CU study: We’re not so different than the Ancients
Feb 12th
Ancient settlements and modern cities follow same
rules of development, says CU-Boulder researcher
rules of development, says CU-Boulder researcher
Recently derived equations that describe development patterns in modern urban areas appear to work equally well to describe ancient cities settled thousands of years ago, according to a new study led by a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“This study suggests that there is a level at which every human society is actually very similar,” said Scott Ortman, assistant professor of anthropology at CU-Boulder and lead author of the study published in the journal PLOS ONE. “This awareness helps break down the barriers between the past and present and allows us to view contemporary cities as lying on a continuum of all human settlements in time and place.”
Over the last several years, Ortman’s colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), including Professor Luis Bettencourt, a co-author of the study, have developed mathematical models that describe how modern cities change as their populations grow. For example, scientists know that as a population increases, its settlement area becomes denser, while infrastructure needs per capita decrease and economic production per capita rises.
Ortman noticed that the variables used in these equations, such as cost of moving around, the size of the settled area, the population, and the benefits of people interacting, did not depend on any particular modern technology.
“I realized that if these models are adequate for explaining what’s going on in contemporary cities, they should apply to any settlements in any society,” he said. “So if these models are on the right track, they should apply to ancient societies too.”
To test his idea, Ortman used data that had been collected in the 1960s about 1,500 settlements in central Mexico that spanned from 1,150 years B.C. through the Aztec period, which ended about 500 years ago. The data included the number of dwellings the archaeologists were able to identify, the total settled area and the density of pottery fragments scattered on the surface. Taken together, these artifacts give an indication of the total population numbers and settlement density of the ancient sites.
“We started analyzing the data in the ways we were thinking about with modern cities, and it showed that the models worked,” Ortman said.
The discovery that ancient and modern settlements may develop in similar and predictable ways has implications both for archaeologists and people studying today’s urban areas. For example, it’s common for archaeologists to assume that population density is constant, no matter how large the settlement area, when estimating the population of ancient cities. The new equations could offer a way for archaeologists to get a more accurate head count, by incorporating the idea that population density tends to grow as total area increases.
In the future, the equations may also guide archaeologists in getting an idea of what they’re likely to find within a given settlement based on its size, such as the miles of roads and pathways. The equations could also guide expectations about the number of different activities that took place in a settlement and the division of labor.
“There should be a relationship between the population of settlements and the productivity of labor,” Ortman said. “So, for example, we would expect larger social networks to be able to produce more public monuments per capita than smaller settlements.”
The findings of the new study may also be useful to studies of modern societies. Because ancient settlements were typically less complex than today’s cities, they offer a simple “model system” for testing the equations devised to explain modern cities.
“The archaeological record actually provides surprisingly clear tests of these models, and in some cases it’s actually much harder to collect comparable data from contemporary cities,” Ortman said.
Other co-authors of the study include Andrew Cabaniss of Santa Fe Institute and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Jennie Sturm of the University of New Mexico.
The study is available at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087902.
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MBB: Near-perfect game stifles Huskies
Feb 10th
Buffs’ Balanced Scoring, Tight Defense Stifles Huskies
By B.G. Brooks, CUBuffs.com Contributing Editor
BOULDER – Colorado overpowered Washington 91-65 on Sunday night at the Coors Events Center, capping a crucial three-game home stand with its third consecutive win and its second-largest margin of victory since joining the Pac-12 Conference. The night quickly turned into all Buffs all the time, and coach Tad Boyle called it “as complete of a performance by our team that we’ve had in a long time. When you defend and you rebound and you shoot the way we did, it’s a recipe for a runaway win. “I’m really proud of our guys, they played together . . . we had 18 assists, it’s been a long time since we’ve had that number, we really shared the ball and played inside-out. Great individual performances and a great team performance.”
The X man had 27 points
The win gave the Buffaloes their second three-game Pac-12 winning streak of the season. They opened 3-0, then lost Spencer Dinwiddie and Tre’Shaun Fletcher during a 71-54 defeat at UW and dropped four of their next five games. But on Sunday night, CU (18-6, 7-4) in no way resembled the team that last month slipped badly in Seattle. Getting an air-tight defensive effort on UW sharpshooter C.J. Wilcox and 20-point scoring performances from three players, the Buffs rolled to a 48-33 halftime lead and led by as many as 30 points (89-59) in winning for the 15th time (against one loss) at the CEC this season. Their 15 home wins are the second-best for a CU team; the 2010-11 Buffs went 18-2. Xavier Johnson, Josh Scott and Askia Booker accounted for 68 of CU’s total, with Johnson scoring a career-high 27, Scott tying a career high with 21 (10 rebounds for his 11th double-double of the season) and Booker adding 20.
