Robert J. Hard

University of Texas at San Antonio | UTSA · Department of Anthropology

Despite years of debate, the factors that control the long-term carrying capacity of human populations are not well understood. In this paper, we assess the effect of changes in resource extraction and climate-driven changes in ecosystem productivity on the carrying capacity of hunter-gatherer populations in a terrestrial and coastal ecosystem. To...

We propose a model that may explain long-term population growth and decline events among human populations: The intensification of production generates a tradeoff between the adaptive capacity of individuals to generate a surplus of energy to maximize their fitness in the short-run and the long-term capacity of a population as a whole to experience...

Describing and explaining the population growth trajectories of prehistoric hunter-gatherers is an important research problem. Large radiocarbon data sets provide one empirical starting point for describing these trajectories; however, explaining trajectories of growth must always take place within the context of theory. In this paper, we formalize...

Taking inspiration from the archaeology of the Texas Coastal Plain (TCP), we develop an ecological theory of population distribution among mobile hunter-gatherers. This theory proposes that, due to the heterogeneity of resources in space and time, foragers create networks of habitats that they access through residential cycling and shared knowledge...

Focusing on radiocarbon dates that relate directly to human occupation, we construct summed probability distribution (SPD; see Surovell et al. 2009) plots to monitor demographic patterns in Central Texas. There are several potential biases in the resulting patterns, including sampling and taphonomic issues, as well as problems produced by date cali...

The adaptive cycle, a seminal component of resilience theory, is a powerful model that archaeologists use to understand the persistence and transformation of prehistoric societies. In this paper, we argue that resilience theory will have a more enduring explanatory role in archaeology if scholars can build on the initial insights of the adaptive cy...

Most ecological proxies used in archaeological research operate at scales that are too coarse-grained for consideration of hunter-gatherer adaptive decisions. Hunter-gatherers adapt to local ecological conditions and short (e.g. seasonal, yearly) time frames. Our goal is to develop proxies to identify ecological shifts at fine-grained temporal and...

The Gulf Coastal Plain of Texas was populated by hunter-gatherers from the Early Archaic (ca. 7000 B. P.) through to the Late Prehistoric period (ca. A. D. 700-1400). In order to characterize past dietary adaptations along the coast and further inland, stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen were analyzed in preserved bone from 198 individuals from...

Our understanding of the origins, timing, and geographic distribution of early agriculture in the New World is changing rapidly due to application of AMS ra- diocarbon dating and increasingly sophisticated microbotanical techniques. In this chapter, we review recent literature on this subject, with particular emphasis on the eventual development of...

The hypothesis that Proto-Uto-Aztecan (PUA) speakers cultivated maize in or near Mesoamerica rests primarily on Jane H. Hill's argument (1) that a maize-related vocabulary can be reconstructed for PUA, based on cognates in Northern Uto-Aztecan (NUA) and Southern Uto-Aztecan (SUA) languages. In our essay (2), we noted that Hill fails to demonstrate...

Our understanding of the initial period of agriculture in the southwestern United States has been transformed by recent discoveries that establish the presence of maize there by 2100 cal. B.C. (calibrated calendrical years before the Christian era) and document the processes by which it was integrated into local foraging economies. Here we review a...

A truism in anthropology is that hunters and gatherers are mobile and agriculturalists are sedentary. Factors affecting residential mobility are examined using data from a Rarámuri (Tarahumara) community of residentially mobile agriculturalists in northern Mexico who move among principal residences, growing-season residences associated with distant...

A theoretically grounded model is used to map expectations for the locations of the earliest intensification across Texas. The absence of agriculture in much of prehistoric Texas versus the widespread adoption of farming in Mesoamerica is explored utilizing a theory of intensification recently proposed by Binford in Constructing Frames of Reference...

The history and details of how agriculture spread and became entrenched over vast areas are difficult to elucidate. In this chapter, physiographic, environmental, and recently acquired archaeological information from southern Chihuahua is used to contextualize the arrival of maize agriculture in the region sometime between ca. 4000 and 1500 b.c. Th...

Poorly understood variability characterizes the rate at which hunting and gathering economies evolve into farming ones at global and regional scales. In Southwestern North America farming economies were typically established with the formation of early pithouse settlements in the Hohokam, Anasazi, and Mogollon regions between ca. ad 200 and 700. Re...

Around 1150 B.C. foraging bands in many parts of NW Mexico and the American Southwest were occupying small camps and building brush structures. At about the same time a dramatically more intensive occupation was underway at the site of Cerro Juanaqueña in northern Chihuahua, Mexico, where Native Americans constructed almost 500 terraces on a hillto...

Cerro Juanaqueña is a large cerro de trincheras located in northwestern Chihuahua, in the municipio of Janos. The site was built over 3000 years ago on the summit and slopes of a 140 meter high basalt hill which overlooks the floodplain of the Rio Casas Grandes and its major tributary, the Rio San Pedro. Large constructed terraces cover an area of...

Cerro Juanaqueña is a residential complex with 8 kilometers of terrace walls in northwestern Mexico that was occupied at ∼3000 calendar years before present based on radiocarbon dates on maize (Zea mays L.). Most other similar sized terrace complex sites that have been found date to ∼1000 years before present. Cerro Juanaqueña was contemporaneous w...

Because of the tremendous scope of the archaeological work and the associated analysis and write-up, the results of the Alamodome Project are presented in three volumes. Volume I contains the background research results, including chapters on the historical setting, the architecture present before demolition began, the oral histories, a study of th...

Because of the tremendous scope of the archaeological work and the associated analysis and write-up, the results of the Alamodome Project are presented in three volumes. This volume, the first of the series, contains the background research results, including chapters on the historical setting, the architecture present before demolition was begun,...

While the level of agricultural dependence affects many aspects of human adaptation, estimating levels of dependence on maize through traditional archaeological techniques is problematic. Here we compare various measurements of manos (e.g., grinding surface area), macrobotanical evidence of maize use, and human collagen stable carbon isotope values...

This document is a design for future archeological research at Fort Bliss. It reviews previous archeological work in the region, assesses the current body of relevant knowledge, and suggests specific avenues for further inquiry. The scientific research design is intended to be a component in the Cultural Resources Management Plan (CRMP) for Fort Bl...

During the spring of 1994, the Center for Archaeological Research of The University of Texas at San Antonio conducted a 100-percent pedestrian survey of Laughlin Air Force Base and the Air Force Recreation Area and Marina in Val Verde County, Texas. In addition to the survey, limited paleontological and geomorphological evaluations were made. One h...

This report details an archaeological study of Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo conducted during the spring and summer of 1993. The study was undertaken by the Center for Archaeological Research of The University of Texas at San Antonio, in accordance with a contract between the National Park Service (owner) and Cox/Croslin and Associates (s...

In June and July 1994, the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) of The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) conducted an archaeological survey on a 147-acre tract of land along Leon Creek in northern San Antonio for Pape-Dawson Engineers. The archaeological work was needed for compliance with U. S. Army Corps of Engineers permit requiremen...

A truism in anthropology is that hunters and gatherers are mobile and agriculturalists are sedentary. Factors affecting residential mobility are examined using data from a Raramuri (Tarahumara) community of residentially mobile agriculturalists in northern Mexico who move among principal residences, growing-season residences associated with distant...