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VILLAGE GROWTH, EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASE, AND THE END OF THE NEOLITHIC DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION IN THE SOUTHWEST UNITED STATES AND NORTHWEST MEXICO

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2018

David A. Phillips Jr. ,
Helen J. Wearing  and
Jeffery J. Clark
David A. Phillips Jr.*
Affiliation:
Maxwell Museum of Anthropology and Department of Anthropology, MSC01 1050, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001, USA
Helen J. Wearing
Affiliation:
Department of Biology and Department of Mathematics and Statistics, MSC03 2020, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001, USA (hwearing@unm.edu)
Jeffery J. Clark
Affiliation:
Archaeology Southwest, 300 North Ash Alley, Tucson, AZ 85701, USA (jclark@archaeologysouthwest.org)
*
(dap@unm.edu, corresponding author)
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Abstract

In the final centuries prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the southwest United States and northwest Mexico underwent two major sociodemographic changes: (1) many people coalesced into large villages, and (2) most of the villages were depopulated within two centuries. Basic epidemiological models indicate that village coalescence could have triggered epidemic diseases that caused the observed demographic decline. The models also link this decline to a global phenomenon, the Neolithic Demographic Transition.

En los últimos siglos antes de la llegada de los españoles, el suroeste de los EE. UU. y el noroeste de México experimentaron dos transformaciones sociodemográficas: (1) una gran parte de la población se incorporó en aldeas grandes; y (2) la mayoría de las aldeas se despoblaron en menos de dos siglos. Modelos básicos de la epidemiología indican que la formación de aldeas grandes pudo haber provocado epidemias que causaron una disminución demográfica. Los modelos también proporcionan un enlace teórico entre los cambios regionales y un fenómeno global, la Transición Demográfica del Neolítico.

Type
Articles
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 83 , Issue 2 , April 2018 , pp. 263 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by the Society for American Archaeology 

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