Resource Stress and Settlement Pattern Change in the Eastern Mimbres Area, Southwest New Mexico

Dissertation by Karen Gust Schollmeyer based in part on EMAP Mimbres Classic period and Reorganization phase faunal data in tDAR.

This dissertation examines the role of resource stress in the dramatic depopulation of large, long-occupied villages in the Mimbres region of the U.S. Southwest. I examine archaeological evidence and models of environmental conditions in the eastern Mimbres area of southwest New Mexico to assess the magnitude and periodicity of food stress from a combination of reduced precipitation and prolonged human farming and hunting activities on the landscape. The results indicate that levels and frequencies of food stress in the area were unlikely to have been a major influence on decisions to change settlement and land use strategies. Environmental explanations focused on long term population-resource imbalances may have been overemphasized in accounting for dramatic cultural changes in the area. Some changes in productive land availability around the time of transition from villages to hamlets, however, suggest that farmers' perceptions of increased risk may have influenced changes in demography and settlement patterns.