Historically Contingent: Case Studies in the Interpretation of Tree-Ring Date Distributions

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Tree-Ring Materials as a Basis for Cultural Interpretations" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

After 95 years of archaeological tree-ring dating in the American Southwest, there are now tens of thousands of tree-ring dates with which scholars can guide their analyses. When dealing with randomly distributed datasets, large samples sizes can mean more reliable statistical inferences. When dealing with spatially, temporally, and historically biased tree-ring datasets, large sample sizes do not (necessarily) mean more reliable inferences. This presentation offers a series of dendroarchaeological case studies to demonstrate that historical and contextual data are essential, indeed critical, to making defensible interpretations about the past based on archaeological tree-ring dates and date distributions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Tree-Ring Materials as a Basis for Cultural Interpretations   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51017