Prospects for Dendrochronology and Isotopic (14C) “Wiggle-Matching” in the Southwest/Northwest

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Isotopic and Animal aDNA Analyses in the Southwest/Northwest" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The contributions of tree-ring dating to American archaeology are well known but the benefits of the technique have largely been restricted to the uplands of the northern Southwest. While tree-ring dates have been successfully obtained from a handful of sites in the Southwest/Northwest, dendrochronology has been hampered in the region by low sample depth, a lack of spatial and temporal overlap between archaeological material and living-tree chronologies, and tree-growth patterns that can confound cross-matching. As a response to these challenges, recent and ongoing projects are beginning to show the high potential for radiocarbon-tree-ring (14C wiggle-matching) studies in the Southwest/Northwest. Wiggle-matching is enabling large-scale dendrochronological projects in Northern Mexico and the desert basins of southern and central Arizona that aim to build high-resolution tree-ring-based chronologies and expand the scope of socioecological research in the region. This paper briefly reviews the history of dendrochronology in the Southwest/Northwest and then summarizes recent and ongoing research to explain how dendrochronology will continue making fundamental contributions in this area.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Isotopic and Animal aDNA Analyses in the Southwest/Northwest   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35787.0