Achievement

Former IPEM trainee R. Kyle Bocinsky continues to collaborate with IPEM PI Kohler on a variety of research related to the IPEM-affiliated Village Ecodynamics Project. This includes expansion of previous research on modeling the relationship between group size, public goods, and leadership in the US Southwest between AD 600 and 1600, which demonstrates why hierarchical societies often emerge in conditions of increasing regional population density. Independently, Bocinsky has also recently developed computationally intensive approaches to assessing the degree to which site locations are conditioned by defensive considerations. Research presented at the Society for American Archaeology, 2013, demonstrated no significant change in degree of defensibility through time on the Northwest Coast in prehistory, though there have been many claims to the contrary. He received the R. E. Taylor Award from the Society of Archaeological Sciences for the poster presenting this research.