Development of a Dendrochemical Method to Date Cinder Cone Volcanoes (2005)

Development of a Dendrochemical Method to Date Cinder Cone Volcanoes Investigators Final Report on the Sunset Crater Volcano Dating Project National Park Service, Flagstaff Area National Monuments Contract No. P7470-02-0040

Mark D. Elson Paul R. Sheppard Michael H. Ort

Technical Report No. 2005-10 Desert Archaeology, Inc.

Development of a Dendrochemical Method to Date Cinder Cone Volcanoes Investigators Final Report on the Sunset Crater Volcano Dating Project National Park Service, Flagstaff Area National Monuments Contract No. P7470-02-0040

Mark D. Elson1

Paul R. Sheppard2

Michael H. Ort3

1Desert Archaeology, Inc., Tucson, Arizona 2Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona 3Departments of Environmental Science and Geology, Northern Arizona University

Technical Report No. 2005-10 Desert Archaeology, Inc. 3975 North Tucson Boulevard, Tucson, AZ 85716 ● April 2005

ABSTRACT

Understanding the full range of interactions between human groups and volcanic

eruptions is of great importance, not only for predicting volcanic hazards and potentially saving lives, but also for insights into human behavior and specifically, on the ways in which populations adapt to catastrophic events. However, most accounts of human/volcano interaction are confined to the past few hundred years, thereby limiting the number of cases and the formulation of predictive models. In this multidisciplinary study, partially supported by a grant from the National Park Service, Flagstaff Area Monuments, we develop methods using a combination of dendrochronology and geochemistry that will enable the dating of prehistoric and unrecorded historic period eruptions with a high degree of both accuracy and precision. Dates derived from our methods can then be combined with the archaeological record or with historic documentation to investigate and model the ways in which human groups interact with volcano eruptions.

Preliminary geochemical data gathered from trees affected by the eruption of Parícutin Volcano in Michoacán, Mexico, show changes in the chemical signatures in phosphorus and perhaps in calcium and strontium during the known historic Parícutin eruption. Significantly, some of these same signatures show up in the mid-11th century A.D. in our preliminary investigation of wood from prehistoric structures in the Sunset Crater vicinity. These data were used as a pilot study in our successful request for funding from the National Science Foundation (Earth Sciences Division). The procurement of this grant will enable us to increase the sample size and replicate these findings before they are used widely in other volcanological settings and in the re-interpretation of prehistoric adaptations to the Sunset Crater eruption.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................................ i LIST OF FIGURES ..............................................................................................................................iii PROJECT BACKGROUND ................................................................................................................ 4 PRELIMINARY RESULTS.................................................................................................................. 6 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................... 8 REFERENCES CITED ....................................................................................................................... 10

LIST OF FIGURES

1. Location maps of (A) Sunset Crater area (from Bloomfield and Arculus 1989) and (B) Paricutin. SFVF = San Francisco Volcanic Field.......................................................... 2 2. Tree-ring width responses to the Sunset Crater eruption. The top half are trees from outside the ash fall zone, while the bottom half is from trees assumed to have been within the ash fall zone. The vertical line marks the year A.D. 1064. From Smiley (1958). Note that the Sunset plots represent 3 trees.......................................... 4 3. Ring width sequence of tree sampled from within the ash fall zone of Parícutin. Ring growth is from left to right. The 1940 and 1950 rings are marked along with the full eruptive period ................................................................................................................ 7 4. Initial dendrochemical results from one pine growing within the ash fall zone of Parícutin. Y-axis scale is log transformed to adjust the high calcium concentrations on the order of the phosphorus and strontium concentrations. The vertical dashed lines demark the eruptive period from 1943 to 1952 ............................................................... 7 5. Initial dendochemical results from one archaeological sample of Wupatki Ruin, near Sunset Crater. Y-axis scale is log transformed to adjust the high calcium concentrations on the order of the phosphorus and strontium concentrations. The vertical dashed line demarks the A.D. 1064 eruption. ..................................................... 9

DEVELOPMENT OF A DENDROCHEMICAL METHOD TO DATE CINDER CONE VOLCANOES

One of the most important goals of volcanic hazards research is to understand the full range of interactions between human groups and volcanic eruptions. In evaluating the hazards associated with a volcano, its past activity is determined and then extrapolated to what might happen in the future. The ability to determine how an eruption will affect nearby populations depends not only on this process of hazard identification, but also on predicting how humans will respond to these hazards, both physically and culturally.

