Dateless Dendroarchaeology

The strength of dendrochronology is chronology. No other non-textual dating technique in the world provides the precision, accuracy, and resolution of dendrochronology. Indeed, den-drochronology is famous for dating prehistoric ruins, and Douglass’ “Bridging the Gap” is still considered one of the greatest achievements in archaeology anywhere, but what happens when samples don’t date? Should they simply be discarded as useless, stored until better chronologies and new techniques are available, or do they contain useful information for current research inter-ests? Using undated collections from the southwestern US and northwestern Mexico, this paper discusses a variety of behavioral and environmental information present in samples, even if they cannot contribute to our chronological knowledge.