Erick Robinson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3590152 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Erick Robinson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Erick |
| FAMILY NAME | Robinson |
| SIGNATURE | ROBINSON E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0789-3724 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 204 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Long-Term Population Dynamics Following Innovations in Food Production
Researchers often posit that innovations in the production of food impact the long-term carrying capacity of human populations. Yet, this proposition has rarely been evaluated by a systematic comparison of different innovations in food production and population dynamics over deep-time. To fill this knowledge gap, we use an Ideal Specialization Model (ISM) to explain how innovations in networks of technology may drive different patterns of populat…
Spirit Cave Resilience: How Do We Explain a 10,000-Year Continuity
Paleoindians buried Spirit Cave Man in a Nevada cave, and archaeologists excavated these remains in 1940. Radiocarbon testing in 1996 dated the burial and associated grave goods as older than 10,700 years. Living just 10 miles from Spirit Cave, the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe filed a NAGPRA claim in 1997 requesting the repatriation of the Spirit Cave ancestor they call 'The Storyteller.' This claim ignited a 20-year legal dispute that led the Fa…
Defining the Central Mountains Archaic: Great Basin natural and cultural biographies : the archaeology of Monitor Valley, contribution 5
This second volume of the Alta Toquima trilogy situates Monitor Valley archaeology within the Central Mountains Archaic, introduced here as a taxonomic equivalent to the better-known Lovelock culture, Fremont complex, and the Virgin Branch of Ancestral Puebloans. This analysis integrates Monitor Valley into the broader Intermountain West using seven multiscalar time slices that address paleoclimatic and cultural change from the Late Pleistocene/E…
Arroyo formation impacts on an early dryland agricultural community in Northeastern Utah, USA
Indigenous Fremont farmers in Cub Creek, a part of northeastern Utah's Dinosaur National Monument, occupied the northern ecological margin of maize cultivation in western North America from A.D. 300 to 1300. Agriculture in Cub Creek was a response to multidecadal precipitation variability, but when precipitation stabilized between A.D. 750 and 1050, agricultural conditions improved and populations expanded to form villages along the floodplains o…
A New Radiocarbon Database for the Lower 48 States
From 2014 to 2020, we compiled radiocarbon ages from the lower 48 states, creating a database of more than 100,000 archaeological, geological, and paleontological ages that will be freely available to researchers through the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database. Here, we discuss the process used to compile ages, general characteristics of the database, and lessons learned from this exercise in 'big data' compilation
Direct Evidence for Geophyte Exploitation in the Wyoming Basin
In the Wyoming Basin, archaeological sites dating from the Early Archaic to Late Prehistoric are often found associated with or adjacent to dense populations of Cymopterus bulbosus (springparsley), a nutritious geophyte that would have been an important food source for prehistoric humans living in the region. Experimental data have shown that the caloric return rates of C. bulbosus were enough to support seasonal exploitation by foragers, yet the…
Landscape Engineering Impacts the Long-Term Stability of Agricultural Populations
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…
European Mesolithic: Geography and Culture
A first empirical analysis of population stability in North America using radiocarbon records
Questions regarding population stability among animals and plants are fundamental to population ecology, yet this has not been a topic studied by archeologists focusing on prehistoric human populations. This is an important knowledge gap. The fluctuation of human populations over decades to centuries – population instability – may constrain the expansion of human economies. A first step toward describing basic patterns of population stability wou…
The global ecology of human population density and interpreting changes in paleo-population density
Multidecadal Climate Variability and the Florescence of Fremont Societies in Eastern Utah
Fremont societies of the Uinta Basin incorporated domesticates into a foraging lifeway over a 1,000-year period from AD 300 to 1300. Fremont research provides a unique opportunity to critically examine the social and ecological processes behind the adoption and abandonment of domesticates by hunter-gatherers. We develop and integrate a 2,115-year precipitation reconstruction with a Bayesian chronological model for the growth of Fremont societies …
European Mesolithic: Geography and Culture
The Importance of Spatial Data to Open-Access National Archaeological Databases and the Development of Paleodemography Research
With generous support from the National Science Foundation, we have spent the past four years developing an archaeological radiocarbon database for the United States. Here, we highlight the importance of spatial data for open-access, national-scale archaeological databases and the development of paleodemography research. We propose a new method for analyzing radiocarbon time series in the context of paleoclimate models. This method forces us to c…
