Tree Rings in the Western Great Basin

Abstract

Introduction: The success of tree-ring dating in the Southwest has not been duplicated in the Great Basin area. Studies of modern tree-ring material in the western Great Basin have been relatively limited, but substantial work has been done by Douglass (1928), Hardman and Reil (1936), Keen (1937), Antevs (1938), Schulman (1956), Schulman and Ferguson (1956), Ferguson and Wright (1962), and Ferguson (1963) . In terms of tree-ring dating in the Great Basin, as elsewhere, there are two major aspects: the modern, dealing with both chronology building and interpretation in terms of environment, and the archaeological. Archaeological dating is dependent upon the finding of tree -ring material of suitable sensitivity and length preserved in archaeological context. There has been no dating of archaeological tree -ring material in the Great Basin due to a combination of the paucity of excavated wood and charcoal and to the difficulty in dating any such material. Conditions for the dating of both modern and archaeological material, however, are met in the western Great Basin, and it remains for time and the active participation of research workers to establish the framework for more extensive dating in the area.