Using the Central Andean Chavín Phenomenon as a case study, this paper explores the middle ground between top-down (big data) and bottom-up (Bayesian modeling) approaches to archaeological radiocarbon data. Compiling radiocarbon dates associated with the Chavín Phenomenon addresses questions of chronology, demonstrating that the relevant phases at interacting sites are relatively brief and broadly contemporary. In addition, the definition of a discrete span of time associated with the Chavín ́Phenomenon makes it possible to explore the context for that period of heightened interaction. Juxtaposing that timespan with a compilation of Central Andean radiocarbon dates identifies contemporary non-participatory sites, enabling characterization of the sociopolitical milieu within which the Chavín Phenomenon emerged, flourished, and faded. The identification of that corpus of sites also highlights the importance of a shift in focus from identification of interaction to characterization of interaction. Bottom-up approaches to radiocarbon chronology will be a key element of that effort, while high-level summary of radiocarbon assemblages can identify where additional dating and Bayesian modeling can have the greatest interpretive impact.

We illustrate the way in which landscape taphonomy predictably complicates “dates-as-data” approaches, propose and demonstrate a new method of empirically based correction, and explore the interpretive ramifications of ignoring or correcting for taphonomic bias.

The impacts of climate change on human societies, and the roles those societies themselves play in altering their environments, appear in headlines more and more as concern over modern global climate change intensifies. Increasingly, archaeologists and paleoenvironmental scientists are looking to evidence from the human past to shed light on the processes which link environmental and cultural change. As they do so, they are emphasizing the complexity of the dynamics underlying both human responses to environmental changes and anthropogenic impacts on environments. Although archaeology has a long history of interest in human impacts on environments and environmental influences on human activities, construction of detailed arguments about causality in such interactions remains a persistent challenge. Limitations in chronological resolution of archaeological data and paleoenvironmental archives pose a methodological problem, while equifinality remains an interpretative challenge. Establishing clear contemporaneity and correlation, and then moving beyond correlation to causation, remains as much a theoretical task as a methodological one.