Lithic Technological Organization and Paleoenvironmental Change: Global and Diachronic Perspectives
Lithic Technological Organization and Paleoenvironmental Change
The 8.2 ka BP Holocene climate change event and human population resilience in northwest Atlantic Europe
Spatiotemporal dynamics of prehistoric human population growth: Radiocarbon ‘dates as data’ and population ecology models
Cultural and palaeoenvironmental changes in late glacial to middle Holocene Europe: Gradual or sudden
Culture Process and the Interpretation of Radiocarbon Data
Over the last decade, archaeologists have turned to large radiocarbon ( 14 C) data sets to infer prehistoric population size and change. An outstanding question concerns just how direct of an estimate 14 C dates are for human populations. In this paper we propose that 14 C dates are a better estimate of energy consumption, rather than an unmediated, proportional estimate of population size. We use a parametric model to describe the relationship b…
Lithic Technological Organization and Paleoenvironmental Change: Global and Diachronic Perspectives
The objective of this edited volume is to bring together a diverse set of analyses to document how small-scale societies responded to paleoenvironmental change based on the evidence of their lithic technologies. The contributions bring together an international forum for interpreting changes in technological organization - embracing a wide range of time periods, geographic regions and methodological approaches. As technology brings more refined i…
Agriculture, population growth, and statistical analysis of the radiocarbon record
Significance We statistically analyze the radiocarbon record and show that early farming societies in Europe grew at the same rate as contemporaneous foraging societies in North America. Thus, our results challenge the commonly held view that the advent of agriculture was linked to accelerated growth of the human population. The same rates of prehistoric population growth measured worldwide suggest that the global climate and/or biological factor…
Human resilience to Lateglacial climate and environmental change in the Scheldt basin (NW Belgium)
Wetland landscape dynamics, Swifterbant land use systems, and the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in the southern North Sea basin
Climate impact on ecosystem changes and human responses during the Last Glacial and Early Holocene: A contribution to the Intimate (INTegration of Ice-core, MArine and TErrestrial records) Cost Action…
Hunter–gatherer responses to environmental change during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition in the southern North Sea basin: Final Palaeolithic–Final Mesolithic land use in northwest Belgium
C dates as demographic proxies in Neolithisation models of northwestern Europe: A critical assessment using Belgium and northeast France as a case-study
Spatiotemporal dynamics of prehistoric human population growth: Radiocarbon ‘dates as data’ and population ecology models
Culture Process and the Interpretation of Radiocarbon Data
Over the last decade, archaeologists have turned to large radiocarbon ( 14 C) data sets to infer prehistoric population size and change. An outstanding question concerns just how direct of an estimate 14 C dates are for human populations. In this paper we propose that 14 C dates are a better estimate of energy consumption, rather than an unmediated, proportional estimate of population size. We use a parametric model to describe the relationship b…
The global ecology of human population density and interpreting changes in paleo-population density
Repatriation, Doxa, and Contested Heritages: The Return of the Altai Princess in an International Perspective
Using Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and doxa, the authors analyze the contested heritage debates surrounding the sensational Scythian burial discovery of the Altai Princess, also called the Ice Maiden, on the Ukok plateau. Her 2012 repatriation to a special Gazprom-funded museum in the Altai Republic of Russia is politically contextualized and compared to cases of the Kennewick Man in the United States and the Lake Mungo Burials of Austra…
A first empirical analysis of population stability in North America using radiocarbon records
Questions regarding population stability among animals and plants are fundamental to population ecology, yet this has not been a topic studied by archeologists focusing on prehistoric human populations. This is an important knowledge gap. The fluctuation of human populations over decades to centuries – population instability – may constrain the expansion of human economies. A first step toward describing basic patterns of population stability wou…
Human resilience to Lateglacial climate and environmental change in the Scheldt basin (NW Belgium)
A New Radiocarbon Database for the Lower 48 States
From 2014 to 2020, we compiled radiocarbon ages from the lower 48 states, creating a database of more than 100,000 archaeological, geological, and paleontological ages that will be freely available to researchers through the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database. Here, we discuss the process used to compile ages, general characteristics of the database, and lessons learned from this exercise in 'big data' compilation
Multidecadal Climate Variability and the Florescence of Fremont Societies in Eastern Utah
