Navajo archaeology

El Palacio ISSN: 0031-0158

Navajo Indians -- Religion
Navajo Indians -- Medicine
Navajo architecture
Sweat lodges
Sweatbaths
Medicine, Traditional
Religion and Medicine
Railroads -- Employees
Campsites -- New Mexico -- Raton
Culture change
Ethnology
Unitarian Service Committee
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad Company
Navajo Nation, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah
Chuska Mountains (Ariz. and N.M.)
Arizona
California
New Mexico
Raton (N.M.)

Proof version of contributed essay chapter in 2024 museum catalog associated with Navajo weaving exhibit "Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles" at MIAC (Santa Fe, NM). Essay discusses archaeological evidence for Diné weaving practices prior to mid-19th century focus of most contemporary Navajo weaving studies.

Over the course of their history, the Navajo (Diné) have constructed many types of architecture, but during the 20th century, one building emerged to become a powerful and inspiring symbol of tribal culture. This book describes the rise of the octagonal stacked-log hogan as the most important architectural form among the Diné. The Navajo Nation is the largest Indian reservation in the United States and encompasses territory from within Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, where thousands of Native American homes, called hogans, dot the landscape. Almost all of these buildings are octagonal. Whether built from plywood nailed onto a wood frame or with other kinds of timber construction, octagonal hogans derive from the stacked-log hogan, a form which came to prominence around the middle of the last century. The stacked-log hogan has also influenced public architecture, and virtually every Diné community on the reservation has a school, senior center, offi ce building, or community center that intentionally evokes it. Although the octagon recurs as a theme across the Navajo reservation, the inventiveness of vernacular builders and professional architects alike has produced a wide range of octagonally inspired architecture. Previous publications about Navajo material culture have emphasized weaving and metalwork, overlooking the importance of the tribe's built environment. But, populated by an array of octagonal public buildings and by the hogan-one of the few Indigenous dwellings still in use during the 21st centurythe Navajo Nation maintains a deep connection with tradition. This book describes how the hogan has remained at the center of Diné society and become the basis for the most distinctive Native American landscape in the United States. The Diné Hogan: A Modern History will appeal to scholarly and educated readers interested in Native American history and American architecture. It is also well suited to a broad selection of college courses in American studies, cultural geography, Native American art, and Native American architecture.

El Palacio [ISSN: 0031-0158]

Includes image.
Includes bibliography.

Anthropology, Cultural
Land settlement patterns
Navajo Indians
Navajo Indians -- History
Apaches de Navajo
Navahu
Navajo architecture
Navajo architecture -- Classification
Navajo Indians -- Dwellings
Navajo Indians -- Dwellings -- Classification
Hogans
Hogans -- Classification
Hogans -- Identification
Jemez Indians
Tewa Indians
Navajo Nation, Arizona, New Mexico & Utah
San Juan County (N.M.)
Chaco Canyon (N.M.)

Investigations of the iconic rainbow pictograph panels at two sites in Southeastern Utah, and one in western Colorado are shown to have diagnostic and homologic correlations with Southern Apachean material culture and sand paintings. Cultural indicators show Apachean preferences for geocentric referencing, cultural direction, symbol consistency and symbol affinity. Homologic comparisons with material artifacts and the creation myths of the Western Apache and Navajo confirm their cultural authorship, in contrast to the Hopi, Pueblo, Uto/Aztecan cultural indicators. The Rainbow is a dynamic motif that is charged with spiritual associations in ethnographic literature (mythic text) and as a visual indicator of cultural authorships in the prehistoric art of these two sites in eastern Utah.

One thing I love about artifact hunting is that you never know what you will find. For those of us old enough to remember, artifact hunting is like finding the prize in a Cracker Jack box - you never knew what that prize is going to be. On my artifact hunts, I always start out with hopes of finding that elusive three-inch Folsom or that bushel basket full of bird points. No one can denounce or refute that hope until the hunt is over. Over the years, I have been on a few great hunts, a pile of decent hunts, and several real stinkers, but there was one thing in common. At the beginning of each hunt, I always hoped that I could slay the artifact dragon!

