The need to study design change over short periods of time has been discussed earlier. I have argued that we presently have little information on this topic, either in the American Southwest or in other areas of the world. It was hoped that tree-ring dates obtained through limited excavation by CARP in 1973 and 1974 would enable me to date precisely several sites with large black-on-white ceramic collections in order to carry out a study of temporal change in design. However, none of the dates obtained was a cutting date (beams with evidence that the last growth ring is present and that thus can be used to date the death of the tree), so it is not possible to pinpoint the construction dates of the sites. In addition, the maximum number of noncutting dates from a single site was three and for most sites only a single date was obtained. It was, therefore, not possible to infer construction dates from the clustering of noncutting dates. [The clustering of noncutting dates has been the only accepted method for inferring construction dates when cutting dates are not available (Bannister 1962, Dean 1978:250).] It is generally argued that little can be said about the construction date of a site from which only one or two noncutting dates were obtained.