Climate and Agriculture: Managing Risk through Agricultural Strategies on the Anasazi Northern Periphery

Current global warming has heightened our awareness of climate change and its effects.  Adaptation to climate change has been replayed on the landscape for millenia.  Modeling past climate assists in understanding application of strategies necessary to cope with that change.  The Anasazi Northern Periphery was occupied by agriculturalists who enjoyed success during the Medieval Warm Period, another period of global warming.  The archaeological record for this area indicates changes in settlement pattern.  A conglomerate of pollen and dendrochronological records and climate models may be compared with the archaeological record of settlement and mobility to better understand local response to the risks of changing climate.  In an area where both temperature and precipitation may impose constraints, agricultural fields must be well situated to take advantage of differing environmental conditions.  During warmer, wetter periods, agriculture and people flourished.  However, cooling and/or drought meant challenges, adaptation, and sometimes abandonment of their homeland.