Alan C. Swedlund

On a Demographer's View of Prehistoric Demography

mind. New York: Basic Books. SACHCHIDANANDA. 1964. Cultural change in tribal Bihar: Mund and Oraon. Calcutta. SANDERS, D. E. 1973. Native peoples in areas of internal national expansion. International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs Document 14. SAREF, S. 1969. Tribal unrest, an urgent research problem. Vanyajati 17. SCHAPERA, I. 1956. Government and politics in tribal societies. London: Watts. SHERMAN, K. BEZALEL. 1954. Three generations. Jewish Frontier, July, pp. 12-16. SIMPSON, G. E., and MILTON YINGER. 1972. 4th edition. Racial and cultural minorities: An analysis of prejudice and discrimination. New York: Harper and Row. SPICER, E. H. 1961. Perspectives in American Indian culture change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. VIDYARTHI, L. P. Socio-cultural implications of industrialization in India: A case study of tribal Bihar. New Delhi: Research Programmes Committee Planning Commission (distributed by the Council of Social and Cultural Research, Department of Anthropology, University of Ranchi, Ranchi, Bihar, India).

Mill Town Mortality: Consequences of Industrial Growth in Two Nineteenth-Century New England Towns

Recent research has considerably increased our understanding of the factors associated with the American epidemiological transition in the late nineteenth century. However, uncertainty remains regarding the impact on mortality of specific changes ancillary to urbanization and industrialization in American cities and towns. The broad objective of the Connecticut Valley Historical Demography Project is to examine changing relationships between socioeconomic status, the rise of new urban-industrial communities, and cause-specific mortality trends during the rapid development of New England manufacturing. To address these issues, the present analysis examines two emergent urban centers in Massachusetts, adopting a micro-demographic approach to explore late-nineteenth-century and turn-of-the-century determinants of mortality.

Gordon Creek woman meets Kennewick man : New interpretations and protocols regarding the peopling of the Americas

Recent discoveries-particularly those of Kennewick Man-have renewed debates on the peopling of the Americas. Our vantage point comes from research on the Gordon Creek Burial which commenced some 30 years ago. We suggest that a contrast between the conditions under which Gordon Creek and Kennewick were recovered and analyzed provides insights into current interpretations and controversies. Specifically, we argue that bioarchaeologists cannot, and therefore should not, separate the sociopolitical issues from the scientific, that biological assignments of affiliation are extremely problematic in such cases, and that prior assumptions figure strongly in the interpretations presented. If more detailed understanding of the peopling of the Americas is a common goal, then we as bioarchaeologists must be prepared to reexamine our practices and learn from our mistakes.

Fertility transition in the Connecticut Valley: 1740–1850

Abstract The growth of population in North America during the last three centuries presents an interesting episode in world demographic history. Although many areas of England and continental Europe provide a richness and depth of records that is only occasionally found in North America, the latter affords us the unique opportunity to view a literate population from initial colonization through over 300 years of settlement. While the growth rates of some communities are now quite well documented, much less attention has been paid to the demographic components contributing to population change.

Gordon Creek Woman Meets Spirit Cave Man: A Response to Comment by Owsley and Jantz

Owsley and Jantz (2001) allege that we (Swedlund and Anderson 1999) misunderstand and misrepresent the events surrounding the controversy over Kennewick Man, and that we misconstrue statements they have made regarding Spirit Cave Man. They then move to their own analysis of Gordon Creek Woman to demonstrate the value of their morphometric techniques in addressing questions of biological affinity. In this reply we clarify and amplify our position on the key issues on which they challenge us, and we evaluate their morphometric analysis of Gordon Creek Woman. To our previous call for bioarchaeologists to more explicitly acknowledge the political environment in which questions of biological affinity currently arise, we add our concern that the methodologies used have their own set of problems and limitations.

The effects of wealth, occupation, and immigration on epidemic mortality from selected infectious diseases and epidemics in Holyoke township, Massachusetts, 1850−1912

BACKGROUND Previous research suggests individual-level socioeconomic circumstances and resources may be especially salient influences on mortality within the broader context of social, economic, and environmental factors affecting urban 19th century mortality. OBJECTIVE We sought to test individual-level socioeconomic effects on mortality from infectious and often epidemic diseases in the context of an emerging New England industrial mill town. METHOD We analyze mortality data from comprehensive death records and a sample of death records linked to census data, for an emergent industrial New England town, to analyze infectious mortality and model socioeconomic effects using Poisson rate regression. RESULTS Despite our expectations that individual resources might be especially salient in the harsh mortality setting of a crowded, rapidly growing, emergent, industrial mill town with high levels of impoverishment, infectious mortality was not significantly lowered by individual socio-economic status or resources.

A view on the science: Physical anthropology at the millennium

My work has been located primarily at the intersection of physical anthropology, demography, and historical epidemiology. I have an ongoing interest in long term demographic processes in the prehistoric American Southwest using paleodemographic approaches (e.g., Swedlund, 1994). The majority of my research, however, engages historical population data from North America in general and New England in particular (e.g., Swedlund, 1990, Swedlund and Ball, 1998). I was drawn to demography and genetics as a graduate student in part because the recent availability of what we then called “high speed” computers provided new opportunities for handling relatively large data sets and investigating diachronic processes. Microevolutionary studies of the 1960s and 70s had shown great promise for understanding genetic variation in numerically small, indigenous populations. What I and others found lacking was the greater generational time depth necessary to estimate the effects of long term demographic processes on genetic structure. With colleagues and graduate students, I began an undertaking now known as the Connecticut Valley Project. I have not been able to escape it since, but it continues in a form very different from its origins. In the paragraphs below, I will retrace a few steps to show the intentional and sometimes serendipitous turns my research has taken, I will also point to issues and lessons that come from my areas of research but which may have relevance to a broader physical anthropology in the future.

Modeling Archaeology: Origins of the Artificial Anasazi Project and Beyond

The Artificial Anasazi (AA) agent-based simulation model was one of the first agent-based models to address archaeological questions. It grew out of a unique interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeologists/anthropologists (George Gumerman, Jeffrey Dean, Alan Swedlund), computational social scientists (Robert Axtell, Joshua Epstein), and computer modelers (Steve McCarroll, Miles Parker). This chapter describes the kinds of archaeological questions the AA model was designed to address and the ability of the model to answer those questions, as well as an extension of the model that incorporates individual-level age-specific fertility and mortality rates (the Artificial Long House Valley, or ALHV model). We also provide a brief overview of other archaeologically oriented agent-based simulation models and describe how they relate to the AA model. We conclude with a discussion of future directions for the AA and ALHV models as well as suggestions for further research on archaeological questions for which agent-based computer simulations may be especially suitable.

Thinning populations and population thinners: The historical demography of Native Americans

Dobyns, Henry F. Their Number Become Thinned: Native American Populations Dynamics in Eastern North America. Native American Historic Demography Series paper. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983. xxi + 378 pp. including 29 tables, 4 figures, 2 maps, bibliography, and index.

Human Biologists in the Archives: Index

29.95 cloth,