There is a long history of interest in the study of extinct populations, sometimes called “prehistoric demography” or “archaeological demography.” Most studies have focused on regional population size and trends through time and their explanation. Analyses of a single population at one community are rare.

This paper discusses one effort at assessing the dynamics of population at one prehistoric community, the Grasshopper Pueblo, located in east-central Arizona. A long range program of archaeological research is being conducted at the site by the University of Arizona through the Archaeological Field School. This program is sponsored jointly by the Department of Anthropology and the Arizona State Museum and has been supported by the National Science Foundation since 1965.

The Grasshopper Ruin, a fourteenth century pueblo, is an example of what some have called “Late Mogollon” or “Prehistoric Western Pueblo” culture. It consists of several main room clusters separated by a presently intermittent stream and surrounded by smaller groupings of rooms. There are approximately 500 rooms at the site. Space does not permit a discussion of the range of problems that we are attempting to solve in our research nor the sampling design. But one aspect of our work, the “Cornering-Growth Project,” has provided us with the relative construction sequences for all the rooms at the community. These data provide a basis for a study of population dynamics.

By careful extraction of minute objects from feces and midden debris at a site, the archaeologist can add greatly to ecological and biological knowledge regarding the human inhabitants of the site, as well as the flora and fauna of the locality. The techniques for sifting through the material to obtain small objects are not complicated, and inexpensive equipment is readily available. Soil and fecal samples from dry, protected sites, such as those of Mesa Verde, will yield the best results.

The disappearance of the agricultural Anasazi peoples from the Four Corners area has been popularly attributed to the incursions of predatory tribes. The position of the Ute in aboriginal distribution makes them the obvious candidates for the honor of having evicted the peaceful cliff-dwellers. Analysis shows that the Utes moved into the Four Corners area much later than is customarily thought — probably 400 years after the Anasazi had drifted away.

Accounts of the monumental architecture occupy much of our text because features of lesser magnitude have suffered deterioration from weather, agriculture, and quarrying for recent building activity.

A number of terrace façades are observable on some pyramids. The clearest of these appear in the north side of Str. 2 where the staircase is Hanked by terrace walls embellished with four large panels recessed nearly a half meter into the wall (Figs. 13, 15, 16). The recessed panel is broken into an upper and a lower plane by a carefully planned offset in the masonry that is evidently decorative. The simplest interpretation of these bold lines, executed through the medium of hewn slabs 30 cm. thick, is that they form a geometrical base for further ornamentation of either painting on flat plaster, or molded stucco.

Scant attention has been given to the archaeology of so inconspicuous a group as the nomadic Navaho in a land where great and imposing pueblos dominate the archaeological scene. Kidder was the first to point out what appeared to be remains of Navaho hogans in the upper San Juan Valley, New Mexico. As early as 1912 he reported visiting three ruins in the Gobernador and Largo canyons, consisting of settlements of pueblo type in association with a “number of ruined log structures closely resembling modern Navajo hogans.” One entire settlement in the San Rafael Canyon, including both Pueblo and Navaho type dwellings, was surrounded by high defense walls, without openings. These sites were recognizable as historic in time, due to the presence of metal axe marks on the timber, cow and sheep bones in the rubbish, and one fireplace of the “hood” type, alleged to be of Spanish derivation. Nelson, in 1916, reported similar types of ruins, not only in the Largo and Gobernador, but also in Carriso and Burns Canyons; and traces in the Puerco drainage.

Paleoeskimo archaeology has a peculiar history in that it is best known by its more distinctive regional and chronological variants. Thus, we have had rather full reports from such edge-areas as Greenland (Knuth 1952; Larsen and Meldgaard 1958), Southampton Island (Collins 1956a, 1956b, 1957), and Newfoundland (Wintemberg 1939, 1940; Harp 1964). More recent fieldwork at Igloolik (Meldgaard 1960b, 1962), and full publication from northwestern Quebec (Taylor 1968a) and Lake Harbor (Maxwell 1973) have begun to close the information gap for the geographic core area of the Central Arctic. However, the continuing research by Taylor, McGhee, and Müller-Beck in the peripheral regions of Coronation Gulf, Banks, and Victoria Islands, by Nash and Harp in southern Hudson Bay, by McGhee on Devon Island, and by Tuck, Plumet, Fitzhugh and Linnemae in Labrador-Ungava and Newfoundland has made it even more necessary to tie these regions to developments in the demographically more stable central regions. A large number of questions, such as relationships with a fluctuating environment, population shifts, and regional interrelationships, hinge on more complete information for the Dorset core area.

One area that until recently remained completely unknown was the Labrador coast (Taylor 1964a). This 800-mile stretch of coastline carries a strip of tundra environment south from Hudson Strait to Newfoundland, and its rich marine resources, including a large seasonal harp seal population, provided a suitable habitat for early Eskimo culture, as well as the only feasible migration route from the northern regions into Subarctic Newfoundland.

