In this Book
University of California Press
- Emergence and Collapse of Early Villages: Models of Central Mesa Verde Archaeology
- Book
- 2012
- Published by: University of California Press
- Series: Origins of Human Behavior and Culture
summary
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.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Title Page, Copyright Page
- pp. 1-7
- Table of Contents
- pp. vii-viii
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-x
- Contributors
- pp. xi-xii
- Chapter 4: Simulation Model Overview
- pp. 59-72
- Color plates
- pp. 98-113
- Appendix A
- pp. 263-274
- Appendix B
- pp. 275-288
- Bibliography
- pp. 289-324
- Notes on Contributors
- pp. 325-326
Additional Information
ISBN
9780520951990
Related ISBN(s)
9780520270145
MARC Record
OCLC
779828587
Pages
376
Launched on MUSE
2014-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No