Hydroclimatic Constraints on Population Growth in Dryland Foraging-Farming Communities

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.

Developing a unified theory of human population growth requires a multiscalar perspective on the evolution of human social-ecological systems over space and time. This requires iteration between macro-level theory and micro-scale events captured in the archaeological record. This poster begins to develop theory for the micro-scale. It does so by focusing on the hydroclimatic constraints on population growth in dryland foraging-farming communities. We develop high-precision models for settlement persistence of Fremont communities on the northern Colorado Plateau and eastern Great Basin. These communities were some of the shortest-lived agricultural communities on earth. We integrate high-precision site-based models for community growth and decline with (1) an annual streamflow model derived from a 3,000-plus-year-old tree-ring record, and (2) high-precision alluvial geochronology models. We propose that the hydroclimatic contexts of these communities were too dynamic and sensitive to major disturbances to support settlement persistence over the long term. This lack of settlement persistence limited the knowledge transmission networks required for innovations to grow and ultimately sustain these populations.

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): 38961.0