The Depopulation of the Northern San Juan: Conditions in the Turbulent 1200s

Population peaked in the Northern San Juan in the early A.D. 1200s, but many people remained after A.D. 1250. Regional abandonment probably started in the west in the late 1260s and in the central area in the 1270s; it was complete by the early or middle 1280s. The social context of the late 1200s included warfare, settlement aggregation, minimal trade with groups outside the region, and low levels of intra- and intercommunity hierarchy. Climatic and other environmental problems undoubtedly had severe effects on farming and perhaps on domestic water supplies. These difficulties probably gave abandonment the principal "push," but complete depopulation of the region may also have required sociocultural "pulls" from outside the region.