The nutritional context of the Pueblo III depopulation of the northern San Juan: Too much maize?

Abstract

The abandonment of the Four Corners area in the U.S. Southwest is a long-standing problem in American archeology. Recent work has shown that the terminal occupation was concentrated into a limited number of large defensive sites. This resulted in an extreme emphasis on maize, which was nutritionally unsustainable because of its low lysine and tryptophan content. I describe the processes that led to this settlement pattern and the limitations of the Pueblo II–III maize-based diet. I then explain how the combination of the settlement pattern and the extreme reliance on maize resulted in a nutritionally fragile situation that collapsed.