Fremont societies of the Uinta Basin incorporated domesticates into a foraging lifeway over a 1,000-year period from AD 300 to 1300. Fremont research provides a unique opportunity to critically examine the social and ecological processes behind the adoption and abandonment of domesticates by hunter-gatherers. We develop and integrate a 2,115-year precipitation reconstruction with a Bayesian chronological model for the growth of Fremont societies …
The Importance of Spatial Data to Open-Access National Archaeological Databases and the Development of Paleodemography Research
With generous support from the National Science Foundation, we have spent the past four years developing an archaeological radiocarbon database for the United States. Here, we highlight the importance of spatial data for open-access, national-scale archaeological databases and the development of paleodemography research. We propose a new method for analyzing radiocarbon time series in the context of paleoclimate models. This method forces us to c…
Late Mesolithic Armature Variability in the Southern North Sea Basin: Implications for Forager- Linearbandkeramik Contact Models of the Transition to Agriculture in Belgium and the Southern Netherland…
Lithic armatures have been widely noted as key evidence for interpreting the role of indigenous Mesolithic traditions in the spread of the Early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik (LBK) culture, and therefore early agriculture, across temperate Europe. Their role as evidence for the continuity of Mesolithic ‘identities’ has been emphasized without the use of a unified, systematic recording methodology of armatures from both Late–Final Mesolithic (LM–FM)…
Radiocarbon chronology and the correlation of hunter–gatherer sociocultural change with abrupt palaeoclimate change: The Middle Mesolithic in the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt area of northwest Europe
Radiocarbon Dating of Mesolithic Open‐air Sites in the Coversand Area of the North‐west European Plain: Problems and Prospects
This paper discusses the problems with sampling materials and sampled contexts in the framework of radiocarbon dating of Mesolithic sites situated in generally dry, acid and bioturbated coversand deposits within north‐western Europe. The case studies presented all relate to the coversand regions of northern Belgium and the Netherlands, two areas for which very large sets of radiocarbon dates performed on different organic components are currently…
Direct Evidence for Geophyte Exploitation in the Wyoming Basin
In the Wyoming Basin, archaeological sites dating from the Early Archaic to Late Prehistoric are often found associated with or adjacent to dense populations of Cymopterus bulbosus (springparsley), a nutritious geophyte that would have been an important food source for prehistoric humans living in the region. Experimental data have shown that the caloric return rates of C. bulbosus were enough to support seasonal exploitation by foragers, yet the…
Defining the Central Mountains Archaic: Great Basin natural and cultural biographies : the archaeology of Monitor Valley, contribution 5
This second volume of the Alta Toquima trilogy situates Monitor Valley archaeology within the Central Mountains Archaic, introduced here as a taxonomic equivalent to the better-known Lovelock culture, Fremont complex, and the Virgin Branch of Ancestral Puebloans. This analysis integrates Monitor Valley into the broader Intermountain West using seven multiscalar time slices that address paleoclimatic and cultural change from the Late Pleistocene/E…
Cultural and palaeoenvironmental changes in late glacial to middle Holocene Europe: Gradual or sudden
Spirit Cave Resilience: How Do We Explain a 10,000-Year Continuity
Paleoindians buried Spirit Cave Man in a Nevada cave, and archaeologists excavated these remains in 1940. Radiocarbon testing in 1996 dated the burial and associated grave goods as older than 10,700 years. Living just 10 miles from Spirit Cave, the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe filed a NAGPRA claim in 1997 requesting the repatriation of the Spirit Cave ancestor they call 'The Storyteller.' This claim ignited a 20-year legal dispute that led the Fa…
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…
Counting microliths: A reliable method to assess Mesolithic land use
In this debate the authors tackle a problem fundamental to researchers and resource managers in the Mesolithic period: what sort of prehistory do flint scatters represent
Dynamics of Neolithisation in Europe: Studies in Honour of Andrew Sherratt
Technological traditions and ‘the dialectic of expansion’: Contact, transmission, and neolithisation along the northwestern fringes of the LBK
Hunter–gatherer responses to environmental change during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition in the southern North Sea basin: Final Palaeolithic–Final Mesolithic land use in northwest Belgium
Radiocarbon chronology and the correlation of hunter–gatherer sociocultural change with abrupt palaeoclimate change: The Middle Mesolithic in the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt area of northwest Europe
Radiocarbon Dating of Mesolithic Open‐air Sites in the Coversand Area of the North‐west European Plain: Problems and Prospects
This paper discusses the problems with sampling materials and sampled contexts in the framework of radiocarbon dating of Mesolithic sites situated in generally dry, acid and bioturbated coversand deposits within north‐western Europe. The case studies presented all relate to the coversand regions of northern Belgium and the Netherlands, two areas for which very large sets of radiocarbon dates performed on different organic components are currently…
