Temperature Variability and the Northern Anasazi: Possible Implications for Regional Abandonment

A temperature reconstruction based on tree-rings from the San Francisco Peaks of northern Arizona is used to examine past temperature variability in relation to the thirteenth-century archaeological record in the northern Anas azi region. Three closely spaced cold periods that occurred in the 1200s can be tentatively linked to climatically effective explosive volcanism as recorded in the historical record and polar ice core record of eruptions. A particularly large volcanic event is recorded in ice core layers at both poles in 1259. The tumultuous nature of northern Anasazi society in the 1200s coincided with the reconstructed temperature decrease, suggesting that temperature variability merits additional consideration both in these circumstances and in the final abandonment of the region.