I am trying to figure out what archaeologists and others mean when they say "demographic exhaustion". It is hard to find any specifics on *exactly* what processes are being invoked.
While I don't remember the exact term 'demographic exhaustion,' one place to look might be Rose & Steckel's volume "The Backbone of History." There should be a chapter or two on paleodemography. Also, Achon's "A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in Global Perspective" had a good fusion of demography, history, and archaeology. Where did you find the term 'demographic exhaustion"?
they might be referring to issues discussed in this 2010 article:
Steele, James
2010 Radiocarbon Dates as Data: Quantitative Strategies for Estimating Colonization Front Speeds and Event Densities. Journal of Archaeological Science 37(8):2017–2030.
Thanks to those who answered. The term is used in various publications on Lapita colonization of the southwestern Pacific Islands.
Ethan, there seems to be a good deal of case-specific variability in the concept of "demographic exhaustion" in the context of colonization. One example is D. Ruscu, "The Supposed Extermination of the Dacians: the literary tradition", in W. S. Hanson and I. P. Haynes, Roman Dacia, The Making of a Provincial Society (Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 56. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2004), in which Ruscu sees "demographic exhaustion" primarily as the apparent non-survival of the Dacian elite and the concomitant loss of (group) identity and political and religious leadership under Roman rule - something that did not happen (at least not to that extent) in Iberia or Gaul, for instance.
As a demographer, I have heard more about "demographic collapse" than "demographic exhaustion".
You may want to have a look at some of the works done by demographers on the collapse of indegineous populations of America:
Livi Bacci, Massimo (2006), "The Depopulation of Hispanic America after the Conquest", Population and Development Review, 32(2), pp. 199-232.
And the contributions on the some topic in the issue 1 of volume 37 of Population and Development Review.
You may find some useful references in the works of Norma McArthur, formerly at the Australian National University. There was a period in European colonial history (eg New Caledonia) when the colonised population was so disrupted, divided, demoralised and decimated by the colonists' diseases that birth rates fell to perilously low levels. Could this be the meaning? However, this is clearly not the Lapita people... about whom try Jack Golson, Daniel Frimigacci, Matthew Spriggs....
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Instrumentation Engineering
- Instruments