Emergence And Collapse Of Early Villages

Download or read book Emergence and Collapse of Early Villages written by Timothy A. Kohler and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-04-10 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancestral Pueblo farmers encountered the deep, well watered, and productive soils of the central Mesa Verde region of Southwest Colorado around A.D. 600, and within two centuries built some of the largest villages known up to that time in the U.S. Southwest. But one hundred years later, those villages were empty, and most people had gone. This cycle repeated itself from the mid-A.D. 1000s until 1280, when Puebloan farmers permanently abandoned the entire northern Southwest. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book examines how climate change, population size, interpersonal conflict, resource depression, and changing social organization contribute to explaining these dramatic shifts. Comparing the simulations from agent-based models with the precisely dated archaeological record from this area, this text will interest archaeologists working in the Southwest and in Neolithic societies around the world as well as anyone applying modeling techniques to understanding how human societies shape, and are shaped by the environments we inhabit.

Download or read book Emergence and Collapse of Early Villages written by Timothy A. Kohler and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-04-10 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparing simulations from agent-based models with the precisely dated archaeological record from this area, this text will interest archaeologists working in the Southwest and in Neolithic studies as well as anyone applying modeling techniques to understanding how human societies shapes, and are shaped by the environment.

Download or read book The Collapse of Complex Societies written by Joseph Tainter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory.

Download or read book Reframing the Northern Rio Grande Pueblo Economy written by Scott Ortman and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rio Grande pueblo societies took shape in the aftermath of significant turmoil and migration in the thirteenth century. In the centuries that followed, the size of Pueblo settlements, level of aggregation, degree of productive specialization, extent of interethnic exchange, and overall social harmony increased to unprecedented levels. Economists recognize scale, agglomeration, the division of labor, international trade, and control over violence as important determinants of socioeconomic development in the modern world. But is a development framework appropriate for understanding Rio Grande archaeology? What do we learn about contemporary Pueblo culture and its resiliency when Pueblo history is viewed through this lens? What does the exercise teach us about the determinants of economic growth more generally? The contributors in this volume argue that ideas from economics and complexity science, when suitably adapted, provide a compelling approach to the archaeological record. Contributors consider what we can learn about socioeconomic development through archaeology and explore how Pueblo culture and institutions supported improvements in the material conditions of life over time. They examine demographic patterns; the production and exchange of food, cotton textiles, pottery, and stone tools; and institutional structures reflected in village plans, rock art, and ritual artifacts that promoted peaceful exchange. They also document change through time in various economic measures and consider their implications for theories of socioeconomic development. The archaeological record of the Northern Rio Grande exhibits the hallmarks of economic development, but Pueblo economies were organized in radically different ways than modern industrialized and capitalist economies. This volume explores the patterns and determinants of economic development in pre-Hispanic Rio Grande Pueblo society, building a platform for more broadly informed research on this critical process.

Download or read book Living and Leaving written by Donna M. Glowacki and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-04-02 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mesa Verde migrations in the thirteenth century were an integral part of a transformative period that forever changed the course of Pueblo history. For more than seven hundred years, Pueblo people lived in the Northern San Juan region of the U.S. Southwest. Yet by the end of the 1200s, tens of thousands of Pueblo people had left the region. Understanding how it happened and where they went are enduring questions central to Southwestern archaeology. Much of the focus on this topic has been directed at understanding the role of climate change, drought, violence, and population pressure. The role of social factors, particularly religious change and sociopolitical organization, are less well understood. Bringing together multiple lines of evidence, including settlement patterns, pottery exchange networks, and changes in ceremonial and civic architecture, this book takes a historical perspective that naturally forefronts the social factors underlying the depopulation of Mesa Verde. Author Donna M. Glowacki shows how “living and leaving” were experienced across the region and what role differing stressors and enablers had in causing emigration. The author’s analysis explains how different histories and contingencies—which were shaped by deeply rooted eastern and western identities, a broad-reaching Aztec-Chaco ideology, and the McElmo Intensification—converged, prompting everyone to leave the region. This book will be of interest to southwestern specialists and anyone interested in societal collapse, transformation, and resilience.

Download or read book Agent-Based Modeling for Archaeology written by Iza Romanowska and published by SFI Press. This book was released on 2021-08-02 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To fully understand not only the past, but also the trajectories, of human societies, we need a more dynamic view of human social systems. Agent-based modeling (ABM), which can create fine-scale models of behavior over time and space, may reveal important, general patterns of human activity. Agent-Based Modeling for Archaeology is the first ABM textbook designed for researchers studying the human past. Appropriate for scholars from archaeology, the digital humanities, and other social sciences, this book offers novices and more experienced ABM researchers a modular approach to learning ABM and using it effectively. Readers will find the necessary background, discussion of modeling techniques and traps, references, and algorithms to use ABM in their own work. They will also find engaging examples of how other scholars have applied ABM, ranging from the study of the intercontinental migration pathways of early hominins, to the weather–crop–population cycles of the American Southwest, to the trade networks of Ancient Rome. This textbook provides the foundations needed to simulate the complexity of past human societies, offering researchers a richer understanding of the past—and likely future—of our species.

Download or read book Viewing the Future in the Past written by H. Thomas Foster II and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2016-05-05 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Viewing the Future in the Past is a collection of essays that represents a wide range of authors, loci, and subjects that together demonstrate the value and necessity of looking at environmental problems as a long-term process that involves humans as a causal factor. Editors H. Thomas Foster, II, Lisa M. Paciulli, and David J. Goldstein argue that it is increasingly apparent to environmental and earth sciences experts that humans have had a profound effect on the physical, climatological, and biological earth. Consequently, they suggest that understanding any aspect of the earth within the last ten thousand years means understanding the density and activities of Homo sapiens. The essays reveal the ways in which archaeologists and anthropologists have devised methodological and theoretical tools and applied them to pre-Columbian societies in the New World and ancient sites in the Middle East. Some of the authors demonstrate how these tools can be useful in examining modern societies. The contributors provide evidence that past and present ecosystems, economies, and landscapes must be understood through the study of human activity over millennia and across the globe.