Modeling Anasazi social dynamics and environmental change
by
George J. Gumerman
The Arizona State Museum, The University of Arizona
Coauthors: Alan Swedlund (University of Massachusetts - Amherst, Jeffrey S. Dean (University of Arizona, Joshua Epstein (Brookings Institution), Robert Extell (Brookings Institution)

It has long been known that environmental perturbations had a dramatic impact on the social and demographic dynamics of the prehistoric Anasazi of the American southwest. A major difficulty in understanding Anasazi culture change has been differentiating external from internal causation, that is, the extent to which changes were the result of Anasazi internal cultural system dynamics or to the effects of the physical environment. Furthermore, the social processes imbedded in Anasazi decision making that in resulted in major culture change are poorly understood.

Archaeological data from both survey and excavation has been collected over a fifty-year period that has produced a detailed cultural evolutionary trajectory for the Anasazi. Fine grained environmental data from tree-rings, pollen analysis, and surficial geology has permitted the retrodiction of the paleoenvironmental record in detail unparalleled for the prehistoric world. Both the cultural and environmental data have been used to construct an agent based computer model that uses assumptions from the historical and ethnographic record of the Hopi (descendants of the Anasazi) to test the relative importance of cultural, demographic, and environmental variables in explaining culture change.

Date received: January 22, 2002

Copyright © 2002 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # caiq-03.