The Western Settlement provides a particularly useful warning against the idea of one dramatic ending.

Its disappearance before the Eastern Settlement suggests that geography mattered.

Farms farther from the strongest resource zones may have had fewer options when conditions deteriorated.

Once the Western Settlement contracted, people may have moved toward more favorable areas.

A population can therefore become increasingly concentrated before it disappears altogether.

The final landscape may show abandonment, while the earlier stages were really migration within the settlement system.

THE WHITE GOLD OF THE ARCTIC