One of the most prominent but least understood demographic phenomena in the precontact Southwest is the disappearance of the Hohokam from the valleys of southern Arizona. Despite extensive research, no widely accepted explanation has been offered. We argue that the failure to identify a satisfactory cause is due to excessive focus on catastrophic phenomena and terminal occupations, and a lack of attention to gradual demographic processes. Based on a combination of macro-regional population studies and local research in the lower San Pedro River valley, we present an explanation for gradual population decline precipitated by social and economic coalescence beginning in the late A.D. 1200s. In the southern Southwest an influx of immigrants from the north led to a shift from a dispersed, extensive settlement/subsistence strategy to increased conflict, aggregation, and economic intensification. This shift resulted in diminished health and transformation from population growth to decline. Over approximately 150 years gradual population decline resulted in small remnant groups unable to maintain viable communities. Small, terminal populations were ultimately unable to continue identifiable Hohokam cultural traditions and consequently disappeared from the archaeological record of southern Arizona, either through migration or a shift in lifestyle that rendered them archaeologically invisible.
The late pre-Hispanic period in the US Southwest (A.D. 1200-1450) was characterized by large-scale demographic changes, including long-distance migration and population aggregation. To reconstruct how these processes reshaped social networks, we compiled a comprehensive artifact database from major sites dating to this interval in the western Southwest. We combine social network analysis with geographic information systems approaches to reconstruct network dynamics over 250 y. We show how social networks were transformed across the region at previously undocumented spatial, temporal, and social scales. Using well-dated decorated ceramics, we track changes in network topology at 50-y intervals to show a dramatic shift in network density and settlement centrality from the northern to the southern Southwest after A.D. 1300. Both obsidian sourcing and ceramic data demonstrate that long-distance network relationships also shifted from north to south after migration. Surprisingly, social distance does not always correlate with spatial distance because of the presence of network relationships spanning long geographic distances. Our research shows how a large network in the southern Southwest grew and then collapsed, whereas networks became more fragmented in the northern Southwest but persisted. The study also illustrates how formal social network analysis may be applied to large-scale databases of material culture to illustrate multigenerational changes in network structure.archaeology | North American Southwest | spatial analysis | network visualization | regional interaction
Maize agriculture appears to have been introduced into the semiarid southern part of the North American Southwest ca. 2200-2000 B.C., at a time when valley bottoms were aggrading. Although small-scale, high-risk agriculture might have been practiced in many landscape positions, valley-bottom locations having particular geomorphic and/or hydrologic conditions would have provided the places most risk-free for farming. These places, associated with what are here called reach boundaries, have conditions that cause elevated water tables or enhance stream discharge, and have floodplain areas suitable for farming. Reach boundaries are easily identified, are relatively predictable in location and occurrence, and are early settled and/or long occupied. Deposition has been the dominant process in most valley bottoms in the southern Southwest for the last ca. 6000 years. Many streams across the region, however, experienced approximately synchronous periods of erosion when deeply incised channels (arroyos) formed in valley bottoms. Each of these periods of erosion, except for that which began in the late 1800s, was followed by a longer period of arroyo-filling and floodplain aggradation, completing a socalled alluvial cycle. Valley-bottom conditions related to alluvial cycles would have greatly influenced the location, water availability, water management technology, and yield of agricultural ventures. Here we identify more than 280 reach boundaries in parts of the middle and upper Gila River and Mimbres River watersheds in Arizona and New Mexico. Spatial analysis shows a strong 4000-year-long correspondence between reach boundaries and agricultural sites where data are available. Identification and characterization of these locations may prove useful for locating yet unknown, deeply buried early agricultural sites (ca. 2200 B.C.-A.D. 200), in addition to providing explanations for prehistoric settlement patterns through time.
In recent years environmental archaeologists have emphasized evidence for human-caused degradation, and attention has been focused on the role of our discipline in debates over contemporary socioenvironmental problems. In a recent American Antiquity forum, van der Leeuw and Redman (2002) argue that current environmental research would benefit from an archaeological perspective on these problems, and that our discipline would benefit from more active engagement in the larger debate. I present research supporting the claim that archaeology has unique and compelling insights to offer socio-natural studies. I make arguments based on spatial statistical and GIS analyses of past land use in the Wadi al-Hasa, west-central Jordan, that environmental degradation in the form of soil erosion has been a problem for agropastoralists in that region for several millennia. Furthermore, I argue that an archaeological perspective on long-term patterns of land use provides information at a scale and resolution that makes it highly suitable for studies of human-environment dynamics. Archaeology's unique data and perspective create an opportunity to contribute in a more explicit manner to the study of contemporary environmental issues that currently lack long-term focus at a scale and resolution that is meaningful to humans.
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