Kenneth Blake Vernon
Biographic Data
| ID | 161820 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kenneth Blake Vernon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kenneth Blake |
| FAMILY NAME | Vernon |
| SIGNATURE | VERNON K B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Colorado Boulder |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0098-5092 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Migration and Environmental Learning in Interstitial Areas: An Example from the Northern Rio Puerco Valley, New Mexico
In this paper we illustrate the potential of interstitial areas, as distinct from both cores and peripheries, for understanding migration and environmental learning among maize farming populations. We analyze settlement data derived from pedestrian survey of a portion of the Rio Puerco (of the East) watershed in north-central New Mexico. Our exploratory analyses are suggestive of interesting patterns that speak to larger debates in the region, in…
The impact of subsistence change on demography: Theory-informed Approximate Bayesian Computation reveals 4-fold increase in carrying capacity following economic intensification
Subsistence intensification is a major process in human history, however, quantifying its effects on demography is challenging given uncertainties regarding timing, population reconstructions, and ecological conditions. To help address these issues, we combine advances in ecological theory with Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) to generate a replicable, theory-informed, computational model for quantifying the effects of intensification on pa…
Drought, Population Pressure, and Inequality Drive Intergroup Conflict in the Precontact North American Southwest
To anticipate relationships between future climate change and societal violence, we need theory to establish causal links and case studies to estimate interactions between driving forces. Here, we couple evolutionary ecology with a machine-learning statistical approach to investigate the long-term effects of climate change, population growth, and inequality on intergroup conflict among farmers in the North American Southwest. Through field invest…
Targeted explorations of Pleistocene-Holocene transition archaeology on the Colorado Plateau in southern Utah
A reconstruction of the Indigenous maize farming niche of Utah
Machine learning reconstructs the Indigenous maize farming niche of Utah. • Early Utah farmers balanced elevation-driven precipitation and the growing season. • Farmers mitigate this trade-off by diverting perennial streams in drier regions. • Early Utah farmers settled in an ideal distribution model way. Maize ( Zea mays L . ) was one of the most widespread domesticated plants in the Americas before European colonization. Despite its widespread …
Environmental Drivers of Wealth Inequality among Ancestral Puebloan Farmers in Bears Ears National Monument
Here, we explore variation in a new record of archaeological house-floor sizes from the southwestern United States relative to spatially explicit time series estimates of local precipitation. Our results show that inequality becomes more severe during periods of high precipitation. This supports the theory suggesting that inequality may emerge where resources are dense, predictable, and clumped within heterogenous and circumscribed environments. …
Can we reliably detect adaptive responses of hunter-gatherers to past climate change? Examining the impact of Mid-Holocene drought on Archaic settlement in the Basin-Plateau Region of North America
The Goldilocks Zone for maize agriculture and the settlement and abandonment of the West Tavaputs Plateau
Between 2100 and 500 BP, maize farming spread throughout the American Southwest, driving changes in land use patterns and relative increases in the number of archaeological sites, which is commonly interpreted as increases in population. In the context of the Southwest, with its variable topography and limited water sources, the locations suitable for productive maize agriculture are limited. Higher elevation locations often have a greater abunda…
Trade-off between market and ecosystem services drives settlement decisions among smallholder ranchers in Baja California Sur, Mexico
A method for defining dispersed community territories
The Fremont Frontier: Living at the Margins of Maize Farming
The Fremont provide an important case study to examine the resilience of ancient farmers to climatic downturns, because they lived at the far northern margin of intensive maize agriculture in the American West, where the constraints on maize production are made abundantly clear. Using a tree-ring and simulation-based reconstruction of average annual precipitation and maize growing degree days, along with cost-distance to perennial streams, we mod…
Ecological Constraints on Violence Avoidance Tactics in the Prehispanic Central Andes
Prehispanic agricultural populations in the central Andes exhibit some of the highest rates of lethal and sublethal trauma ever recorded. Explanations for high rates of violence focus on what factors drove proactive conflict. While it is true that incentives for proactive violence must exist for high rates of trauma to ensue, it is far less recognized how ecological conditions may promote economic activities that constrain violence avoidance tact…
Socioecological Dynamics Structuring the Spread of Farming in the North American Basin-Plateau Region
The spread of agriculture is a major driver of social and environmental change throughout the Holocene, yet experimental and ethnographic data indicate that farming is less profitable than foraging, so why would individuals choose to adopt agriculture leading to its expansion? Ideal distribution models offer one framework to answer this question: Individuals should adopt less profitable subsistence strategies and occupy more marginal environments…
