Demographic and Architectural Retrodiction

An Ethnoarchaeological Case Study in the South American Tropical Lowlands

Bibliographic Data

ID4374765
AuthorsP E Siegel (0000-0003-1260-7646, Puerto Rico Community Foundation, corresponding author)
Year1990
Volume1
Issue4
Pages319-346
Publication date1990-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLatin American Antiquity (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1045-6635 • E-ISSN: 2325-5080
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/971813
OpenAlexW2323150767
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited46

This paper focuses on the demographic and architectural organization of a South Amerindian tropical-forest community. The household, as the most important social, economic, and behavioral unit in this society, is reflected in the strong quantitative relations between the floor areas of the various structure types and the associated number of occupants. In contrast, floor area/number of occupants relations at the nuclear-family level are quantitatively weak. Since the aboriginal household was also the most important economic and demographic social unit in the South American tropics, the present study may be used to estimate prehistoric settlement population levels using excavated data. As such, this study encourages the use of the direct-historical approach by archaeologists working in the lowlands of South America

Ethnoarchaeology · Settlement (finance · Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies

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