Join me on my latest adventure in prehistoric time.

El Palacio magazine [ISSN: 0031-0158]

Ethnologists have generally considered the presence of Ancestral Puebloan traits in Navajo culture the result of a process of cultural change characterized as "incorporative" by Vogt (in Spicer, 1961, pp. 278-36). Vogt defines the incorporative process as one by which ".. .elements from other cultures are incorporated into Navaho culture in such a way that the structural framework of the institutional core.. .is maintained, and the borrowed elements are fitted into place and elaborated in terms of the pre-existing patterns.. ." (ibid., 328). Archaeological studies have generally given slight attention to this theoretical problem and most archaeologists have let the ethnologists' ideas stand without criticism, but Hester (1962, pp. 91 & 92) has described the process that Spicer described for Spanish acculturation among the Yaquis. (Spicer, 1961, pp. 7-93). We know remarkably little about Navajo culture prior to 1700, but three kinds of evidence can be employed to infer the type or types of dwellings then in use. These are ethnographic, historical, and archaeological. Data limitations, however, severely restrict conclusions. The wide distribution of conical and sub-conical house types in western North America, especially among Athabaskan-speaking peoples, has led to a general be-This paper was read at the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology at Santa Fe, May 10, 1968. The research on which it is based was sponsored by the Navajo Tribe. An 1890 Ben Wittick photo of forked-stick hogan at Canyon de Chelly.

Navajo Indians
Culture change
Navajo architecture
Navajo dwellings
Hogans
Forked-stick hogans
Pueblo architecture
Canyon de Chelly (Ariz.)
Kinaazini (Ariz.)

Many Indigenous groups in North America have long-held practices of using migration and movement in response to environmental and social changes. Diasporic communities, composed of migrants maintaining significant connections to their former homelands, were likely once common in refuge areas of North America, but not always recognized by archaeologists. Many Puebloan peoples in the Northern Rio Grande region of the US Southwest used movement as a way to escape Spanish colonial control after AD 1600, yet retained connections to their homelands. This Puebloan diaspora had far-reaching consequences for Native peoples across the Southwest and neighboring regions like the Great Plains. Here, we briefly summarize how diasporas are defined globally and the ways in which these definitions could shift to help us model diasporas in North America. Using the Pueblo diaspora and a multi-generational Pueblo-Ndee (Apache) community in the Central Great Plains as example, we explore the intricacies of identifying diasporas for North America within the contexts of Indigenous resistance and adaptation.

The present report is a comprehensive summary of all known archaeological survey activity conducted within John Day Fossil Beds National Monument boundaries from its inception through calendar year 2015. The report is organized it in two parts; each centered on JODA’s two major systematic survey periods in the 1990s and early 2000s. The report focuses on the monument’s first two decades; emphasizing the monument’s first archaeological survey as a new park unit in 1976 (Davis 1977), and its first large-scale systematic survey in 1993 and 1994.

La Vega Project
Museum of New Mexico MNM Project ; no. 41.397.
New Mexico State Highway Department [sponsoring body]

Research design for a late Paleoindian through Pueblo III site first recorded in 1969 by Stewart Peckham.

Research design
Excavations (Archaeology)
Folsom culture
Paleoindians
Oshara tradition
Surface architecture
Lithic analysis
Quarries and quarrying
Cherts
Projectile points
Folsom points
Archaic points
Lobo points
Petroglyphs
Paleoindian period
Folsom period
Archaic period
Jay phase
Bajada phase
San Jose phase
Armijo phase
Basketmaker II period
Pueblo II period
Pueblo III period
Cibola County (N.M.)
Mount Taylor region (N.M.)
La Vega Site (N.M.)
LA 9075

