This website collects all of my publishing output along with a list of current or ongoing projects. It is presented in a way that is easy to search, providing access to preprints (at least when I have them) and bibliographic data, all of which can be directly downloaded.

Research Interests. Broadly speaking, my research focuses on the ecology of human behavior, but here are the specific questions that really animate me these days:

In my spare time, I also contribute to several FOSS projects in the R community.

2026
The impact of subsistence change on demography: Theory-informed Approximate Bayesian Computation reveals 4-fold increase in carrying capacity following economic intensification
Journal of Archaeological Science 189: 106523 (2026)
Kurt M. Wilson, Brian F. Codding, Weston C. McCool, Ishmael Medina, Kenneth Blake Vernon, Simon C. Brewer
10.1016/j.jas.2026.106523
A reconstruction of the Indigenous maize farming niche of Utah
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 69: 105493 (2026)
Ishmael D. Medina, Kenneth B. Vernon, Weston C. McCool, Jerry D. Spangler, Brian F. Codding
10.1016/j.jasrep.2025.105493
Migration and environmental learning in interstitial areas: An example from the Northern Rio Puerco Valley, New Mexico
Open Archaeology 12 (1) (2026)
Kenneth B. Vernon, Donald A. Shiffler, Scott G. Ortman
10.1515/opar-2025-0075
2025
Modeling the rise and demise of Classic Maya cities: Climate, conflict, and economies of scale
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122 (42): e2512325122 (2025)
Weston C. McCool, Brian F. Codding, Bridgette Degnan, Claire E. Ebert, Emily S. Johnson, Kenneth Blake Vernon, Kurt M. Wilson, Timothy Beach, Keith M. Prufer, Douglas J. Kennett
10.1073/pnas.2512325122
Targeted explorations of Pleistocene-Holocene transition archaeology on the Colorado Plateau in southern Utah
Quaternary International 746: 109992 (2025)
Abby S. Baka, Kenneth B. Vernon, Madeline E. Mackie, Simon Brewer, Jerry Spangler, Brian F. Codding, Lisbeth A. Louderback, Thomas H. Flanigan, Alexandra M. Greenwald
10.1016/j.quaint.2025.109992
Drought, Population Pressure, and Inequality Drive Intergroup Conflict in the Precontact North American Southwest
American Antiquity: 1-19 (2025)
Weston C. McCool, Kenneth B. Vernon, Ishmael D. Medina, Joan Brenner Coltrain, Kurt M. Wilson, Brian F. Codding
10.1017/aaq.2025.10107
Environmental drivers of wealth inequality among Ancestral Puebloan farmers in Bears Ears National Monument
American Antiquity: 1-7 (2025)
Roxanne Lois F. Lamson, Kurt M. Wilson, Hayley T. Kievman, Kenneth Blake Vernon, Peter M. Yaworsky, Brian F. Codding
10.1017/aaq.2025.8
2024
A method for defining dispersed community territories
Journal of Archaeological Science 170: 106048 (2024)
Kenneth B. Vernon, Scott G. Ortman
10.1016/j.jas.2024.106048
Trade-off between market and ecosystem services drives settlement decisions among smallholder ranchers in Baja California Sur, Mexico
Sustainability Science 19 (4): 1377-1390 (2024)
Kenneth B. Vernon, Brian F. Codding, Simon C. Brewer, Shane J. Macfarlan
10.1007/s11625-024-01491-9
The Goldilocks Zone for maize agriculture and the settlement and abandonment of the West Tavaputs Plateau
Quaternary International 689-690: 30-42 (2024)
Peter M. Yaworsky, Kenneth B. Vernon, Weston C. McCool, Isaac A. Hart, Jerry Spangler, Brian F. Codding
10.1016/j.quaint.2023.12.003
Can we reliably detect adaptive responses of hunter-gatherers to past climate change? Examining the impact of Mid-Holocene drought on Archaic settlement in the Basin-Plateau Region of North America
Quaternary International 689-690: 5-15 (2024)
Brian F. Codding, Heidi Roberts, William Eckerle, Simon C. Brewer, Ishmael D. Medina, Kenneth B. Vernon, Jerry S. Spangler
10.1016/j.quaint.2023.06.014
The Fremont frontier: Living at the margins of maize farming
American Antiquity 89 (3): 440-458 (2024)
