Doctoral Dissertation Research: Settlement and Subsistence in the Western Anasazi Core Area: Development and Assessment of a Risk Response Model

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Under the supervision of James L. Boone and Bruce Huckell, Karl Benedict will integrate archaeological, historic climate, paleoclimate, environmental, and paleoenvironmental data in an assessment of human response to subsistence risk. In particular, he will examine changing patterns in subsistence-related activity locations within a variable environment as a part of the mixed farmer-forager economy of Northeastern Arizona between A.D. 600 and 1150. The planned research program utilizes existing data from several long-term science and research programs including: 1) archaeological data from the Black Mesa and Long House Valley Archaeological Projects; 2) modern and historic climate data made available through the NOAAis United States Historic Climatology Network; 3) prehistoric climate data available from the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research Southwest Paleoclimatology Program at the University of Arizona and the International Tree Ring Database maintained by the NOAA Paleoclimatology Program; 4) modern environmental data collected by the Arizona GAP Project with support from the USGS Biological Resources Division; and 5) additional physiographic datasets made available through the USGS. These modern, historic and prehistoric environmental data will be integrated within a Geographic Information System employing recently developed and extensively tested meteorological interpolation methods to produce a high resolution (both spatially and temporally) model of localized climate conditions for northern Black Mesa and the adjacent Long House Valley study areas. This model of localized climate will then be integrated with vegetation distribution information to identify areas within the study area that represent high- or low-variability conditions within the range of variation for the region. The distribution of archaeological subsistence activity locations will then be compared to the distribution of high- and low-variability locations on the landscape to test hypotheses related to human response to subsistence uncertainty through the positioning of subsistence activities at locations that minimize uncertainty in productivity while also not significantly reducing long-term mean productivity.In general, the planned research program provides an explicit means for developing and testing hypotheses developed from models of decision-making derived from behavioral ecology. These models have potential applicability not only to prehistoric decision-making but also to general models of human response to risk and uncertainty in economic decision-making. Overall, this project will build upon the extensive archaeological and environmental research that has proceeded it through the integration of multiple recent datasets into a detailed picture of localized environmental variability within an area for which there is a well- and consistently-documented assemblage of archaeological data with which hypotheses relating human response to environmental conditions may be tested.