TY - JOUR
T1 - Using event-history analysis to examine the causes of semi-sedentism among shifting cultivators
T2 - A case study of the Haudenosaunee, AD 1500-1700
AU - Jones, Eric E.
AU - Wood, James W.
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Dean Snow, George Milner, Ken Hirth, and Tim Murtha for their invaluable assistance with this research and two anonymous reviewers for their help in refining this work. We would especially like to thank Sharon DeWitte for her editing skills and unfailing support. We are grateful to the Department of Anthropology at Penn State University, the Research in Graduate Studies Office at Penn State University, and the Robert Funk Memorial Foundation of the New York State Museum Institute for providing funding for this research. An earlier version of this work was presented in poster form at the 2010 Society for American Archaeology meetings in St. Louis.
PY - 2012/8
Y1 - 2012/8
N2 - Event-history analysis is often used in the social sciences to study the occurrence of particular events over the lifespan of individuals and the impact of various factors on the rate at which those events occur. Like individuals, settlements can be analyzed and important events, such as founding or abandonment, can be studied using this method. Thus, as Richard Paine (1992) has noted, the technique can be useful in archaeological investigations of settlement processes. In this research we use it to explore the causes of settlement abandonment among a temperate shifting cultivators in an attempt to better understand the ecology of this adaptation and in order to evaluate the merits of the method. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) of northeastern North America present an interesting case study for applying event-history analysis to archaeological settlement dynamics because of the wealth of archaeological settlement data and detailed historic record that allows us to parse out historical factors and analyze the remaining ecological factors. We use event-history analysis as an alternative means for evaluating the relative and absolute effects of several variables that may have been predictive of the lifespan of settlements and the timing of their removal. The results suggest that the decision to move from a village was a complex process in which the population size of a village may have been the single most important, but not the only, determinant of settlement duration.
AB - Event-history analysis is often used in the social sciences to study the occurrence of particular events over the lifespan of individuals and the impact of various factors on the rate at which those events occur. Like individuals, settlements can be analyzed and important events, such as founding or abandonment, can be studied using this method. Thus, as Richard Paine (1992) has noted, the technique can be useful in archaeological investigations of settlement processes. In this research we use it to explore the causes of settlement abandonment among a temperate shifting cultivators in an attempt to better understand the ecology of this adaptation and in order to evaluate the merits of the method. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) of northeastern North America present an interesting case study for applying event-history analysis to archaeological settlement dynamics because of the wealth of archaeological settlement data and detailed historic record that allows us to parse out historical factors and analyze the remaining ecological factors. We use event-history analysis as an alternative means for evaluating the relative and absolute effects of several variables that may have been predictive of the lifespan of settlements and the timing of their removal. The results suggest that the decision to move from a village was a complex process in which the population size of a village may have been the single most important, but not the only, determinant of settlement duration.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84862192787&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84862192787&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jas.2012.04.019
DO - 10.1016/j.jas.2012.04.019
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84862192787
SN - 0305-4403
VL - 39
SP - 2593
EP - 2603
JO - Journal of Archaeological Science
JF - Journal of Archaeological Science
IS - 8
ER -