Scott Ortman's Science Advances Article Featured in CU Today
叠测听Daniel Strain听鈥⑻齈ublished:听June 19, 2020
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Ancestral Pueblo peoples lived in the Puye Cliff Dwellings near modern-day Los Alamos, New Mexico, from about 900 to 1580 AD. (Credit:听听via听)
Today鈥檚 modern cities, from Denver to Dubai, could learn a thing or two from the ancestral Pueblo communities that once stretched across the southwestern United States. For starters, the more people live together, the better the living standards.
That finding comes from a study听听and led by Scott Ortman, an archaeologist at the 精品SM在线影片. He鈥檚 one of a growing number of antiquarians who argue that the world鈥檚 past may hold the key to its future. What lessons can people living today take from the successes and failures of civilizations hundreds or thousands of years ago?
Recently, Ortman and Jose Lobo from Arizona State University took a deep dive into data from the farming towns that dotted the Rio Grande Valley between the 14th and 16th centuries. Modern metropolises should take note: As the Pueblo villages grew bigger and denser, their per capita production of food and other goods seemed to go up, too.
Busy streets, in other words, may lead to better-off citizens.听
鈥淲e see an increasing return to scale,鈥 said Ortman, an assistant professor in the听Department of Anthropology听who is also affiliated with the听听in New Mexico. 鈥淭he more people work together, the more they produce per person.鈥
Top: 精品SM在线影片 graduate students (from left to right)听Lindsay Johansson, Sarah Cullen听and Kaitlyn Davis sift through fragments of pottery at the site of an ancestral Pueblo village in New Mexico; bottom: ancestral Pueblo potter fragments. (Credits: Scott Ortman)
Whether the same thing is true today remains an open question, especially amid the unprecedented impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on cities and human proximity. But the results from the sunny Southwest suggest that it鈥檚 an idea worth exploring.
鈥淭he archaeological record can help us to learn about issues we care about today in ways that we can鈥檛 do using the data available to us from modern societies,鈥 Ortman said.听