Kenneth B. Vernon, Peter M. Yaworsky, Weston McCool, Jerry D. Spangler, Simon Brewer, Brian F. Codding
10.1017/aaq.2024.22
2022
Ecological constraints on violence avoidance tactics in the Prehispanic Central Andes
Environmental Archaeology: 1-14 (2022)
Weston C. McCool, Kurt M. Wilson, Kenneth B. Vernon
10.1080/14614103.2022.2137652
Socioecological dynamics structuring the spread of farming in the North American basin-plateau region
Environmental Archaeology 27 (4): 434-446 (2022)
Brian F. Codding, Joan Brenner Coltrain, Lisbeth Louderback, Kenneth Blake Vernon, Kate E. Magargal, Peter M. Yaworsky, Erick Robinson, Simon C. Brewer, Jerry D. Spangler
10.1080/14614103.2021.1927480
Decomposing habitat suitability across the forager to farmer transition
Environmental Archaeology 27 (4): 420-433 (2022)
Kenneth B. Vernon, Peter M. Yaworsky, Jerry Spangler, Simon Brewer, Brian F. Codding
10.1080/14614103.2020.1746880
Subsistence strategy mediates ecological drivers of human violence
PLOS ONE 17 (5): e0268257 (2022)
Weston C. McCool, Kenneth B. Vernon, Peter M. Yaworsky, Brian F. Codding
10.1371/journal.pone.0268257
Climate change–induced population pressure drives high rates of lethal violence in the Prehispanic central Andes
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119 (17): e2117556119 (2022)
Weston C. McCool, Brian F. Codding, Kenneth B. Vernon, Kurt M. Wilson, Peter M. Yaworsky, Norbert Marwan, Douglas J. Kennett
10.1073/pnas.2117556119
Plant species richness at archaeological sites suggests ecological legacy of Indigenous subsistence on the Colorado Plateau
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (21): e2025047118 (2021)
Bruce M. Pavlik, Lisbeth A. Louderback, Kenneth B. Vernon, Peter M. Yaworsky, Cynthia Wilson, Arnold Clifford, Brian F. Codding
10.1073/pnas.2025047118
Marriage dynamics in old Lower California: Ecological constraints and reproductive value in an arid peninsular frontier
Biodemography and Social Biology 65 (2): 156-171 (2020)
Shane J. Macfarlan, Ryan Schacht, Caroline Foley, Sydney Cahoon, Grace Osusky, Kenneth B. Vernon, Evan Tayler, Celeste Henrickson, Eric Schniter
10.1080/19485565.2020.1728685
2020
Advancing predictive modeling in archaeology: An evaluation of regression and machine learning methods on the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
PLOS ONE 15 (10): e0239424 (2020)
Peter M. Yaworsky, Kenneth B. Vernon, Jerry D. Spangler, Simon C. Brewer, Brian F. Codding
10.1371/journal.pone.0239424
2017
The ecology of population dispersal: Modeling alternative Basin-Plateau foraging strategies to explain the Numic expansion
American Journal of Human Biology 29 (4): e23000 (2017)
Kate E. Magargal, Ashley K. Parker, Kenneth Blake Vernon, Will Rath, Brian F. Codding
10.1002/ajhb.23000
2025
Working with REST APIs to access spatial data
Spatial Utah Data Science (SUDS) Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT.
Kenneth B. Vernon
Promoting water-use efficiency with responsible AI
One-U Responsible AI Annual Symposium, Salt Lake City, UT.
Kenneth B. Vernon
Indirect dating with Mixture Density Networks
Utah Center for Data Science, Data Science & AI Lecture Series, Salt Lake City, UT.
Kenneth B. Vernon, Brian F Codding, Scott G. Ortman, Simon C. Brewer
Indirect dating with Mixture Density Networks
90th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Denver, CO.
Kenneth B. Vernon, Brian F Codding, Scott G. Ortman, Simon C. Brewer
2024
The network ecology of settlement persistence
workshop 'Advances in modelling past human ecosystems', Cologne, Germany.
Kenneth B. Vernon, Simon C. Brewer, Brian F. Codding, Scott G. Ortman
The socio-ecology of community centers
89th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, New Orleans, LA.
Kenneth B. Vernon, Scott G. Ortman
The network ecology of settlement persistence
30th Annual Meeting of the European Archaeological Association, Rome, Italy.
