How Many People Lived at a Site?
Archaeologists use the following steps to determine how many people may have lived at a site:
- First, count or estimate the number of rooms at a site.
- Next, decide how many rooms were in use at the same time. Some rooms were likely associated with the founding of the site, some with the middle occupation, and some were only used near the end of the occupation. Remember the Piece of the Puzzle that focused on using pottery to date things? Pottery can help archaeologists determine which rooms were lived in first, and which last.
- Finally, use trends among historic American Indians to arrive at a reasonable estimate of the number of people who lived in each room.
Tracking Population Changes through Time and across Geographic Place
|
|
|
|
| The illustrations above, in clockwise order, indicate rooms occupied during different time periods at the Schoolhouse Point platform mound site near Lake Roosevelt in central Arizona. Yellow indicates the earliest occupation, light orange and dark orange indicate rooms built and used during the middle occupation, and red indicates the latest and final occupation. | |
Key Points:
Archaeologists estimate site population by counting rooms, figuring out how many rooms were occupied during different periods of time, and estimating the number of people per room based on trends among historic American Indians.
Advances in computer technology, especially the use of Geographic Information Systems, have given archaeologists much more effective ways to investigate and illustrate changes in population through time at the scale of the entire Southwest.
The Hohokam region was gradually depopulated despite an influx of immigrants from northern Arizona.
This online exhibit was created in partnership with Pueblo Grande Museum, and is made possible by grants from the National Science Foundation.
