Stephen Plog

Archaeologist who has made contributions to understanding the founding and abandonment of settlements in the American Southwest. Combined original research at Black Mesa and Chevelon with reanalysis of others' datasets to craft a new picture of Anasazi and Native American cultures, a view more compatible with previous knowledge of small-scale societies elsewhere in the world. Fieldwork and analyses replaced traditional peace and harmony models with new models in which warfare, competition and human-initiated environmental alteration and degradation play larger roles. Used paleobotanical evidence to show much of the periodic environmental degradation had resulted from human impacts, and that many cases of local abandonment occurred before the climate and environmental deteriorated. Demonstrated that intergroup warfare, long downplayed as a variable, was intermittent, but had a significant impact on society and site location.