Population Dynamics and Settlement Change in the Jos Plateau During the Second Millennium CE

The Jos Plateau presents a demographically complex archaeological landscape shaped by millennia of in-migration, inter-community exchange, and periodic population displacement associated with ecological stress and political conflict. This study investigates population dynamics and settlement change on the Jos Plateau during the second millennium CE, using systematic settlement survey, ceramic assemblage analysis, radiocarbon chronology synthesis, and historical documentation to reconstruct the spatial and temporal dimensions of demographic transformation. The study area encompasses approximately eight hundred square kilometres in the central plateau, within which one hundred and twenty-four settlement sites of potential second-millennium date were identified through a combination of aerial image analysis and targeted pedestrian survey. Site size distributions analysed through time show a pronounced shift from a dispersed pattern of small sites before approximately 1400 CE to a nucleated pattern of larger, more densely populated hilltop sites in the post-1400 horizon, a change that oral historical and archival sources associate with intensification of the slave-raiding threat from Hausa-Fulani polities to the north and west. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal from six excavated or test-pitted sites provides a preliminary absolute chronology for the settlement shift that is broadly consistent with historical attribution. The study situates these findings within the growing literature on archaeological demography in sub-Saharan Africa and contributes a methodological model for multi-proxy population reconstruction applicable across the Middle Belt zone. Keywords: population dynamics, settlement change, Jos Plateau, second millennium CE, Plateau State.