Hazards predictions are based on a knowledge of volcanic processes that stems from a wide and constantly improving data base as we learn more about what volcanoes can do, as well as how to identify various indicators of potentially dangerous volcanic activity. Our understanding of human response to volcanic eruptions is much more limited than our knowledge of what volcanoes are likely to do, because consideration must be given to both the type of the eruption as well as to the type of human land use and the culture of surrounding populations. With a few notable exceptions, the volcanic hazard record is confined to the past few hundred years (Scarth 1999; Sigurdsson 1999; Zeilinga de Boer and Sanders 2002), limiting the number of cases and the scope of predictive modeling. Our current work is addressing this problem by studying human responses to eruptions as revealed in the archaeological record of the American Southwest. In this document, we present preliminary findings on a dendrochemical method that we believe will enable the dating of volcanic eruptions with a high degree of both accuracy and precision. Our development of this method, which was partially supported by a grant from the National Park Service (NPS), Flagstaff Area National Monuments (Contract No. P7470-02-0040), has important ramifications for volcanological, archaeological, and hazards research.

This research arose from our investigations into the interaction of prehistoric human populations with Sunset Crater, a cinder cone volcano located in north-central Arizona, 20 km north of the city of Flagstaff (Figure 1A). This study was undertaken as part of an archaeological project involving the excavation of approximately 40 prehistoric sites along a segment of U.S. 89 that was slated for widening by the Arizona Department of Transportation (Elson 1997). Many of the sites are within 10 km of Sunset Crater, and all are within its cinder and ash fall zone. The dating of the eruption, and the nature of the human response and adaptation to this catastrophic event, are of critical importance in deciphering the prehistory of northern Arizona and the greater Southwest (Elson and Ort 2003; Elson et al. 2002, 2003).

Our current work is focused on Sunset Crater and two other basaltic volcanoes in southwestern North America: Little Springs Volcano, situated in northern Arizona around 25 km north of the Grand Canyon, and Parícutin Volcano in Michoacán, Mexico (Figure 1B) (Elson and Ort 2003). Sunset Crater and Little Springs both erupted sometime in the eleventh and twelfth centuries A.D. Parícutin, which is perhaps the most thoroughly documented cinder cone eruption in North America (see Luhr and Simkin 1993), erupted for nine years between 1943 and 1952. Geological mapping and archaeological survey have been undertaken at the two Arizona volcanoes, but our work was significantly hampered by

A Dendrochemical Method to Date Cinder Cone Volcanoes Page 2

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Figure 1. Location maps of (A) Sunset Crater area (from Bloomfield and Arculus 1989) and (B) Paricutin. SFVF = San Francisco Volcanic Field.

he inability to precisely date the eruptions. Archaeological dating of sites buried by cinders uggests that Sunset Crater erupted between about A.D. 1050 and 1150 (Boston 1995; Colton 946; Downum 1988). Our recent paleomagnetic secular variation study (Ort et al. 2002), uilding upon previous work by Champion (1980; Shoemaker and Champion 1977), allows n overall date of A.D. 1020-1170, with A.D. 1030-1080 being the area of greatest overlap on he secular variation curve, although this date is subject to change as the curve is improved ver time.

