Demographic Reconstructions in the American Southwest: Alternative Behavioral Means to the Same Archaeological Ends

ABSTRACT

Paleodemographic reconstructions are an important component of many evaluations of prehistoric cultural change, and the number of sites in an area, the size of those sites, or both of these variables are frequently used to estimate population size over time. Some of the reconstructions are based on a set of implicit assumptions—that a large number of large sites is the result of a large population. Despite the plausibility of this assumption, factors other than many people may have produced many and/or large sites. Data from the historic Navajo occupation of Black Mesa, Arizona, are used to illustrate our point.