ABSTRACT
During the last decade, several archaeologists (Cordell and Plog 1979/Feinman, Upham, and Lightfoot 1981/Lightfoot and Feinman 1982/Upham, Lightfoot and Feinman 1981/Upham and Plog 1986) have made use of data from the site of Nuvakwewtaqa (Figure 15.1), a large pueblo ruin located in the northern portion of the American Southwest. Central to many of the inferences about this fourteenth century site is the issue of the site’s chronology, and the way in which the distribution of material culture conforms or diverges from patterns in the rest of the northern Southwest. Past interpretations of Nuvakwewtaqa and its hinterland have emphasized the development of a centralized political system, the emergence of social stratification, and the operation of elite-based systems of exchange. A few recent studies have taken issue with the findings of the above referenced work (e.g.. Graves 1986/Downum 1986), and have suggested that errors in chronology construction, stratigraphic analysis, and other dimensions of excavation and survey have led to erroneous interpretations. In this paper, we do not address the critiques of the Nuvakwewtaqa work directly. Instead, we present additional chronometric data, summarize past and present attempts at relative chronological analyses, and discuss the implications of the different Nuvakwewtaqa chronologies for understanding social processes at this important site.
