Population Reconstruction for the VEP North Study Area
The following maps illustrate the population reconstruction for the VEP North study area. There are 15 slides, each depicting a different time period, beginning in A.D. 600 and ending in A.D. 1285.
There are several things to pay attention to as the images shift from one time period to the next. You will see how site locations change through time, with subregions having greater or fewer sites in different periods. You will also notice how the total number of sites changes in each time period, and you can see how the number and density of sites correspond to the areas that have been surveyed. There would be many more sites—especially small-and-medium-sized sites—if archaeologists had surveyed the entire study area. Finally, pay special attention to how the proportion of small, medium, and large sites varies during different times; try to identify the periods when people were moving out of small sites and aggregating into larger villages. Because these villages are so large, we think almost all of them have been located, so these maps provide a relatively complete picture of the distribution of villages in the region and how their number and locations changed through time.
Chapter 3, Question 6 provides images that show the size of the community centers in greater detail.
Each map shows the location and size of the residential sites occupied during a particular time period.
Both the color and size of the dot indicate the size of the individual residential sites.
Red Dots - Farmstead (1 to 2 households, or about 6 to 12 people)
Yellow Dots - Hamlet (3 to 8 households, or about 18 to 48 people)
Blue Dots - Community Center (9 or more households and more than about 54 people)
Maps by Crow Canyon Archaeological Center (base map imagery by ESRI) |