Dendrochronology presents the best opportunity for highly precise dates, if evidence of he eruption can be found in the trees. In 1958, Terah Smiley suggested that several pine and ir beams recovered from the prehistoric site of Wupatki, a 100-room pueblo located 20 km orth of Sunset Crater, showed evidence at A.D. 1064-1065 for a catastrophic change in the nvironment, which he attributed to the Sunset Crater eruption (Smiley 1958). Although the .D. 1064 date has become entrenched in both the archaeological and geological literatures –

o much so that over the last 45 years it has rarely been questioned – as we discuss in greater etail below, it is not conclusive for a number of reasons. Significantly, because Wupatki is t least 15 km north of the nearest source of pine or fir trees, the original provenance of the eams is unknown.

We therefore wondered whether a chemical fingerprint of the eruption might be present n tree rings, which could positively link the A.D. 1064 date to the eruption. With the grant rom the National Park Service, we went to Parícutin Volcano in order to core trees and look or chemical changes during the known dates of the eruption. Our preliminary findings are ighly promising, and we believe that the methods we have developed may be broadly pplicable, allowing us, and others who adopt similar methods, to develop remarkably recise eruption chronologies for volcanoes throughout the world.

Future research will be facilitated by the recent award (2004) of a grant from the Earth ciences Division of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the three authors of this eport (Proposal Numbers 0409117, 0409190, 0409149). The NSF grant was procured using he NPS-funded data presented here as a pilot study.


In the upcoming NSF study, we propose not only to continue our studies of Parícutin, testing and further developing the technique, but we will now also apply these methods to beams from Wupatki and other prehistoric sites in the Sunset Crater region, allowing us to accurately date the eruption and either confirm or reject Smiley’s A.D. 1064 date. A preliminary search of the tree-ring samples at the University of Arizona and National Park Service, Flagstaff Area Monuments, suggests that there are at least 25 samples spanning the eruption time period, and possibly many more. We are planning to also broaden our investigations to other volcanic environments, keeping cinder cone eruptions as the primary focus of our research for two reasons: 1) Cinder cones are discrete events of relatively small size, physically impacting only a limited area. This allows us to obtain tree samples from within the affected environment, but also to obtain control samples from areas unaffected by the eruption that are close enough to be in similar geological and biological environments. 2) Cinder cones are the most widespread type of volcano eruption, commonly erupting in populated areas where people live and farm between older cinder cones (Vespermann and Schmincke 2000). Thus, they have the potential to profoundly affect local groups, providing significant insights into human behavior as well as the opportunity to formulate more accurate predictive models (Ort and Elson 2005). This contrasts with the larger and more commonly studied stratovolcanoes, whose eruptions tend to either leave a society completely unscathed or deeply affected on a regional scale. Because stratovolcanic eruptions cover large areas with tephra, as well as devastate forests, finding trees that lived through the eruption, as well as geologically similar environments for both affected and control sites, is much more difficult.

Dendrochronology has been used for decades to date and investigate past volcanic eruptions and their direct effects (i.e., non-climatic) on local environments. Besides the early research on Sunset Crater (Colton 1945; McGregor 1936a, b; Smiley 1958) and on Parícutin (Eggler 1967), pioneering work was conducted on cinder cones in California (Finch 1937) and New Zealand (Druce 1966). Other dendrochronological research has been done on stratovolcanoes of the central Cascades such as Mt. St. Helens (Lawrence 1939, 1954; Yamaguchi 1983, 1985; Brantley et al. 1986; Yamaguchi and Lawrence 1993), Mt. Hood (Cameron and Pringle 1986, 1987), and Mt. Shasta (Hupp 1984). In all of these studies, dendrochronological dating has been the key method for accurately dating the eruption in question, often to the level of precision of one year.

These studies also share the trait that the dendrochronological evidence studied was a visible change in ring growth of “event” trees growing near the eruptions versus no coincident change in “control” trees growing away from the eruptions (cf., Shroder 1980). Looking for evidence of past eruptions in dendrochemical data (i.e., changes in ring element concentrations), which would not be overtly visible to the human eye, could expand the use of dendrochronology in studies of volcanic eruptions that for whatever reasons did not physically affect nearby trees. This could include areas with known volcanic activity over the past 1000 years but no successful tree-ring research to date (e.g., Medicine Lake Highlands of northeastern California, Sheppard and White 1995). This could also include reanalyzing wood samples from otherwise well studied eruptions such as Sunset Crater for the purpose of better understanding the duration and spatial extent of environmental effects of the eruption.

