Environmental productivity predicts migration, demographic, and linguistic patterns in prehistoric California

Abstract

Global patterns of ethnolinguistic diversity vary tremendously. Some regions show very little variation even across vast expanses, whereas others exhibit dense mosaics of different languages spoken alongside one another. Compared with the rest of Native North America, prehistoric California exemplified the latter. Decades of linguistic, genetic, and archaeological research have produced detailed accounts of the migrations that aggregated to build California’s diverse ethnolinguistic mosaic, but there have been few have attempts to explain the process underpinning these migrations and why such a mosaic did not develop elsewhere. Here we show that environmental productivity predicts both the order of migration events and the population density recorded at contact. The earliest colonizers occupied the most suitable habitats along the coast, whereas subsequent Mid–Late Holocene migrants settled in more marginal habitats. Other Late Holocene patterns diverge from this trend, reflecting altered dynamics linked to food storage and increased sedentism. Through repeated migration events, incoming populations replaced resident populations occurring at lower densities in lower-productivity habitats, thereby resulting in the fragmentation of earlier groups and the development of one of the most diverse ethnolinguistic patterns in the Americas. Such a process may account for the distribution of ethnolinguistic diversity worldwide.

Socioecological transitions trigger fire regime shifts and modulate fire–climate interactions in the Sierra Nevada, USA, 1600–2015 CE

“…The influx of migrants to California during the Gold Rush (1848-1855 CE) (18) accelerated Native American depopulation from disease, dislocation, mistreatment, and even state-sanctioned violence (30), and, by 1855, only 15% of the Native American population present in 1769 remained (16). Approximately 10% of the Native Americans in California belonged to ethnographic groups that included territories within Sierra Nevada lower montane forest (31). Native Americans who used lower montane forest habitat used fire extensively to enhance productivity of wild tree crops, shrubs, grasses, tubers, roots, and game, and to reduce fuels.…”

Large mammal biomass predicts the changing distribution of hunter-gatherer settlements in mid-late Holocene Alaska

“…Developed first to describe the dispersive behavior and distribution of birds (Fretwell and Lucas, 1969), the IFD has recently proved useful for explaining anthropological problems as well (Codding and Jones, 2013;Jazwa et al, 2013;Kennett et al, 2006;O'Connell and Codding, 2014;Winterhalder et al, 2010). The model posits that dispersive organisms will choose to locate first in the most suitable habitat available.…”

“…Our first challenge is deciding which factors are most important for ranking habitat suitability. Other studies have used watershed size and resource base (Winterhalder et al, 2010), effective moisture (O'Connell and Codding, 2014), and environmental bioproductivity (Codding and Jones, 2013) as proxy measures for suitability. Here, we assess suitability by using large animal population densities.…”

A Test of Ideal Free Distribution Predictions Using Targeted Survey and Excavation on California’s Northern Channel Islands

“…The location of larger sites with permanent or semipermanent occupation usually takes into account a suite of environmental and socioeconomic factors. The ideal free distribution or IFD (Åström 1994;Fretwell and Lucas 1969;Fretwell 1972;Sutherland 1983Sutherland , 1996Treganza 1995) is used in behavioral ecology and increasingly in anthropology and archaeology to understand how such factors affect human settlement and broader patterns of decision-making and culture change (e.g., Kennett 2005;Kennett et al 2006Kennett et al , 2009Kennett and Winterhalder 2008;McClure et al 2009;Winterhalder et al 2010;Culleton 2012;O'Connell and Allen 2012;Codding and Jones 2013;Giovas and Fitzpatrick 2014;Moritz et al 2014;Codding and Bird 2015).…”

“…It can be used to understand settlement patterns on both large (e.g., Fitzhugh and Kennett 2010;Allen and O'Connell 2008) and small (e.g., Kennett et al 2006;Culleton 2012) scales. It is flexible enough to address questions about where people settled as they entered and expanded throughout California (Codding and Jones 2013) and which drainage on a small island people would choose to establish individual sites (Winterhalder et al 2010).…”