Fine-Grained Estimation of House Populations in North America’s Pacific Northwest: Implications for Understanding Socio-demographic Change

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Peopling the Past: Critically Evaluating Settlement and Regional Population Estimates with New Methods and Demographic Modeling" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeologists benefit from theoretical modeling in demographic ecology. Models generated by Bruce Winterhalder, Cedric Puleston, and colleagues provide us with precise predictions as to conditions favoring population growth, stability, decline, and associated socioeconomic implications. Our challenge as archaeologists comes with devising adequate tests using archaeological data. In this paper we explore relationships between measures of population, subsistence, and social relationships drawing data from the fine-grained record of Housepit 54 at the Bridge River site in British Columbia. Results offer a number of potential implications. First, methodological procedure (and associated assumptions) used to assess population affects variation in outcomes. Second, fine-grained estimations are critical for adequately assessing deductions from theoretical models. Finally, demography remains essential for understanding past decision-making regarding subsistence, mobility, and sociality.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)   •
• Peopling the Past: Critically Evaluating Settlement and Regional Population Estimates with New Methods and Demographic Modeling

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37198.0