A brief background to our research is presented first, followed by a discussion of the results of our NPS-funded pilot study. We believe that this project is highly significant, not only to the scientific volcanological and geological communities, but also to anyone who


endeavors to understand human responses to environmental hazards, such as archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists. As prehistoric cave drawings, oral traditions, and mythologies attest, mankind has long been both terrified and captivated by volcanoes. This inherent fascination also provides an excellent opportunity for this project to reach and educate student groups and the general public.

PROJECT BACKGROUND

For more than 70 years, archaeologists and volcanologists have known that the prehistoric inhabitants of the northern American Southwest witnessed and interacted with an active volcano (Colton 1932, 1937). The eruption of Sunset Crater Volcano, sometime in the eleventh or early twelfth century A.D., built a cinder cone over 300 m high and spewed ash and lava over an area of about 2,300 km2 (Amos 1986; Duffield 1997; Holm and Moore 1987). The response to the eruption by nearby prehistoric groups involved population movement along with significant alterations in trade, manufacturing, and settlement and subsistence systems (Colton 1946; Downum and Sullivan 1990; Elson and Ort 2003; Elson et al. 2003; Ort and Elson 2005; Pilles 1979, 1987). The specifics of the local adaptation to the eruption are currently being investigated as part of the research being undertaken for the U.S. 89 Archaeological Project. Digital elevational modeling of the Sunset Crater viewshed suggests that the eruption cloud was visible from high points as far as 400 km away, and it was therefore probably known throughout much of the greater Southwest. In addition, evidence for offerings of corn indicative of ritual behavior related to the eruption has also recently been uncovered (Elson and Ort 1999; Elson et al. 2002). Some 900 years later, Hopi accounts of Sunset Crater are still passed from generation to generation as a part of traditional clan knowledge, further underscoring the significance of this event (Ferguson and Loma’omvaya 2005; Malotki and Lomatuway’ma 1987).

The Sunset Crater eruption has been dated by dendrochronology, paleomag-netic secular variation, and archaeo-logical association. Although, as noted above, a date of A.D. 1064 for the initial eruption has become entrenched in both the archaeological and geological literatures, the dating is not conclusive (Boston 1995:22). The most commonly accepted date comes from Smiley (1958), who tree-ring dated several beams used in constructing Wupatki pueblo, situated about 20 km northeast of Sunset Crater. Eight of Smiley’s (1958:190) conifer samples showed suppressed and “complacent” rings after A.D. 1065, which he interpreted as dating the eruption to the winter of A.D. 1064-65 (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Tree-ring width responses to the SunsetCrater eruption. The top half are trees from outsidethe ash fall zone, while the bottom half is from treesassumed to have been within the ash fall zone. Thevertical line marks the year A.D. 1064. From Smiley(1958). Note that the Sunset plots represent 3 trees.


However, a recent re-examination of Smiley’s samples by Dr. Jeffrey Dean (personal com

Previous pa

red du

munication 2001) of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research indicates that several of them are duplicates from the same tree, and Smiley’s sample actually consisted of only one ponderosa pine and two Douglas-fir trees. Therefore, this data set is not as strong nor as well-replicated as it initially seemed. More importantly, the provenance of the analyzed trees is not known; at only 1,495 m asl, Wupatki is too low to support the growth of pine and fir, both today and in the prehistoric past (Sullivan and Downum 1991:272). Therefore, the trees could have come from anywhere in the nearby higher elevation areas, possibly from the pine-covered plateau to the northwest that was not heavily affected by ash and cinder fall from the eruption. Douglas fir is especially rare within the area covered by Sunset cinders. Furthermore, many disturbance factors other than volcanic eruptions can affect tree-ring growth and produce suppressed and complacent rings, including: localized drought (Baldwin 1935), proximity to a forest fire (Swetnam and Baisan 1996), earthquakes (Jacoby et al. 1989), extreme cold (Baillie 1996), and insect infestation (Swetnam and Lynch 1993). Perhaps most significantly, in the hundreds of tree-ring samples that span this period examined since Smiley’s work, no others have contained this unique signature (Boston 1995:37; Jeffrey Dean, personal communication 2001). This suggests the possibility that Smiley’s trees were affected by a highly localized event and not something of regional scale, such as an eruption.

