ABSTRACT
Archaeologists look at depopulation in terms of push factors which encouraged people to leave their old homes, and pull factors, which attracted them to new ones. This chapter investigates the factors and processes that led people to leave single settlements, small geographical areas, and entire regions. The post-Spanish period saw times of considerable hostility between Pueblo and non-Pueblo groups, mostly Navajos, Apaches, and Utes, in the northern Southwest. Maitland Bradfield was able to show that headward cutting of arroyos greatly decreased the amount of land the modern Hopis of Oraibi could cultivate in the vicinity of their village. Critics of factionalism as an explanation for depopulation have argued that the conflict at Old Oraibi was largely the result of US government intervention in the Hopi way of life, so it is not an appropriate example for the pre-Euroamerican period. What scholars do know is that at 1100 Ce, intact regional systems existed at Chaco Canyon and in the Hohokam heartland.
