New archaeological research and computer simulation suggest why Ancestral Puebloans deserted the northern Southwest United States

Abstract

Early archaeologists often invoked single factors—such as climate change or conflict—as explanations for the depopulation of more than 600 cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde, as well as thousands of home sites and community centers across the Four Corners. More recently, some scholars have posited that better conditions or new types of social organization drew Pueblo people south. We propose, instead, that the emigration resulted from a combination of causes. To explore such a complex hypothesis, we employ computer modeling, using new climatic, ecological and demographic data that synthesize a century of archaeological research. Over the past century, archaeologists