The overall duration of the Sunset Crater eruption is also controversial. leomagnetic results, upon which all current archaeological models are based, suggested

an eruptive period of 100 to 200 years (Champion 1980; Pilles 1979, 1987), but our recent paleomagnetic work, done in collaboration with Champion, suggests a period of 50 years and probably less (Ort et al. 2002). In general, cinder cone eruptions do not typically last more than a few decades: 50 percent of known historic period eruptions lasted less than 30 days and 95 percent lasted less than 1 year (Vespermann and Schmincke 2000). However, there is at least one well-documented volcano, Cerro Negro in Nicaragua that has been periodically erupting for over 100 years (Hill et al. 1998). Amos (1986) documented at least eight different Sunset Crater eruptive episodes based on the stratification of cinder and ash layers, but the lengths of time represented by the episodes, and the lengths of time between them, are unknown. No evidence of erosion or re-working of the cinders between deposition of the layers has been found, indicating that they were probably emplaced over a short period. A shorter eruption accords better with the archaeological evidence; cinder deposits at sites in the A.D. 1050 to 1150 period are relatively common, but similar evidence from the later part of the twelfth century is ambiguous. The length of the eruption is critical in determining the scope of prehistoric adaptation; a short term, isolated event would require a very different response than one that was long term and periodically repeated.

Until very recently, Sunset Crater was believed to be the only eruption that occurring the prehistoric human occupation of the American Southwest. However, in 2001,

lava from Little Springs Volcano was dated at 1300 ± 500 ybp (cosmogenic He; Fenton et al. 2001), placing it within the realm of human occupation. The significance of this eruption became even more apparent when five ceramic sherds of the type Hurricane Black-on-gray, dated between A.D. 1050 and 1200, were found embedded in Little Springs lava (Ort 2003). This dating would make the Little Springs eruption roughly contemporaneous with the eruption of Sunset Crater. The accurate dating of this volcano is highly important in regional prehistory, but the current lack of dateable tree-ring samples limits its relevance to this report, and it is not further discussed.


PRELIMINARY RESULTS

The methods we are proposing to date prehistoric (or unrecorded historic-period) ation of dendrochronological data with geochemical signatures

of

ant life within 5-8 km of the cone was killed outright (Luhr an

he availability of

ery old due to int

mically dating the cinder con

volcanoes involve the calibrthe eruption. To test this, it was necessary to find a well-dated and accessible historic

period cinder cone eruption within a forested area containing tree species amenable to tree-ring dating. Parícutin Volcano, in Michoacán, México, was a perfect fit for our research. Not only was the eruption of Parícutin similar to Sunset Crater, but it is perhaps the most thoroughly documented cinder cone in North America (Luhr and Simkin 1993). Parícutin is also within a pine-tree forested area, with Pinus leiophylla and Pinus pseudostrobus as the dominant species (Eggler 1948). The volcano erupted over a 9-year period from 1943–1952, emitting 0.7 km3 of lava over an area of approximately 24.8 km2, and 1.3 km3 of ash and cinders, covering an area of approximately 300 km2 under >15 cm tephra (Luhr and Simkin 1993). Five Purépeche Indian communities, containing several thousand people, had to be abandoned (Nolan 1979, 1993).

