A paleointensity study on nine potsherds from the Hohokam Indian site of Snaketown, Arizona is described. The sherds range in age from A.D. 200--1400. Examination of different temperature subintervals from the Thellier-Thellier double heating experiment reveals that conventional statistical measures sometimes can unambiguously determine the best data subset for paleointensity calculations. However, it is often necessary to visually inspect the data and utilize physical insight in determining this data subset. Results suggest that the paleointensity was about 0.94 F0 (F0, present intensity ?0.506 oe) at A.D. 200, 0.72 F0 at A.D. 600, and 1.2 F0 at A.D. 1400. The shape of our curve of paleointensity vs. age is congruent with a curve previously derived from other Snaketown artifacts, but our paleointensities are systematically lower by about 0.15 oe. |