Large game, agricultural land, and settlement pattern change in the eastern Mimbres area, southwest New Mexico

Schollmeyer, Karen

doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2011.04.004

Cited by 20 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…People had depleted riverine habitats in some parts of the region (53), decreased the abundance of artiodactyls (54,55), and damaged some upland soils through farming (56). In addition, external relations with other Southwestern groups appear to have been severely limited (57).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate challenges, vulnerabilities, and food security

Nelson

Ingram

Dugmore

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

133

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This paper identifies rare climate challenges in the long-term history of seven areas, three in the subpolar North Atlantic Islands and four in the arid-to-semiarid deserts of the US Southwest. For each case, the vulnerability to food shortage before the climate challenge is quantified based on eight variables encompassing both environmental and social domains. These data are used to evaluate the relationship between the "weight" of vulnerability before a climate challenge and the nature of social change and food security following a challenge. The outcome of this work is directly applicable to debates about disaster management policy.anaging disasters, especially those that are climate-induced, calls for reducing vulnerabilities as an essential step in reducing impacts (1-8). Exposure to environmental risks is but one component of potential for disasters. Social, political, and economic processes play substantial roles in determining the scale and kind of impacts of hazards (1,(8)(9)(10)(11)(12). "Disasters triggered by natural hazards are not solely influenced by the magnitude and frequency of the hazard event (wave height, drought intensity etc.), but are also rather heavily determined by the vulnerability of the affected society and its natural environment" (ref. 1, p. 2). Thus, disaster planning and relief should address vulnerabilities, rather than returning a system to its previous condition following a disaster event (6).Using archaeologically and historically documented cultural and climate series from the North Atlantic Islands and the US Southwest, we contribute strength to the increasing emphasis on vulnerability reduction in disaster management. We ask whether there are ways to think about climate uncertainties that can help people build resilience to rare, extreme, and potentially devastating climate events. More specifically, we ask whether vulnerability to food shortfall before a climate challenge predicts the scale of impact of that challenge. Our goal is both to assess current understandings of disaster management and to aid in understanding how people can build the capability to increase food security and reduce their vulnerability to climate challenges.We present analyses of cases from substantially different regions and cultural traditions that show strong relationships between levels of vulnerability to food shortage before rare climate events and the impact of those events. The patterns and details of the different contexts support the view that vulnerability cannot be ignored. These cases offer a long-term view rarely included in studies of disaster management or human and cultural well-being (for exceptions, see refs. 13 and 14). This long time frame allows us to witness changes in the context of vulnerabilities and climate challenges, responding to a call for more attention to "how human security changes through time,

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate challenges, vulnerabilities, and food security

Nelson

Ingram

Dugmore

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

133

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“…(Nogue ), and the densely settled Mimbres Valley was mostly depopulated by 1130. In contrast, there was less demographic change and greater overall continuity in the more sparsely populated eastern Mimbres area (Nelson ; Schollmeyer ). It is likely that people who left the region moved in various directions.…”

Section: Background: the Mimbres Region And Transformationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, their diets were relatively low in protein and quite low in fat due to a heavy reliance on maize agriculture and relatively low local availability of fat‐rich wild or domesticated foods (Nelson and Schollmeyer ). Their best source of fat was large game (deer and antelope), which had been depleted by at least 1000 C.E., and probably even earlier (Cannon ; Schollmeyer ). People during the mid‐to‐late Classic period probably lacked reliable access to meat and fat during some times of the year, but their experiences were not substantially different from that of their parents’ generation.…”

Section: Dietmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…People during the mid‐to‐late Classic period probably lacked reliable access to meat and fat during some times of the year, but their experiences were not substantially different from that of their parents’ generation. After 1130, when the human population declined, deer populations may have rebounded in areas with the lowest human populations, but stayed low in areas where human populations remained (Schollmeyer ).…”

Section: Dietmentioning

confidence: 99%

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4 Experiencing Social Change: Life during the Mimbres Classic Transformation

Hegmon

Nelson

Schollmeyer

2016

Archaeological Papers of the American

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By about 1130 C.E., the end of the Classic Mimbres period, this way of life had ended; most people left the large villages, many left the region, and they no longer made the beautiful pottery. There is almost no evidence of violence or disease, and the reasons for the change are not well understood.Archaeologists have long been interested in this transformation, once viewed as a collapse and disappearance (e.g., LeBlanc 1983:158-159). More recently, based on evidence that some people stayed in the region, we described the events around 1130 as a regional reorganization (Hegmon et al. 1998;Nelson et al. 2006). In comparison to other transformations elsewhere in the Southwest, the Mimbres reorganization was milder and involved less human suffering (Hegmon et al. 2008). The Mimbres case has also been used to define a kind of change called "transformative relocation," which recognizes that there was some population continuity through a time of settlement relocation (Nelson et al. 1996;Torvinen et al. 2015).Here we consider what it was like to live during this reorganization or "transformative relocation." Specifically, we ask how the changes we see archaeologically actually affected people's lives. The first component of AHE involves the conditions of life, and that is our focus here. Some chapters in this volume (Ortman, Chapter 5; Brewington, Chapter 6; Logan, Chapter 7) take an ordinal approach to AHE, comparing conditions over time or space or between social groups. Here we take a different and complementary approach, focusing simply on whether and how the Experiencing Social Change 55conditions of life changed without judging those changes as positive or negative. We also assume that different people were affected differently by the changes, such as the end of a land tenure system or the movement out of large villages. What emerges is an understanding of what people might have experienced-for example, the need to work harder to produce the same amount of food-even if we cannot know how they felt about it. Thus our work opens avenues for archaeologists to explore the fourth component of AHE, which is concerned with the experience of the conditions of life.A brief background section sets the stage for our exploration. This is followed by sections that explore the human experience in a number of realms, ranging from diet to subsistence labor to the activities and contributions of artists. These insights are supported by multiple lines of archaeological evidence, and in some cases the same archaeological evidence is germane to several realms and thus is mentioned in multiple sections. Our focus is on the Mimbres Valley, which had the densest population during the Classic period, and on the eastern Mimbres area, where we can trace the Classic to Postclassic/Reorganization phase transition (Nelson et al. 2006). The background is written in a style familiar to most archaeologists, focusing on evidence and trends. In contrast, in the sections on the human experience we attempted, where appropriate, to make peo...

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“…Faunal remains from archaeological sites, which reflect resource availability and habitat diversity around ancient settlements, are invaluable in reconstructing changes in these parameters over time (Emery and Thornton, 2008;Marom and Bar-Oz, 2009a,b;McGovern, 1980;McGovern et al, 1996). Game animals, micro-vertebrates and livestock animals can be used as environmental proxies to measure degradation that is implied as the proximate cause of episodes of collapse (Badenhorst and Driver, 2009;Schollmeyer, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%