The Arnapik site, JlGu-9, is located about two miles east (Fig. 1) of Amulet Creek (61°51′15″N., 79°27′40″W.) on the central east coast of Mansel Island in the northeastern extremity of Hudson Bay. Mansel Island, 36 miles west of the Ungava mainland at its closest point, is a low, generally barren island measuring roughly 60 by 34 miles. Despite its size its maximum elevation is under 500 feet. The island, formed of limestone and limestone gravels, geologically is a member of the Arctic lowlands. The vegetation, arctic grasses, sedges, mosses, lichens, willow and arctic flowers, is extremely sparse for this latitude, a marked contrast to the hardrock terrain of the nearby mainland, but much like such high Arctic locales as Bathurst and Comwallis Islands near 75° north latitude (Polunin 1948: 248).

Extinct at Mesa Verde in historic times, the turkey was reintroduced in 1944. This permitted observation of the relationship between wild birds and domesticated employees at the park. Timid at first, the turkeys soon knew where food could be found. They took over the feeding stations set out for small birds and took advantage of warm roosting places in the residential area. Despite efforts to chase them away (tossing cherry bombs and firing guns in the air), turkeys continued to congregate around park homes. It can be conjectured that the prehistoric Indians suffered likewise. When they learned that they could not drive off the turkeys, they most likely decided to corral them to protect their crops and food stores. Recognition of the value of this bird for food and artifacts was the logical next step. Domestication must have been a means for establishing order and maintaining sanity among the prehistoric Indians, who might otherwise have been driven wild by turkeys.

The approach to population structure followed in this work is that of stable population theory as developed by A. J. Lotka and others. An early exposition of this theory is found in Lotka (1956); more recently it has been summarized by Coale (1972), Keyfitz (1968), and Shryock and Siegel(1971).

The theory of stable populations requires that a population is infinite in size, has no net immigration or outmigration, and has fixed rates of fertility and mortality at each age. These assumptions are often approximated closely enough by real populations for the theory to be useful. Given the stated conditions, a population is described by its age distribution, or the number of individuals at each age. Since the theoretical population is infinite, the age distribution is defined in terms of relative numbers or percentages rather than finite numbers of individuals at each age.

The age structure is determined by the rates of mortality and fertility. It has been proved by Lotka that, no matter what the initial age distribution, a population under these assumptions approaches a certain age distribution which is determined by those rates. The result is the so-called stable age distribution since it will no longer change if mortality and fertility remain fixed. In fact, a temporary perturbation in these rates will only temporarily disturb the age distribution, which will quickly return to the stable form. Human populations approach the stable age distribution in well under 100 yr after the rates become fixed.

Until quite recently the cultural prehistory of Japan has been, like many other areas of Asia, very inadequately known to most American and European students. There is now enough material available to enable me to present to you an outline of the prehistoric cultural development of Japan with a high degree of reliability in its essential validity. Much remains to be done, however, both in the sphere of “dirt archaeology” and in the field of analysis, synthesis, and foreign relationships.

The term “Jomon” has become entrenched as the designation for the entire period of Japanese culture preceding the entrance of the Yayoi people with their bronze-age culture from Korea and the adjacent areas into Kyushu. This migration must have commenced at least as early as the second century B.C. since it is known that Yayoi centers were flourishing in Kyushu and southwest Honshu in the first century B.C. Absolute dates for the earliest cultural manifestations in Japan are lacking but my guess would be about 3000 B.C.

Locational Analysis has been a fundamental part of research in plant ecology and cultural geography for many years (for reviews see Greig-Smith 1964; Haggett 1966; Harvey 1967; King 1969; Morrill 1970). Recently there has been a growing interest in applying locational analysis in anthropological studies (for example, Plog 1968; Zubrow 1970; Wood 1971; Johnson 1972; Marcus 1973; Whallon 1973a, 1973b; Waddell 1972). The spatial organization of settlements and smaller units of human activity is relevant to an understanding of population structure. The distribution of human activity areas is presumably the result of complex interrelationships between social, biological, and ecological variables, and therefore should provide significant information regarding the effects of these variables in given situations. This paper will compare the historic pattern of community growth in Hampshire and Franklin Counties, Massachusetts, with that predicted by Hudson's (1969) model of rural settlement location.

The topography of the study area (Fig. 1) is dominated by the presence of the Connecticut River Valley and its tributaries. This region was first settled by Europeans in the 1650s and was primarily agricultural until recent times. The area has been characterized by rapid population growth over much of its history, and the population has tended to be distributed in the form of towns and small villages. The time period considered in the present study will be 1650-1850 which represents the time of maximum dispersal of settlements, prior to the advent of the automobile and most railroad traffic.

Two prehistoric Southwestern societies, the Black Mesa Anasazi and the Winslow Tradition of the Hopi Buttes, are used to demonstrate different types of adaptation to an increasing population.

I indicate that changes in population density can be used to better understand the structure of society, as well as to investigate culture change. The role of demography, however, must be seen in the perspective of a single sub-system within the entire cultural and natural system. Viewed in this way, population pressure is a single part of the human ecosystem and not a simple cause or effect of culture change.

The holistic approach of cultural ecological studies in anthropology has, in the last decade, proven to be a generally successful means for helping to understand the structure of cultural systems and also for elucidating some of the processes of culture change. The ecosystem concept is important to anthropology because of its holistic and synthetic characteristics; nevertheless anthropologists, for a variety of reasons, have used the ecosystem approach on a relatively simplistic, mechanical level which has limited the success of even the better studies.