechanism. Specifically, we conduct a geospatial analysis of radiocarbon-dated components to evaluate the rate at which agricultural land use patterns spread across varying levels of environmental suitability and resident population density. Results elucidate the dynamics underlying the Archaic to Formative transition in the Basin-Plateau region of North America, and offer general insights into the patterns structuring agricultural dispersal.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Fifty Years of Fretwell and Lucas: Archaeological Applications of Ideal Distribution Models   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24636