“Those guys just picked it up,” said UW coach Lorenzo Romar. “All three of them picked up the slack for what they didn’t have. I don’t think (their length inside) bothered us much. Not as much as it did the first time. It bothered us the first time we played them although Josh Scott is a very good player and shot blocker and defender.” A trio of Buffs reaching 20 points hadn’t happened since Feb. 3, 2007 when Kal Bay (21), Dominique Coleman (20) and Richard Roby (20) all reached the 20-point mark against Oklahoma State. Booker scored 26 points in CU’s 68-63 win over Washington State on Wednesday night, and Johnson had 20. The WSU and UW games marked the first time in XJ’s career for back-to-back 20-point games, and he also was instrumental in keeping Wilcox in check.
“I felt like if not his best game as a Buff then it’s right up there,” Boyle said of Johnson. “He was terrific on both ends of the floor. The thing I’m most proud of with Xavier Johnson is his ability to take on a defensive challenge. He did it against Cue Johnson (WSU guard) and he did it tonight against C.J. Wilcox.” Johnson called Wilcox “a great player. I didn’t guard him last game, so coach was trying something new and put me on him. I was able to contain him for the most part, but most of the credit goes to Jaron (Hopkins). He guarded him most of the game and did very well on him.”
Scott, who was held to one point and one rebound – both season lows – against WSU – recovered in a big way. His 21 points and 10 rebounds gave him his 11th double-double of the season. “The only thing I’d say about that game (WSU) is that I didn’t rebound well,” Scott said. “There’s not very much you can do offensively with three people in the paint. Tonight I just played my game like I did the other night and it all worked out.” Scott also called going 3-0 in the three-game home stand “huge. You always want to win at home and for us losing any of these games wasn’t an option. It’s big. We have a heavier next couple of weeks so any games we win at home is huge at this point in the season.”
CU outrebounded UW (13-10, 5-5) 44-30 and held the Huskies to 32.3 percent (21-of-65) from the field. Wilcox entered the game averaging 19.8 points (18.9 in league play). In the first game in Seattle, he scored 31 points, including seven 3-pointers. The Buffs limited him to eight points on 2-for-10 shooting Sunday night, and he was 0-for-7 from beyond the arc. Freshman Nigel Williams-Goss led the Huskies, who had averaged 76 points a game, with 15 points. Since January, the Buffs have had to compensate for injuries and the trend continued Sunday. Wesley Gordon, who had 8 points, 10 rebounds, 4 blocked shots in Wednesday night’s win against Washington State, missed Sunday’s game with an ankle sprain he suffered when slipping on ice on Saturday. Gordon watched in street clothes, sitting alongside Dinwiddie on the CU bench. Making his first college start in place of Gordon was freshman Dustin Thomas, the “next man up” in Boyle’s philosophy.
Thomas fouled out with 1:41 to play after scoring 3 points and collecting 4 rebounds. Boyle said his team, while obviously missing Dinwiddie, has “settled in. We’ve moved on, we certainly miss Spencer still but I think Askia Booker has really taken on that mentality of a facilitator, Xavier Talton has stepped in and given us good minutes. We do need Wesley back because he’s going to be important to us. We’ve made the transition, but now the test for us is to go on the road. We’ve done what we needed to do at home, we’ve won our home stand and now we need to go on the road and get some road wins.” The Buffs opened and closed the first half on baskets by Talton, who was making his second career start at guard.
Talton opened the scoring with a 3-pointer from the left wing and three of his teammates quickly followed suit. CU hit its first six shots, including its first four 3-point attempts. “Colorado, wow,” said Romar. “They came out on fire, shots contested, not contested. They were just knocking shots down and knocked us back on our heels right away. I thought coming into the game we were pretty focused and ready to play but their ability to hit shots early pushed us back a little bit. They did a nice job coming in to play.” CU shot 52 percent from the field and 60 percent from beyond the arc (6-of-10) in the first 20 minutes and finished at a season-best 64.4 percent (9-of-14) from long range for the game. The Buffs shot 55.4 percent (31-of-56) from the field for the night. Booker, Johnson and Thomas all hit their first 3-point tries, helping push CU to a 16-4 with 16:10 left before intermission.
UW didn’t get its first field goal until just under 31/2 minutes into the game, missing 10 of its first 13 shots. The Buffs stretched their lead to 17 (26-19) before they temporarily cooled off, allowing the Huskies to creep back to within seven (37-30) with 4:10 left before the break. But over those final 4 minutes, CU outscored UW 11-3. When Talton hit a buzzer beater to end the first-half scoring, the Buffs had a 48-33 lead and their largest first-half total of the season. Booker’s 16 points led all first-half scorers and gave him a career high for points scored in one half.