The forest response to Parícutin included the usual range of effects on trees growing near volcanic eruptions. Nearly all pl

d Simkin 1993:9), trees farther away survived but were affected in both direct and indirect ways (Eggler 1959, 1963, 1967), and more distant trees were entirely unaffected and could serve as “control” comparison samples. These forest responses allow for dendrochronological techniques to be used to calibrate the dating of the eruption with its impacts on nearby natural and agricultural ecosystems. Given that enough trees are old enough to have experienced the eruption and that their ring growth can be confidently crossdated, dendrochronology will work well at Parícutin. Early studies right after the eruption documented visible ring growth effects on some trees (Eggler 1967).

In addition to visible ring responses to the Parícutin eruption, ring chemical responses were also investigated to see what direct and indirect changes took place in t

various elements. In particular, laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (LA-ICP-MS) allows for a wide array of elements to be measured in wood samples, including whole tree-ring samples at an annual resolution (Garbe-Schoenberg et al. 1997; Hoffman et al. 1994; Prohaska et al. 1998; Watmough et al. 1997, 1998).

In January 2003, we collected samples from pines growing within the ash fall zone of the Nuevo San Juan Indigenous Community. Most trees in the area are not v

ense forest management, but some trees remain that had germinated by the early 1930s, making them just old enough to have at least a decade of growth prior to the start of the eruption. Crossdating has been demonstrated for the region generally (Biondi 2001; Biondi et al. 2003), and has been possible in our preliminary investigation. Some trees show slight visible aberrations for rings dating from 1943 to 1952, including narrow rings and an aligning of non-traumatic resin ducts that is not apparent in other rings (Figure 3). It is evident that these trees experienced some effects of the eruption.

Selected samples were sent to Missouri University Research Reactor (MURR) for LA-ICP-MS. Initial results have shown excellent potential for dendroche

e eruption. Most striking is an increase in phosphorus exactly concurrent with the eruption (Figure 4). This could be a direct effect of input of volcanic P or an indirect effect of changing soil pH altering the availability of pre-existing soil P (Pritchett and Fisher 1981). Phosphorus concentrations have remained elevated since 1952, which merits additional


study of the soils themselves. LA-ICP-MS is still a relatively new technique, so with NSF funding we will cross-check these results with dissolution chemistry ICP-MS.

Calcium and strontium also changed approximately concurrently with the eruption period of Parícutin, both showing decreases in concentration beginning in the middle of the eruption (Figure 4). These could also be indirect results of changing soil pH altering the av

As a calibrated process, this dendrochemical response can now be searched for explicitly in Sunset Crater archeological wood collections. For example, initial results from a Wupatki sample are highly promising in showing that similar chemical spikes do occur (Figure 5). This sample is from one of the beams analyzed by Smiley (1958) and shows abrupt changes

ailability of these +2 cations (Pritchett and Fisher 1981), which again merits additional study of the soils and ash deposits. CaO averages approximately 6.7 weight-percent in the tephra (range 6.1-7.4 weight-percent) and Sr averages 562 ppm (range 512-612 ppm), so it seems unlikely that the addition of the tephra to the landscape would lower the availability of the two cations, unless it is due to changes in pH.

Figure 3. Ring width sequence of tree sampled fromwithin the ash fall zone of Parícutin. Ring growth is fromleft to right. The 1940 and 1950 rings are marked alongwith the full eruptive period.

0

1

10

100

1000

10000

pm)

1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965

Year

Con

cent

ratio

n (p

Phosphorus Calcium Strontium eruptive period

Figure 4. Initial dendrochemical results from one pine growing within the ash fall zone of Parícutin. Y-axis scale is log transformed to adjust the high calcium concentrations on the order of the phosphorusand strontium concentrations. The vertical dashed lines demark the eruptive period from 1943 to 1952.


Figure 5. Initial dendochemicalresults from one archaeological sample of Wupatki Ruin, near Sunset Crater. Y-axis scale is log transformed to adjust the high calcium concentrations on the order of the phosphorus and strontium concentrations. The vertical dashed line demarks the A.D. 1064 eruption.

in le str te ad 1064 event? Or, does the lack of dendrochemical effects at A.D. 1064 indicate that the suppressed and complacent rings seen by Smiley were not dating a volcano eruption? Clearly, more samples need to be analyzed to determine consistency of these results before the presence or absence of these elements is interpreted. Chemical analysis of Sunset Crater soils and tephra is also justified to potentially explain these tree-ring signatures.

