Timothy A. Kohler

Grand challenges for archaeology

Abstract This article represents a systematic effort to answer the question, What are archaeology’s most important scientific challenges? Starting with a crowd-sourced query directed broadly to the professional community of archaeologists, the authors augmented, prioritized, and refined the responses during a two-day workshop focused specifically on this question. The resulting 25 “grand challenges” focus on dynamic cultural processes and the operation of coupled human and natural systems. We organize these challenges into five topics: (1) emergence, communities, and complexity; (2) resilience, persistence, transformation, and collapse; (3) movement, mobility, and migration; (4) cognition, behavior, and identity; and (5) human-environment interactions. A discussion and a brief list of references accompany each question. An important goal in identifying these challenges is to inform decisions on infrastructure investments for archaeology. Our premise is that the highest priority investments should enable us to address the most important questions. Addressing many of these challenges will require both sophisticated modeling and large-scale synthetic research that are only now becoming possible. Although new archaeological fieldwork will be essential, the greatest pay off will derive from investments that provide sophisticated research access to the explosion in systematically collected archaeological data that has occurred over the last several decades.

Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS): Approach, Challenges, and Strategies

William J. McConnell, James D. A. Millington, Nicholas J. Reo, Marina Alberti, Heidi Asbjornsen, Lawrence A. Baker, Nicholas Brozov, Laurie E. Drinkwater, Scott A. Drzyzga, Jose, Fragoso, Daniel S. Holland, Claire A. Jantz, Timothy Kohler, Herbert D. G. Maschner, Michael Monticino, Guillermo Podesta, Robert Gilmore Pontius, Jr., Charles L. Redman, David Sailor, Gerald Urquhart, and Jianguo Liu. (2011). Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS): Approach, Challenges, and Strategies. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America April: 218-228.

HISTORICAL ECOLOGY IN THE MESA VERDE REGION: RESULTS FROM THE VILLAGE ECODYNAMICS PROJECT

Using the occupation histories of 3,176 habitation sites, new estimates of maize-agriculture productivity, and an analysis of over 1,700 construction timbers, we examine the historical ecology of Pueblo peoples during their seven-century occupation (A.D. 600–1300) of a densely settled portion of the Mesa Verde archaeological region. We identify two cycles of population growth and decline, the earlier and smaller peaking in the late-A.D. 800s, the later and larger in the mid-A.D. 1200s. We also identify several episodes of immigration. Formation of aggregated settlements, which we term community centers, is positively correlated with increasing population and the time elapsed in each settlement cycle, and it persists during periods of regional population decline, but it does not correlate with climatic variation averaged over periods. Architectural and land-use practices depleted pinyon-juniper woodlands during the first cycle, but more stable field systems and greater recycling of construction timber resulted in more sustainable management of wood resources during the second cycle, despite much higher population densities. Our estimates for maize production are lower than previous estimates, especially for the A.D. 1200s, when population reached its peak in the study area. Even so, considerable potential agricultural production remained unused in the decades that immediately preceded the complete depopulation of our study area.

Predictive Models for Archaeological Resource Location

Publisher Summary This chapter describes various empiric correlative models for locational prediction developed in both cultural resource management (CRM) and academic research contexts. There is no doubt that the recent popularity of predictive models is due to their promise in two areas: cost-effectiveness and utility in planning. Several of the inferential models reviewed in the chapter appear to provide predictions of location that are sufficiently accurate and precise to be used for planning purposes. Through correct use of sampling procedures and statistical techniques, predictive models can be built that perform this management function adequately, while making little or no contribution to understanding locational processes. This frequently happens in the case where such models have uninterpretable independent variables or fail to differentiate significant subsets of activities. On the positive side, the surveys on which these models were based have produced an immense amount of site location data accompanied by the simultaneous collection of much useful environmental information. In conclusion, predictive models can provide both a planning service and one framework for incorporating CRM studies into wider research concerns.

Long-term Anasazi Land-Use Patterns and Forest Reduction: A Case Study from Southwest Colorado

Kohler, Timothy, Meredith Matthews. (1988). Long-term Anasazi Land-Use Patterns and Forest Reduction: A Case Study from Southwest Colorado. American Antiquity 53:537-564.

Sunk-cost effects and vulnerability to collapse in ancient societies

marco a. janssen, t imothy a. kohler , and marten scheffer Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change, Indiana University, 408 N. Indiana Ave., Bloomington, Ind. 47408-3799, U.S.A. (maajanss@indiana.edu)/Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, P.O. Box 644910, Pullman, Wash. 99164-4910, U.S.A. (tako@wsu.edu)/ Department of Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 8080, NL-6700 DD Wageningen, The Netherlands (marten.scheffer@aqec.wkao.wau.nl). 26 v 03

Field Houses, Villages, and the Tragedy of the Commons in the Early Northern Anasazi Southwest

Kohler, Timothy A. (1992 ). Fieldhouses, Villages, and the Tragedy of the Commons in the Early Northern Anasazi Southwest. American Antiquity 57:617–635.

The Neolithic Demographic Transition In The U.S. Southwest

Maize agriculture was practiced in the U.S. Southwest slightly before 2000 B.C., but had a negligible impact on population growth rates until the development or introduction of more productive landraces; the ability to successfully cultivate maize under a greater variety of conditions, with dry farming especially important; the addition of beans, squash, and eventually turkey to the diet; increased sedentism; and what we infer to be the remapping of exchange networks and the development of efficient exchange strategies in first-millenium-A.D. villages. Our estimates of birthrates and growth rates are derived from the proportions of immature individuals among human remains. These proportions are somewhat affected by warfare in our region, and perhaps also by climate. Nevertheless, there is a strong identifiable Neolithic Demographic Transition signal in the U.S. Southwest in about the mid-first-millennium A.D. in most subregions, visible a few hundred years after the introduction of well-fired ceramic containers, and more or less contemporaneous with the first appearance of villages. Independent genetic data derived from the mitochondrial genomes of present-day indigenous populations of the Southwest are also consistent with the hypothesis that a major demographic expansion occurred 1,500-2000 years ago in the Southwest.

Prehistoric human impact on the environment in the upland North American Southwest

Some early Anasazi (prehistoric Puebloan) agricultural practices tended to be land-extensive and made substantial impact on the forests, primarily through clearing by burning. Later agriculture tended to be more land-intensive, but longer duration occupations by larger populations also had significant local effects on the forests, through both clearing for fields and through intensive harvest of firewood. Strategies of early Anasazi agriculture that resulted in forest depletion probably also tended to maximize the power output of the economic systems, and therefore must have had considerable selective value. Depletion of various wild resources was an important impetus to culture change, leading, in conjunction with population growth, to more intensive farming practices, and contributing to the tendency to aggregate in large villages at various times in the prehistoric period.

Solving mixture problems in archaeology: Analysis of ceramic materials for dating and demographic reconstruction

Abstract Mixed collections are ubiquitous in archaeology. Multiple linear regression provides one means for partitioning mixed archaeological collections into their constituent components. The technique estimates the best combination of specified sets of sources in the composition of a mixed whole. As applied to ceramic collections, this technique has proven successful in solving complex dating problems. Used in conjunction with sherd collections obtained through probabilistic sampling, the technique can be extended to demographic reconstruction. Under certain conditions, the techniques described in this paper provide important ancillary data for detecting seasonality, duration, and nature of occupations.