Evaluating the Impacts of Past Climate Change on Demographic and Subsistence Patterns in the Basin-Plateau Region of Western North America

Summary

This is an abstract from the "People, Climate, and Proxies in Holocene Western North America" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological and paleoclimatological research increasingly reveal long-term impacts of past climate on human subsistence, settlement, and demography, yet positive results are debated and the underlying dynamics structuring these correlations remain questioned. Coupling a comprehensive dataset of radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites with both modeled and proxy-based paleoclimatic reconstructions, here we evaluate how temporal patterning in inferred population density varies as a function of past climate change, applying novel taphonomic controls to improve the reliability of the results. Particular focus is given to (1) dynamics across the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and (2) the Late Holocene adoption, and subsequent abandonment, of maize agriculture.

Cite this Record

Evaluating the Impacts of Past Climate Change on Demographic and Subsistence Patterns in the Basin-Plateau Region of Western North America. Kurt Wilson, Daniel Contreras, Joan Coltrain, D. Craig Young, Brian Codding. Presented at The 86th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2021 ( tDAR id: 467301)

Spatial Coverage

min long: -124.189; min lat: 31.803 ; max long: -105.469; max lat: 43.58 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33606