Late Mesolithic Armature Variability in the Southern North Sea Basin: Implications for Forager- Linearbandkeramik Contact Models of the Transition to Agriculture in Belgium and the Southern Netherland…
Lithic armatures have been widely noted as key evidence for interpreting the role of indigenous Mesolithic traditions in the spread of the Early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik (LBK) culture, and therefore early agriculture, across temperate Europe. Their role as evidence for the continuity of Mesolithic ‘identities’ has been emphasized without the use of a unified, systematic recording methodology of armatures from both Late–Final Mesolithic (LM–FM)…
Repatriation, Doxa, and Contested Heritages: The Return of the Altai Princess in an International Perspective
Using Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and doxa, the authors analyze the contested heritage debates surrounding the sensational Scythian burial discovery of the Altai Princess, also called the Ice Maiden, on the Ukok plateau. Her 2012 repatriation to a special Gazprom-funded museum in the Altai Republic of Russia is politically contextualized and compared to cases of the Kennewick Man in the United States and the Lake Mungo Burials of Austra…
C dates as demographic proxies in Neolithisation models of northwestern Europe: A critical assessment using Belgium and northeast France as a case-study
Synchronizing a Late Glacial Abrupt Cooling Event with Paleoenvironmental and Population Changes: Case Study of the Moervaart Paleolake Area (NW Belgium)
Sum probability and Bayesian modeling of a substantial series of radiocarbon dates from a former extensive lake area in NW Belgium, known as the Moervaart area, allow important hydrological changes to be synchronized with Greenland Interstadial lb (or Intra-Allerød Cold Period). It is postulated that the disappearance of nearly all open water systems (Moervaart lake, anastomosing gullies, and dune-slacks) in response to this short but abrupt cool…
Wetland landscape dynamics, Swifterbant land use systems, and the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in the southern North Sea basin
Climate impact on ecosystem changes and human responses during the Last Glacial and Early Holocene: A contribution to the Intimate (INTegration of Ice-core, MArine and TErrestrial records) Cost Action…
Impacts of palaeoclimate change 60 000–8000 years ago on humans and their environments in Europe: Integrating palaeoenvironmental and archaeological data
Agriculture, population growth, and statistical analysis of the radiocarbon record
Significance We statistically analyze the radiocarbon record and show that early farming societies in Europe grew at the same rate as contemporaneous foraging societies in North America. Thus, our results challenge the commonly held view that the advent of agriculture was linked to accelerated growth of the human population. The same rates of prehistoric population growth measured worldwide suggest that the global climate and/or biological factor…
Human resilience to Lateglacial climate and environmental change in the Scheldt basin (NW Belgium)
Lithic Technological Organization and Paleoenvironmental Change: Global and Diachronic Perspectives
The objective of this edited volume is to bring together a diverse set of analyses to document how small-scale societies responded to paleoenvironmental change based on the evidence of their lithic technologies. The contributions bring together an international forum for interpreting changes in technological organization - embracing a wide range of time periods, geographic regions and methodological approaches. As technology brings more refined i…
Lithic Technological Organization and Paleoenvironmental Change: Global and Diachronic Perspectives
Lithic Technological Organization and Paleoenvironmental Change
The 8.2 ka BP Holocene climate change event and human population resilience in northwest Atlantic Europe
Spatiotemporal dynamics of prehistoric human population growth: Radiocarbon ‘dates as data’ and population ecology models
Cultural and palaeoenvironmental changes in late glacial to middle Holocene Europe: Gradual or sudden
Culture Process and the Interpretation of Radiocarbon Data
Over the last decade, archaeologists have turned to large radiocarbon ( 14 C) data sets to infer prehistoric population size and change. An outstanding question concerns just how direct of an estimate 14 C dates are for human populations. In this paper we propose that 14 C dates are a better estimate of energy consumption, rather than an unmediated, proportional estimate of population size. We use a parametric model to describe the relationship b…
European Mesolithic: Geography and Culture
The Importance of Spatial Data to Open-Access National Archaeological Databases and the Development of Paleodemography Research
With generous support from the National Science Foundation, we have spent the past four years developing an archaeological radiocarbon database for the United States. Here, we highlight the importance of spatial data for open-access, national-scale archaeological databases and the development of paleodemography research. We propose a new method for analyzing radiocarbon time series in the context of paleoclimate models. This method forces us to c…
European Mesolithic: Geography and Culture
Geography (31 works) · Archaeology (29 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (29 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (25 works) · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research (17 works) · Physical geography (15 works) · Population (14 works) · Geology (13 works) · Ecology (12 works) · Mesolithic (12 works)