RESUMEN
The late pre-Hispanic period in the US Southwest (A.D. 1200-1450) was characterized by large-scale demographic changes, including long-distance migration and population aggregation. To reconstruct how these processes reshaped social networks, we compiled a comprehensive artifact database from major sites dating to this interval in the western Southwest. We combine social network analysis with geographic information systems approaches to reconstruct network dynamics over 250 y. We show how social networks were transformed across the region at previously undocumented spatial, temporal, and social scales. Using well-dated decorated ceramics, we track changes in network topology at 50-y intervals to show a dramatic shift in network density and settlement centrality from the northern to the southern Southwest after A.D. 1300. Both obsidian sourcing and ceramic data demonstrate that long-distance network relationships also shifted from north to south after migration. Surprisingly, social distance does not always correlate with spatial distance because of the presence of network relationships spanning long geographic distances. Our research shows how a large network in the southern Southwest grew and then collapsed, whereas networks became more fragmented in the northern Southwest but persisted. The study also illustrates how formal social network analysis may be applied to large-scale databases of material culture to illustrate multigenerational changes in network structure.
Asunto(s)
Apoyo Social , Arqueología/métodos , Cerámica , Bases de Datos Factuales , Sistemas de Información Geográfica , Geografía , Historia Medieval , Migración Humana , Humanos , Sudoeste de Estados Unidos , Factores de Tiempo , Estados UnidosRESUMEN
Zhang et al contest that Chusang was part of an annual mobility round that "more likely" included seasonal use of high-elevation environments than permanent use. We show that their probabilistic statement hinges on indefensible claims about hunter-gatherer mobility. In the context of quantitative data from hunter-gatherer ethnography, our travel model shows that seasonal-use models are highly unlikely to explain Chusang.
Asunto(s)
Altitud , Ocupaciones , Antropología Cultural , Ambiente , Humanos , TibetRESUMEN
We show that Zhang and Li's sedimentological model for the Chusang travertine neglects the three-dimensional information from multiple outcrops and that their optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) age of about 20,000 years for the human imprints is untenable. We highlight the robustness of our chronology and explore reasons why Zhang and Li's OSL age is a gross overestimation of the real depositional age of the imprinted travertine.
Asunto(s)
Luminiscencia , Ocupaciones , Humanos , TibetRESUMEN
Current models of the peopling of the higher-elevation zones of the Tibetan Plateau postulate that permanent occupation could only have been facilitated by an agricultural lifeway at ~3.6 thousand calibrated carbon-14 years before present. Here we report a reanalysis of the chronology of the Chusang site, located on the central Tibetan Plateau at an elevation of ~4270 meters above sea level. The minimum age of the site is fixed at ~7.4 thousand years (thorium-230/uranium dating), with a maximum age between ~8.20 and 12.67 thousand calibrated carbon-14 years before present (carbon-14 assays). Travel cost modeling and archaeological data suggest that the site was part of an annual, permanent, preagricultural occupation of the central plateau. These findings challenge current models of the occupation of the Tibetan Plateau.