Dating the Eruption of Sunset Crater, Arizona

Almost all archaeological work in the Southwest in the past several years has been an attempt to establish a series of events in their proper time and space context. This implies as the ultimate objective the building of a spacial series of chronologies, each one of which will give as complete an historical picture as is possible to obtain from archaeological data. The particular emphasis which has been, and is being, placed on chronology has directed attention to the methods by which this end is attained. The method has been set forth in 1931 by Leslie Spier in an article in “Methods in Social Science.” The list which Spier suggested is composed of the following methods: geology and paleontology, distribution, typology, stratigraphy, seriation, annual deposits, and documents.