These chemical responses could also exist in wood that does not necessarily show any visible responses, so in the next stage of this research more tree-ring samples will be available to us than Smiley (1958) found useful for strictly visible inspection. Dendrochemical measurements can then confirm or fine-tune the dating of Sunset Crater, as well as establish the length of the eruption. With either a more accurate dating of the eruption and/or a more precise delineation of its temporal extent, the basic questions of human adaptation to the eruption can be reassessed.

CONCLUSION

The arc on and nd continuing into the modern period (Anderson 1990; Downum 1988; Pilles 1979, 1987). This is

ecause tephra from the volcano clearly impacted prehistoric inhabitants over a wide area,

P, Ca, and Sr concentrations. Phosphorus increased dramatically at A.D. 1032 whiontium and calcium changed at A.D. 1057. Do these dendrochemical results indicaditional eruptive events of Sunset Crater prior to the (traditionally accepted) A.D

eruption of Sunset Crater Volcano plays an extremely critical role in all haeological models of northern Arizona prehistory, beginning with the work of Colt his colleagues at the Museum of Northern Arizona in the early 1930s (Colton 1932), a

bestimated to cover approximately 2,300 km2 (Hooten et al. 2001), causing population movement and dramatically altering settlement, subsistence, and ritual systems (Elson et al. 2002, 2003). The eruption also appears to coincide with a time of major change throughout the greater American Southwest, including the decline of both the Chaco Canyon and Hohokam regional systems (Crown and Judge 1991). Chaco Canyon and the Phoenix Basin


Hohokam core area are within the viewshed of the Sunset Crater ash plume as determined through digital elevational modeling (Elson and Ort 2003). While the eruption did not physically impact these other areas, a large body of cross-cultural ethnographic data indicate that significant psychological impacts are highly possible (Nolan 1979, 1993). Es

funding from the National Science Foundation will enable us to make significant progress in developing these methods, which will allow us to very accurately date the eruptive period. These new data will then be

erms of current archaeological models for both the Flagstaff area and the gre

tablishing the date(s) and duration of the eruption are critical.

All current archaeological models are dependent on an A.D. 1064 eruption date and a 100-200 year eruption span (e.g., Downum and Sullivan 1990; Pilles 1979, 1987; Sullivan and Downum 1991). Until our recent work, archaeologists and geologists have rarely questioned these dates, even though there are both archaeological and dendrochronological data suggesting alternative scenarios (see Boston 1995:35-37; Elson et al. 2002). Although our research is still in the preliminary stage, recent

reinterpreted in tater American Southwest.

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Boston, R.L. 1995. Electron microprobe sourcing of volcanic ash temper in Sunset Red ceramics. Unpublished Master's thesis, Department of Anthropology, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff. Brantley, S., Yamaguchi, D., Cameron, K., Pringle, P. 1986. Tree-ring dating of volcanic deposits. Earthquakes and Volcanoes 18(5):184-194. Cameron, K.A., Pringle, P.T. 1986. Post-glacial lahars of the Sandy River basin, Mount Hood, Oregon. Northwest Science 60(4):225-237. Cameron, K.A., Pringle, P.T. 1987. A detailed chronology of the most recent major eruptive period at Mount Hood, Oregon. Geological Society of America Bulletin 99:845-851. Champion, D.E. 1980. Holocene Geomagnetic Secular Variation in the Western United States: Implications for the Global Geomagnetic Field. Open-File Report 80-824. United States Department of the Interior Geological Survey, Washington. Colton, H.S. 1932. Sunset Crater: the effect of a volcanic eruption on the ancient pueblo people. Geographical Review 22:582-590.

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Development of a Dendrochemical Method to Date Cinder Cone Volcanoes (2005)

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