The Agricultural Transition in the Northern Southwest: Patterns in the Current Chronometric Data

ABSTRACTNew evidence continues to fuel discussion on the chronology and process of culture change in the American Southwest. The purpose here is, first, to examine the currently available pan-Southwestern chronometric data on the early agricultural period. A second goal is to provide a general perspective on the structure and nature of the current radiocarbon data base. The perspective presented in this paper is illustrated by partitioning and graphing the distributions of dates by kinds of materials dated, by geographic regions, and by early agricultural site types.