Environmental Change and Human Adaptation in the Ancient American Southwest

edited by David E Doyel and Jeffrey S Dean

University of Utah Press, 2006
Cloth: 978-0-87480-853-7
Library of Congress Classification E78.S7E68 2006
Dewey Decimal Classification 979.01

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Archaeology provides an ideal avenue for examining long-term processes and interrelationships between human behavior and environmental stability, variation, and change. The American Southwest is particularly well suited for such 'deep-time' investigations because of its comprehensive archaeological record, rich ethnographic and historical data on its peoples, and unmatched reconstructions of multiple environmental variables across a broad range of spatial and temporal scales.

This volume contains a varied and instructive set of studies of human behavioral adaptation to environmental change in the ancient Southwest. It makes significant contributions to southwestern prehistory, settlement pattern studies, agriculture, behavioral ecology, paleo-environmental reconstruction, and statistical and computer-aided modeling. The mix of case studies and syntheses covers the Colorado Plateau, Sonoran Desert, Mogollon Highlands, and Rio Grande Valley and summarizes the work of some of the leading researchers in the region.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

David E. Doyel owns and operates Estrella Cultural Research and is adjunct faculty in anthropology at Arizona State University.

Jeffrey S. Dean is professor of dendrochronology (Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research) and professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, and curator of archaeology for the Arizona State Museum.

REVIEWS

"An excellent contribution to our understanding of human ecology and the prehistory of the American Southwest." — Daniel Larson, California State University, Long Beach

"The authors should be commended for the excellent job the chapters do in showing how environmental change can be used to strengthen our understanding of the past, as all of the social and politiacal processes took place within a variable context that significantly influenced the trajectory of human response. Of interest not only to Southwestern researchers, but to researchers anywhere who want to see how they can astutely examine human-environment interactions."—Journal of Field Archaeology

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ContentsFiguresTablesPreface1. Culture, Environment, and Adaptation: Perspectives from the Ancient Southwest Jeffrey S. Dean and David E. Doyel2. Early People, Early Maize, and Late Archaic Ecology in the Southwest Alan H. Simmons3. Prehistoric Human Response to Landscape Change in the American Southwest Michael R. Waters4. Cross-cultural Perspectives on Prehispanic Hohokam Agricultural Potential Suzanne K. Fish and Paul R. Fish5. Long-term Streamflow Reconstructions, River Channel Morphology, and Aboriginal Irrigation Systems along the Salt and Gila Rivers Donald A. Graybill, David A. Gregory, Gary S. Funkhouser, and Fred L. Nials 6. Subsistence Management Strategies in the Grasshopper Region, East-Central Arizona J. Jefferson Reid, Donald A. Graybill, and Ann Clair Seiferle-Valencia7. Settlement History and Environmental Variability in the Upper Little Colorado River Valley, Arizona David E. Doyel8. Subsistence Stress and Food Storage at Kiet Siel, Northeastern Arizona Jeffrey S. Dean9. The Effects of Environmental Fluctuations on Ancient Livelihoods: Implications of Paleoeconomic Evidence from the Upper Basin, Northern Arizona Alan P. Sullivan, III, and Anthony H. Ruter10. Environmental Variation and Prehistoric Culture in the Mimbres Area, Southwestern New Mexico Darrell Creel 11. Tree Rings, Drought, and the Pueblo Abandonment of South-Central New Mexico in the 1670s James A. Parks, Jeffrey S. Dean, and Julio L. Betancourt12. Sky as Environment: Solar Eclipses and Hohokam Culture Change W. Bruce Masse and Fred Espenak13. The Resurgence of the Co-evolution of Human and Natural Landscape Studies in the American Southwest George J. Gumerman ReferencesContributorsIndex

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