Early Puebloan, Late Puebloan, or Paiute? Using Luminescence Dating to Address Issues with the Virgin Branch Ceramic Chronology

Summary

The Virgin Branch ceramic typology is poorly defined. Definitions and chronologies of most types were established more than half a century ago, when little work had been conducted in the region. Further, because of an absence of tree-ring dates, the placement of most types has relied on cross-dating with Kayenta pottery styles. These situations can create problems when using ceramics to date archaeological contexts, as illustrated by recent excavations at the Pete’s Pocket site. This site, located on the Arizona Strip, contains Puebloan architecture and gray ware pottery. Unexpectedly, however, it also contained numerous ceramics with brown pastes, some tempered with olivine and some with sand. Traditionally, brown olivine-tempered sherds are considered associated with Basketmaker or early Puebloan occupations, and brown sand-tempered sherds with early historic Paiute occupations. Because the site is multicomponent and many of the rooms are filled with trash from earlier occupations, the temporal placement of these ceramics cannot be resolved using traditional dating methods. To determine the temporal and cultural association of these ceramics, therefore, we relied on luminescence dating of selected sherds. The implications of the results for understanding both Virgin Branch ceramic typologies and the occupation of the Pete’s Pocket site are discussed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Recent Applications of Luminescence Dating in Archaeology

Keywords

Spatial Coverage