Boom-and-Bust Population Dynamics: Climate Change, Resource Inequality, and Intergroup Conflict in the Prehistoric North American Southwest

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Human Population Dynamics, Innovation, and Ecosystem Change" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

With the transition to agricultural economies human populations underwent profound changes including, in many regions, rapid growth accompanied by marked volatility. The Colorado Plateau in western North America offers unique insights into volatile population dynamics, as it represents one of the few known occurrences of near total population abandonment by sedentary agriculturalists and a reoccupation by mobile foragers. In this analysis, we investigate the drivers of local population growth and decline and suggest how multiple interactive socio-ecological conditions influenced the depopulation of the area. We leverage a newly developed archaeological database from the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah to model demographic variation as it relates to climate change, resource inequality, and human conflict, and compare modeled results to those observed in neighboring regions in the Southwest.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Global Perspectives on Human Population Dynamics, Innovation, and Ecosystem Change   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39399.0