Decomposing Habitat Suitability Across the Forager to Farmer Transition
How might subsistence strategies structure the costs and benefits of habitat selection and, therefore, drive settlement patterning? We explore this question within an Ideal Distribution framework, arguing that (i) a habitat can be decomposed into its environmental covariates, (ii) their relative contributions to suitability can vary as a function of subsistence strategy, and (iii) the resulting differences will in turn lead to different populatio…
Marriage dynamics in old Lower California: Ecological Constraints and Reproductive Value in an Arid Peninsular Frontier
It is commonly expected that natural selection will favor earlier reproduction, yet ecological constraints can force people to delay marriage. Furthermore, humans demonstrate sex-specific preferences in marriage partners - with grooms normally a few years older than their brides; however, the age at which individuals marry can influence the spousal age gap. We investigate factors influencing age at first marriage and age difference at marriage us…
The ecology of population dispersal: Modeling alternative basin‐plateau foraging strategies to explain the Numic expansion
OBJECTIVES: The expansion of Numic speaking populations into the Great Basin required individuals to adapt to a relatively unproductive landscape. Researchers have proposed numerous social and subsistence strategies to explain how and why these settlers were able to replace any established populations, including private property and intensive plant processing. Here we evaluate these hypotheses and propose a new strategy involving the use of lands…
Decomposing Habitat Suitability Across the Forager to Farmer Transition
How might subsistence strategies structure the costs and benefits of habitat selection and, therefore, drive settlement patterning? We explore this question within an Ideal Distribution framework, arguing that (i) a habitat can be decomposed into its environmental covariates, (ii) their relative contributions to suitability can vary as a function of subsistence strategy, and (iii) the resulting differences will in turn lead to different populatio…
The Fremont Frontier: Living at the Margins of Maize Farming
The Fremont provide an important case study to examine the resilience of ancient farmers to climatic downturns, because they lived at the far northern margin of intensive maize agriculture in the American West, where the constraints on maize production are made abundantly clear. Using a tree-ring and simulation-based reconstruction of average annual precipitation and maize growing degree days, along with cost-distance to perennial streams, we mod…
Marriage dynamics in old Lower California: Ecological Constraints and Reproductive Value in an Arid Peninsular Frontier
It is commonly expected that natural selection will favor earlier reproduction, yet ecological constraints can force people to delay marriage. Furthermore, humans demonstrate sex-specific preferences in marriage partners - with grooms normally a few years older than their brides; however, the age at which individuals marry can influence the spousal age gap. We investigate factors influencing age at first marriage and age difference at marriage us…
Socioecological Dynamics Structuring the Spread of Farming in the North American Basin-Plateau Region
The spread of agriculture is a major driver of social and environmental change throughout the Holocene, yet experimental and ethnographic data indicate that farming is less profitable than foraging, so why would individuals choose to adopt agriculture leading to its expansion? Ideal distribution models offer one framework to answer this question: Individuals should adopt less profitable subsistence strategies and occupy more marginal environments…
A method for defining dispersed community territories
The ecology of population dispersal: Modeling alternative basin‐plateau foraging strategies to explain the Numic expansion
OBJECTIVES: The expansion of Numic speaking populations into the Great Basin required individuals to adapt to a relatively unproductive landscape. Researchers have proposed numerous social and subsistence strategies to explain how and why these settlers were able to replace any established populations, including private property and intensive plant processing. Here we evaluate these hypotheses and propose a new strategy involving the use of lands…
Decomposing Habitat Suitability Across the Forager to Farmer Transition
How might subsistence strategies structure the costs and benefits of habitat selection and, therefore, drive settlement patterning? We explore this question within an Ideal Distribution framework, arguing that (i) a habitat can be decomposed into its environmental covariates, (ii) their relative contributions to suitability can vary as a function of subsistence strategy, and (iii) the resulting differences will in turn lead to different populatio…
Marriage dynamics in old Lower California: Ecological Constraints and Reproductive Value in an Arid Peninsular Frontier
It is commonly expected that natural selection will favor earlier reproduction, yet ecological constraints can force people to delay marriage. Furthermore, humans demonstrate sex-specific preferences in marriage partners - with grooms normally a few years older than their brides; however, the age at which individuals marry can influence the spousal age gap. We investigate factors influencing age at first marriage and age difference at marriage us…
