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Tree-ring dating, or dendrochronology, is the study of the chronological sequence of annual growth rings in trees. This book--a seminal study in its field--provides a simple yet eloquent introduction to the discipline, explaining what a dendrochronologist does both in the field and in the laboratory.

Authors Stokes and Smiley first explain the basic principles of tree-ring dating, then describe details of the process, step by step, from the time a sample is collected until it is incorporated into a master chronology.

The book focuses on coniferous evergreens of the Southwest, particularly piñons, because they have wide geographic distribution, constitute a large population, and show excellent growth response to certain controlling factors. The book is specifically concerned with the task of establishing a calendar date for a wood or charcoal specimen.

This concise but thorough explication of an important discipline will make dendrochonology more meaningful to students and professionals in archaeology, forestry, hydrology, and global change.

The research reported here was conducted under the auspices of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The University of Arizona, Tucson, and presents findings based on intensive dendrochronological analyses of individual archaeological sites. Fieldwork, supported by the National Park Service and the Arizona State Museum, took place on lands belonging to Navajo National Monument and on the Navajo Indian Reservation.

Among the most striking features of the northwestern New Mexico landscape are the more than 130 fortresses and towers built on boulders, promontories, and mesa rims. These "pueblitos" in the traditional Navajo homeland of Dinétah have been a key piece of evidence used by archaeologists to infer a massive immigration of Puebloans into the Navajo country following the Spanish re-conquest of New Mexico (ca. 1700), yet they have never been comprehensively analyzed.

Using a database of tree-ring dates taken from beams and wood used to construct these pueblitos, Ronald Towner shows in this volume that most pueblitos are unrelated to Puebloan immigration or the re-conquest. He concludes that Navajos constructed the masonry structures and hogans contemporaneously for protection against Ute raiders and later Spanish entradas. Further, most were occupied for relatively brief periods and population density was much lower than has been assumed.

Towner points to a new model of Navajo ethnogenesis, based on a revised early population distribution and a variety of other means of incorporating non-Athapaskan elements into Navajo culture, making Defending the Dinétah a major contribution to Navajo studies. 

Tree-ring dating (dendrochronology) is a method of scientific dating based on the analysis of tree-ring growth patterns. As author James Speer notes, trees are remarkable bioindicators. Although there are other scientific means of dating climatic and environmental events, dendrochronology provides the most reliable of all paleorecords. Dendrochronology can be applied to very old trees to provide long-term records of past temperature, rainfall, fire, insect outbreaks, landslides, hurricanes, and ice storms—to name only a few events.

This comprehensive text addresses all of the subjects that a reader who is new to the field will need to know and will be a welcome reference for practitioners at all levels. It includes a history of the discipline, biological and ecological background, principles of the field, basic scientific information on the structure and growth of trees, the complete range of dendrochronology methods, and a full description of each of the relevant subdisciplines.

Individual chapters address the composition of wood, methods of field and laboratory study, dendroarchaeology, dendroclimatology, dendroecology, dendrogeomorphology, and dendrochemistry. The book also provides thorough introductions to common computer programs and methods of statistical analysis. In the final chapter, the author describes “frontiers in dendrochronology,” with an eye toward future directions in the field. He concludes with several useful appendixes, including a listing of tree and shrub species that have been used successfully by dendrochronologists. Throughout, photographs and illustrations visually represent the state of knowledge in the field.

Dendrochronology, the science of assigning precise calendar dates to annual growth rings in trees, provided accurate dates at a time when North American archaeologists had no absolute dating techniques available to guide their analyses. Time, Trees, and Prehistory examines the growth, development, application, and interpretive implications of North American archaeological tree-ring dating from 1914 to 1950.

The development of dendrochronology forced archaeologists to radically revise their understanding of the prehistoric past, compressing by nearly fifty percent the time scale of the archaeological record. Basketmaker sites, for instance, were once thought to be four thousand years old; tree-ring application demonstrated that these sites dated well into the present millennium. Classic sites in Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde were believed occupied for nearly a thousand years, but tree-ring dates demonstrated that such sites were often built, occupied, and abandoned in just over a century. Other similar changes in temporal scale forced archaeologists to reconsider their interpretations of the rate of prehistoric cultural change, population growth, and the degree of social and political complexity in the Southwest.

Time, Trees, and Prehistory examines archaeological practices of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s and demonstrates that tree-ring dating set the stage that enabled revolutionary developments in archaeological method and theory in succeeding decades.