A 2000-Year Perspective on People and Climate Change in the Neolithic U.S. Southwest

Estimates of crude birth rates and expected life span from human remains provide a regionalized overview of the success of the Neolithic way of life in the US Southwest since about 1000 BCE. These will be set against spatial behavior derived from tree-rings for entire the Pueblo region, various climate proxies, and estimates of population, agricultural productivity, and warfare for two of the most populous portions of the Pueblo world: the central Mesa Verde and the northern Rio Grande.