Scientific American – Funded by the US National Science Foundation, the nearly US$2.5-million initiative is assessing how social and environmental factors influenced the populations of prehistoric Pueblo farmers from about 600 to 1300, says Tim Kohler, the VEP’s principal investigator and an archaeologist at Washington State University in Pullman.
In one strand of research, the team drew on the rich history of archaeology in the region to compile a database of 18,000 prehistoric sites, which allowed them to measure the population and how it shifted over time. With such a massive database, the researchers could look at population changes in narrow time bands averaging about 40 years.