ABSTRACT
The original sequence of Hohokam periods and phases was established by Harold Gladwin and his co-workers. Gladwin's earliest work produced the sequence of Colonial, Sedentary, and Classic periods, which were defined on the basis of pottery types. In southern Arizona, however, where tree-ring dating is largely inapplicable, the chronology of the Hohokam was one of the most hotly contested subjects in Southwestern archaeology, even after the advent of radiocarbon dating. Once the outline of a chronology erected on a framework of strong-perhaps unimpeachable-cases, one turns to other lines of evidence, in order of declining strength. Although dates on structural wood ought to furnish higher-resolution information than firewood, there are no other structural wood dates from Snaketown. New archaeologists tended to downplay the difficulties and significance of chronological inference. Indeed, processualists, rushing to understand processes of culture change, often employed the chronologies pieced together long ago by culture historians or, like Plog, resorted to an unwise use of statistics.
