Tree-Ring Dates and Demographic Change in the Southern Colorado Plateau and Rio Grande Regions

Authors

Michael S. Berry, Bureau of Reclamation, Salt Lake City, UT
Larry Benson, U.S. Geological SurveyFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2010

Citation

In: Leaving Mesa Verde: Peril and Change in the Thirteenth-Century Southwest, ed. T. Kohler, A. Varien, & A. Wright (University of Arizona Press, 2010), pp. 53-74.

Comments

U.S. government work.

Abstract

In this chapter, tree-ring dates from the southern Colorado Plateau, Mogollon Highlands, and Rio Grande areas (fig. 3-1) (hereafter referred to as the study area) are used to estimate regional-scale timber-harvesting and construction activities between AD 600 and 1600 (the Basketmaker III through Pueblo IV periods). Within that time span, we focus our attention particularly on the AD 1045-1300 period, a time when anomalously wet periods alternated with megadroughts (fig. 3.2). Treering- date distributions (histograms) for eight archaeological subregions within the study area have been created using a database of more than twenty-four thousand tree-ring dates from archaeological sites. These dates, in turn, are compared with the paleoclimatic record for the study area as a whole (fig. 3.2).