Puebloan Historic Demographic Trends

Scientists have conducted numerous studies of the Puebloan peoples residing in southwestern North America. Nonetheless, as two leading and energetic specialists admitted, "We have, we know, barely scratched the surface of the amount of work that must be done" (Cordell and Plog 1979: 424). Some of the most necessary analysis yet to be done bears upon the biological, social structural, and cultural changes that occurred among the rapidly diminishing Pueblo peoples during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This essay takes a direct historical approach toward illuminating these changes.