Socioecological Dynamics Structuring the Spread of Farming in the North American Basin-Plateau Region
The spread of agriculture is a major driver of social and environmental change throughout the Holocene, yet experimental and ethnographic data indicate that farming is less profitable than foraging, so why would individuals choose to adopt agriculture leading to its expansion? Ideal distribution models offer one framework to answer this question: Individuals should adopt less profitable subsistence strategies and occupy more marginal environments…
Ecological Constraints on Violence Avoidance Tactics in the Prehispanic Central Andes
Prehispanic agricultural populations in the central Andes exhibit some of the highest rates of lethal and sublethal trauma ever recorded. Explanations for high rates of violence focus on what factors drove proactive conflict. While it is true that incentives for proactive violence must exist for high rates of trauma to ensue, it is far less recognized how ecological conditions may promote economic activities that constrain violence avoidance tact…
Can we reliably detect adaptive responses of hunter-gatherers to past climate change? Examining the impact of Mid-Holocene drought on Archaic settlement in the Basin-Plateau Region of North America
The Goldilocks Zone for maize agriculture and the settlement and abandonment of the West Tavaputs Plateau
Between 2100 and 500 BP, maize farming spread throughout the American Southwest, driving changes in land use patterns and relative increases in the number of archaeological sites, which is commonly interpreted as increases in population. In the context of the Southwest, with its variable topography and limited water sources, the locations suitable for productive maize agriculture are limited. Higher elevation locations often have a greater abunda…
Trade-off between market and ecosystem services drives settlement decisions among smallholder ranchers in Baja California Sur, Mexico
A method for defining dispersed community territories
The Fremont Frontier: Living at the Margins of Maize Farming
The Fremont provide an important case study to examine the resilience of ancient farmers to climatic downturns, because they lived at the far northern margin of intensive maize agriculture in the American West, where the constraints on maize production are made abundantly clear. Using a tree-ring and simulation-based reconstruction of average annual precipitation and maize growing degree days, along with cost-distance to perennial streams, we mod…
Drought, Population Pressure, and Inequality Drive Intergroup Conflict in the Precontact North American Southwest
To anticipate relationships between future climate change and societal violence, we need theory to establish causal links and case studies to estimate interactions between driving forces. Here, we couple evolutionary ecology with a machine-learning statistical approach to investigate the long-term effects of climate change, population growth, and inequality on intergroup conflict among farmers in the North American Southwest. Through field invest…
Targeted explorations of Pleistocene-Holocene transition archaeology on the Colorado Plateau in southern Utah
A reconstruction of the Indigenous maize farming niche of Utah
Machine learning reconstructs the Indigenous maize farming niche of Utah. • Early Utah farmers balanced elevation-driven precipitation and the growing season. • Farmers mitigate this trade-off by diverting perennial streams in drier regions. • Early Utah farmers settled in an ideal distribution model way. Maize ( Zea mays L . ) was one of the most widespread domesticated plants in the Americas before European colonization. Despite its widespread …
Environmental Drivers of Wealth Inequality among Ancestral Puebloan Farmers in Bears Ears National Monument
Here, we explore variation in a new record of archaeological house-floor sizes from the southwestern United States relative to spatially explicit time series estimates of local precipitation. Our results show that inequality becomes more severe during periods of high precipitation. This supports the theory suggesting that inequality may emerge where resources are dense, predictable, and clumped within heterogenous and circumscribed environments. …
Migration and Environmental Learning in Interstitial Areas: An Example from the Northern Rio Puerco Valley, New Mexico
In this paper we illustrate the potential of interstitial areas, as distinct from both cores and peripheries, for understanding migration and environmental learning among maize farming populations. We analyze settlement data derived from pedestrian survey of a portion of the Rio Puerco (of the East) watershed in north-central New Mexico. Our exploratory analyses are suggestive of interesting patterns that speak to larger debates in the region, in…
The impact of subsistence change on demography: Theory-informed Approximate Bayesian Computation reveals 4-fold increase in carrying capacity following economic intensification
Subsistence intensification is a major process in human history, however, quantifying its effects on demography is challenging given uncertainties regarding timing, population reconstructions, and ecological conditions. To help address these issues, we combine advances in ecological theory with Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) to generate a replicable, theory-informed, computational model for quantifying the effects of intensification on pa…
Geography (11 works) · Agriculture (10 works) · Population (10 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (9 works) · Ecology (8 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (8 works) · Biology (7 works) · Subsistence agriculture (6 works) · Archaeology (5 works) · Economics (4 works)