Kenneth B. Vernon, Simon C. Brewer, Brian F. Codding, Scott G. Ortman
2023
Exploring the dynamics of late precontact obsidian procurement and exchange networks across the US Southwest and Northwest Mexico using cyberSW
The Southwest Symposium Archaeological Conference, Santa Fe, NM.
Sarah Oas, Kenneth B. Vernon, Matthew A. Peeples, Barbara J. Mills, Joshua Watts, Jeffery J. Clark, Steven Shackley, Scott G. Ortman
A core-periphery approach to defining community boundaries
29th Annual Meeting of the European Archaeological Association, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Kenneth B. Vernon, Scott G. Ortman
How do I work this? this R project
Spatial Utah Data Science (SUDS) Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT.
Kenneth B. Vernon
The ecology of agglomeration and the rise of Chaco Great Houses
88th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Portland, OR.
Kenneth B. Vernon, Weston C. McCool, Simon C. Brewer, Brian F. Codding, Scott G. Ortman
2022
The Fremont frontier: Living at the margins of maize farming
87th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Chicago, IL.
Kenneth B. Vernon, Jerry D. Spangler, Weston C. McCool, Peter M. Yaworsky, Simon C. Brewer, Brian F. Codding
2021
Explaining PaleoIndian settlement in the Intermountain West: A regression adjustment approach
86th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, CA.
Kenneth B. Vernon, David Zeanah, D. Craig Young, Robert G. Elston, Brian F. Codding
2019
Decomposing habitat suitability with theory-driven machine-learning
84th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Albuquerque, NM.
Kenneth B. Vernon, Peter M. Yaworsky, Brian F. Codding
2018
Prearchaic land use in Grass Valley, Nevada: This time with Bayes
Bi-annual Great Basin Anthropological Conference, Salt Lake City, UT.
Kenneth B. Vernon, Peter M. Yaworsky, Kate E. Magargal, D. Craig Young, David Zeanah, Brian F. Codding
Prearchaic land use in Grass Valley, Nevada: A novel statistical implementation of optimal distribution modeling
83th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Washington D.C..
Kenneth B. Vernon, Peter M. Yaworsky, Kate E. Magargal, D. Craig Young, David Zeanah, Brian F. Codding
2015
Numic fires: Modeling the effects of anthropogenic fire on foraging decisions in the Great Basin
80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, CA.
Kenneth B. Vernon, Kate E. Magargal, Ashley K. Parker, Will Rath, Brian F. Codding
TerraCal: A global deep foundation radiocarbon calibration curve
(in prep)
Kenneth B. Vernon, Brian F. Codding, Simon C. Brewer
Some Kantian and Aristotelian themes in anthropological thought
(in prep)
Kenneth B. Vernon
An encoder-decoder neural network for down-scaling soil moisture estimates
(in prep)
Kenneth B. Vernon, Brian F. Codding, Simon C. Brewer
Urbanism, population decline, and biodiversity in an arid environment
(in prep)
Kenneth B. Vernon, Brian F. Codding, Simon C. Brewer, Shane J. Macfarlan
RagStone: A retrieval-augmented language model for archaeological reports
(in prep)
Kenneth B. Vernon, Brian F. Codding, Simon C. Brewer
One theory, many models of habitat suitability
(in prep)
Kenneth B. Vernon
Predicting PHT archaeology on the northwest Colorado Plateau: A predictive model for determining targeted survey areas
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (in prep)
Abby S. Baka, Kenneth B. Vernon, Simon C. Brewer, Brian F. Codding, Jerry D. Spangler, Alexandra M. Greenwald
NetC14: A Gaussian mixture neural network for calibrating and summarizing radiocarbon dates
Journal of Archaeological Science (in prep)
Kenneth B. Vernon, Brian F. Codding, Simon C. Brewer
Socio-economic status before we measured it: A machine learning approach to imputing income and education in the US Census before 1950
(in prep)
Kelsey Carlston, Kenneth B. Vernon
The evolution of a labor market
(in prep)
Kenneth B. Vernon, Kelsey Carlston, Weston C. McCool, Kurt M. Wilson, Brian F. Codding
Responsible artificial intelligence and the science of human-environment interactions
Environmental Data Science (in prep)
Kenneth B. Vernon, Brian F. Codding, Simon C. Brewer
Explaining PaleoIndian settlement in the Intermountain West
American Antiquity (in prep)
Kenneth B. Vernon, Kate E. Magargal, David Zeanah, D. Craig Young, Robert G. Elston, Simon C. Brewer, Brian F. Codding