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ANTHROPOLOGY: L. SPIER 
ZUNI CHRONOLOGY 
By Leslie Spier 
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. NEW YORK 
Communicated by H. F. Osbom. February 19, 1917 
In connection with ethnological studies in the southwestern United 
States, the American Museum of Natural History is conducting an 
archeological survey of the same area. This provides the necessary 
background for a complete understanding of the ethnography of the 
region. While much energy has been expended in the Southwest, chief- 
ly on the description of cultures, little progress has been made in the 
delineation of its culture-history through want of a chronology for the 
region. 
The problem takes definite form when related to the ethnologic 
study of the social structure of the Zuni tribe now being made by Prof. 
A. L. Kroeber of the University of CaKfornia. It is conceivable, for 
instance, that a far-reaching effect may have resulted from the concen- 
tration of the Zufiiis into a single huge community from their several 
villages of early historic times (the famous ^ Seven Cities, of Cibola'). 
What can archeological method tell us of the former groupings of these 
people, of their ultimate origin and their relations with other peoples? 
The answer to the problem rests on the establishment of a chronology 
which will order the confused mass of cultural data into a culture- 
history. 
The possibihty of attacking the problem in the vicinity of Zuiii itself 
was made clear by the richness of the finds of the Hemenway expedition 
of 1888 under Cushing, Bandelier, and Hodge, by a later hasty recon- 
noissance of the region by Fewkes in 1890,' and finally by Kroeber in a 
suggestive study incidental to his ethnologic work in 1915 which in- 
dicated the main direction the chronology would take.^ The present 
study was undertaken by the writer in the summer of 1916. 
The pueblos of the Zuni tribe occupy a strategic position for the 
study of the Southwest. They lie on the headwaters of the Little 
Colorado River in central western New Mexico, occupying a central 
location in the area. The two great areas of ruined pueblos He one 
along the northern margin of the Southwest culture province in the 
drainage of the San Juan, the other along its southern margin in the 
Gila and Salt River watersheds. To the east, the occupied villages of 
the Pueblo Indians stretch along the Rio Grande, and from that center 
an extension of the modern culture including Zuni stretches westward 
into northern Arizona. We now have Nelson's partial chronology of 
