ABSTRACT
The Southwest offers an extraordinary archaeological record of human behaviour spanning at least 14,000 years. Within the US Southwest, archaeology is one tool that may be used to argue for or against particular parties in American Indian land-claim cases and in deciding among heirs to Spanish land-grant claims. The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) initiative was begun by Keith Kintigh, Katherine Spielmann, and their colleagues at Arizona State University, where the project is being developed with advice from a distinguished external science board including representatives from all sectors of archaeology and information science. The Chaco Digital Archive, developed by Stephen Plog at the University of Virginia, is a good example of the productive use of older records to resolve contemporary problems. Specifically, south-western archaeological data analyzed by the Coalescent Communities and the Village Ecodynamics projects reveal long-term settlement patterns that are strikingly similar to those observed for ancient Oaxaca, Mexico and also resemble those of Neolithic Europe.
