Under the supervision of Dr. Margaret C. Nelson, Steve Swanson will analyze archaeological, environmental, and satellite-based data to answer questions about human impacts on the environment during the development of agriculture in the Southwestern U.S. In the Mogollon Rim area of western New Mexico and eastern Arizona, native groups made the transition to agriculture between 200 A.D. and 1000 A.D., marking a change in the relationship between people and their environment. While it is often assumed that the adoption of agriculture rapidly leads to sedentism and village formation, in the Mogollon region the early farming settlements actually remained small and residents mobile, for hundreds of years after the adoption of agriculture. These early agricultural sites were repeatedly occupied and abandoned for hundreds of years, and only a few developed into agricultural villages by AD 1000. In the US Southwest, early attempts at farming during the transition to agriculture provide a rich database on these long-term human-environment dynamics. By supplementing the archaeological data with recent satellite-based environmental data, this research will explore the inter-related processes of environmental resilience, environmental impact of land use, and of village formation.
The archaeological record can provide critical insights into the transition from hunting and gathering to farming, as well as the ecology of farming strategies in an arid landscape. In the Mogollon area there are sites that span the 800-year transition to agriculture. At each of these sites, there is a series of different occupations, each with only a few houses at a time. By examining pollen and burned plant remains in houses of different ages, one can develop an environmental history for the sites, documenting vegetation disturbance (such as deforestation) as well as vegetation recovery over time. Combining this with satellite-based data on modern vegetation communities permits an assessment of the environmental factors that might influence the development of sedentism and agriculture. First, did the environmental impacts of early agriculture influence the ability of farmers to successfully live in a single place for long periods of time? Second, are some places on the landscape inherently more resistant to environmental degradation, and is that where we see the development of farming villages? Finally, what role does climate play in influencing the location and persistence of early farming settlements?
Insights gained from this research are not only useful for social scientists: they have broader implications for developing solutions to modern environmental problems facing society. At a time when the environmental impacts of human land use practices are reaching the level of a critical, global-scale danger to quality of life, it is important to recognize that proposed solutions to current environmental crises must address sociocultural factors as well as issues of long-term sustainability, or they will be unsuccessful. This research is especially applicable to regions with a similar demographic or environmental context, such as for migrant or mobile populations, or in arid regions of the world. By examining a long-term dataset, this study can contribute scientific information to the problem of the sustainability of mobile land use practices in arid environments across the globe. Information of this sort is timely given the numerous recent and ongoing instances of displaced populations in arid environments worldwide.
