2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 82 



University of Arizona, accepted an invitation from the National 

 Geographic Society to extend his researches in dendro-chronology 

 to include such beam material as might be provided by the Society's 

 expeditions. While the age of Pueblo Bonito was the Society's sole 

 objective Dr. Douglass' chief interest lay in the evidence of sun- 

 spot influences and climatic variations as revealed by the annual 

 growth rings of the timbers. 



Three separate collecting parties, under the general supervision 

 of Dr. Douglass and myself, were sent out by the Society in the 

 summers of 1923, 1928 and 1929. Mr. Haury has briefly reviewed 

 the purpose and results of these successive expeditions in his intro- 

 duction. It should be emphasized, however, that we had a definite 

 plan constantly in mind ; that we worked as directly as possible 

 toward our objective. When Dr. Douglass had brought his ring- 

 record into two separate sequences we sought to join them into a 

 single series. It was the Third Beam Expedition, that of 1929, 

 which finally crowned this unique adventure with success. 



As Mr. Haury states, a certain transient phase of Pueblo pottery 

 provided the clue to ruins which immediately antedated Oraibi, the 

 inhabited Hopi village from which Dr. Douglass had secured his 

 oldest historic timbers. From collections in the United States Na- 

 tional Museum and elsewhere a list was prepared of 20 prehistoric 

 villages from which that particular type of pottery had previously 

 been gathered. Our 1929 reconnaissance was undertaken for the 

 purpose of eliminating from that list those ruins in which there 

 seemed little likelihood of finding charred fragments of pine ceiling 

 beams, for only thoroughly charred timbers could have resisted seven 

 centuries of decay in an exposed site. Of the ruins visited on that 

 preliminary survey four only were selected for partial examination : 

 Kin Tiel and Kokopnyama, north of the Little Colorado River, and 

 Pinedale and Showlow, in the forested area to the south. Mr. Har- 

 grave, from his more intimate knowledge of early Hopi cultures, was 

 placed in charge of excavations at the two former sites; Mr. Haury,' 

 at the latter two. 



In the pages which follow, Messrs. Haury and Hargrave describe 

 their individual efi^orts in the four ruins a1)ove named. Since these 

 are more or less well known to all .students of Pueblo archeology, it 

 is felt that the authors' observations will form a welcome addition 

 to the rapidly growing literature on the Southwest, especially in view 

 of the fact that each of the ruined villages has now been correlated 

 definitely with our own calendar. 