The opening of the second half mirrored the first, with Talton draining a triple from the left wing and Johnson scoring the next six points to send CU up 57-39. Booker then hit a pair of free throws with 15:25 to play, fed Scott for a fast break dunk and hit a short jumper in the lane to push the Buffs ahead by 23 (63-40). If the Huskies were going to avoid their third consecutive loss, something dramatic had to happen – and fast. It didn’t, and UW lost for the fifth time in six Pac-12 road trips. CU, meanwhile, hadn’t beaten a conference opponent that badly since burying Utah 73-33 in 2011 — both schools’ first season in the league. The Buffs play at UCLA on Thursday (7 p.m. MT, ESPN2) and at Southern California on Sunday (6 p.m. MT, ESPNU).
WBB: CU women continue free fall
Feb 9th
Buffs Can’t Overcome Stagnant Second Half, Lose 75-63 CORVALLIS, Ore. –
The Colorado Buffaloes cut a 10-point second-half Oregon State lead to three on two occasions but couldn’t complete their comeback, losing 75-63 here Saturday afternoon at Gill Coliseum. The Buffs (13-9 overall, 3-8 Pac-12) stayed with the Beavers for most of the first half but couldn’t keep up with the home team to start the final 20 minutes. OSU (14-9, 6-5) outscored CU 10-5 to open the second half and the Buffs never caught up when their offense went stagnant in the final 6 minutes.
Nonetheless, CU coach Linda Lappe said her team could have salvaged the afternoon had its defense stayed as solid as it was for most of the opening half. The Beavers hit 60 percent from the field (15-of-25) in the second half. “We were on pace to hold them under 60 points, which would have won us the game,” Lappe said. “I’m not impressed with our defense right now. It’s what we should be all about . . . we have to be more defensive minded so we can grind out games and win.”
Saturday’s game was originally scheduled to played Friday night, but it was pushed back a day because of a winter storm in the area. Then Saturday’s tip time also was pushed back an hour. With the exception of trips to the free throw line and free throws made, the statistics showed an even contest. Both teams made 25 field goals, collected 38 rebounds and hit four 3-pointers.
But OSU made 21-of-28 free throws – including 14-of-16 in the first half – while CU went 9-for-16 from the foul line. Four Beavers players reached double figures in scoring, topped by freshman point guard Sydney Wiese’s 20. Forward Deven Hunter added 18 points and nine rebounds, while guard Ali Gibson added 12 points and center Ruth Hamblin 11 points. “Give Deven Hunter a lot of credit; she was a monster in there,” Lappe said. And the 6-6 Hamblin also made life inside the lane treacherous for CU, blocking four shots and forcing the Buffs to alter several other attempts. Lappe said her team “went around Hamblin in first half, but we tried to go through her in the second (and) you’re not going to do it . . . she’s so big. I didn’t like a lot of our shots in the second half – they were by the wrong people and they were the wrong shots. We have to do a better job of executing our offense.”
The Buffs, who have lost seven of their past nine games, had three players in double figures, led by Arielle Roberson (12), Jen Reese and Brittany Wilson contributed 10 each, but OSU held Reese scoreless in the second half. The Beavers hit five of six free throws in the first half’s final 48.3 seconds to take a 36-13 lead at the break. Wiese, who led all first-half scorers with 12 points, hit three of her four foul shots to give OSU its five-point advantage – the largest for either team in the first 20 minutes.
The Buffs were competent at the foul line, but they simply didn’t get there enough in the first half. And when they reached the stripe in the second half, they had trouble converting. Roberson hit only one of her seven free throw attempts. Reese led CU with 10 first-half points, going four of five from the field. But she missed all six of her second-half field goal attempts. The score was tied four times in the first half – the last at 31-31 – with 13 lead changes.
CU’s last lead was 29-28 on Reese’s pair of free throws. Oregon State, which had been averaging 80-plus points a game at home and 73.1 overall (fourth in the Pac-12), opened the second half with a 10-5 run and took its largest lead – 46-36 – only 4 minutes into the final 20. CU kept chiseling away at OSU’s lead, and when Ashley Wilson hit a 3-pointer from the left wing near the 11-minute mark the Buffs were only back by three points – 55-52.
A Lexy Kresl layup kept CU’s deficit at three – 57-54 – with 6:50 to play but the Buffs could come no closer. A quick 5-0 run courtesy of a layup by Hunter and a Gabriella Hanson triple pushed the Beavers’ lead to 62-54. But empty possession after empty possession awaited the Buffs; they didn’t get their next basket until Ashley Wilson hit a jumper in the lane with 2:20 remaining – a span of 4:27 without a field goal.
During that span, the Buffs went 3-of-15 from the field. In the meantime, with CU also having problems getting stops, OSU built its biggest lead – 11 points twice – until Hanson hit one of two free throws in the final 10 seconds to put the Beavers up by their final 12-point margin. “You always give your opponent credit,” Lappe said. “They made more plays and just drove it at us.” Because of the winter storm in the Pacific Northwest, CU’s scheduled Sunday game at Oregon has been pushed back to Monday (6 p.m.).