Relatively little attention has been given to projectile point morphology and raw material use in the Gallina (AD 1100–1300) area of northwestern New Mexico. Analysis of projectile points among six Gallina sites illustrates the spatial distribution of general point styles and material choice across the west, central, and eastern parts of the culture area. The composition of raw materials within the Gallina culture area gives insight to the differential use of sources among the Gallina people. X-ray fluorescence characterization of obsidian Gallina projectile points allows for a fine-grained examination of Gallina obsidian procurement patterns from these sites across the culture area. Results of this study indicate a differential use of obsidian flows within the Jemez Mountains and some stylistic differences across the study sites. Furthermore, the collection and re-working of Archaic/Paleoindian points by the Gallina serves as a proxy for toolstone choices of these groups occupying ...

Collaborating at the trowel's edge: teaching and learning in indigenous archaeology I edited by Stephen W. Silliman ; with a foreword by Larry J. Zimmerman. p. em.-(Amerind studies in archaeology) Includes bibliographical references and index.

Davina Two Bears is Navajo, and is Bitter Water clan and born for Red Running into the Water Clan. She is originally from Bird Springs, Ariz ona, on the southwestern part of the Navajo Reservation. She was recently hired as the new Program Manager of the

Introduction to Kiva Fall 2021 special issue focused on Diné (Navajo) archaeology. Discusses key themes within the area of study, as well as a short discussion of the five research articles (Weiner & Kelley 2021; Campbell 2021; Lee 2021; Two Bears 2021; and Wero & Martin 2021) that make up the issue. The other articles cover topics ranging from: Navajo insights about Chaco Canyon, reservation-era pastoralism, weaving craft traditions, boarding school ethnohistory, and the historical archaeology of uranium mining.

LSOCUNFt wk.MORMaii.. of ltd.L be. ON d~aftic MWa Afub4 .a0 mo.8.mina"" "Mn Jo. 0SWORN OMO 3iS 0. 01IO~INgAS6 ACTSIF-TV fCOMMM" d.) i ARPOfi? 24CUduY C&AINU.CATO U. S. Arm, Engineer Wtriways Experirment Station Unclasified Vicksburg, Miss. GIU 2. 149OIT ?ITLI

Museum of New Mexico MNM Project ; no. 65.07

Archaeological clearance survey of sixteen (16) sites, including an prehistoric Chaco road.

Salt River Project (Phoenix, Ariz.)
Coal mines and mining

Archaeological surveying
Lithic analysis

Ancestral Pueblo culture
Chaco culture
Chacoan roads
Lithics

Navajo Indians
Navajo architecture
Corrals
Hogans
Ramadas
Sheep pens
Sweat lodges
Limited occupation sites
Camp sites
Historic period
20th century
Navajo Nation, Arizona, New Mexico & Utah
San Juan County (N.M.)
-- LA 14707  | -- LA 14708  | -- LA 14711  | -- LA 14712  | -- LA 14713  | -- LA 14714  | -- LA 14716  | -- LA 14717  | -- LA 14718  | -- LA 14719  | -- LA 14720  | -- LA 14721  | -- LA 14722  | -- LA 14723  | -- LA 14724  | -- LA 14725  | -- LA 14726  | -- LA 14727  | -- LA 14728  | -- LA 14729

Research design proposal for performing an archaeological survey of historic Navajo sites, multicomponent sites that are Navajo, Euroamerican also of an unidentified culture, as well as precontact sites that are possibly Archaic.

Museum of New Mexico MNM Project: 68.04.
Hunter Wash Research Design
Hunter Wash Survey Project

Archaeological surveying
Lithic analysis
Historical archaeology
Ethnology
Paleo-Indians
Navajo Indians
Land settlement patterns
History
Navajo architecture
Corrals
Hogans
Petroglyphs
Trading posts
Graffiti
Archaic period
Historic period
19th century
20th century
Navajo Nation, Arizona, New Mexico & Utah
San Juan County (N.M.)
LA 14838
LA 20225
LA 20226
LA 20228
LA 20231
LA 20233
LA 26143
LA 30961
LA 30964
LA 30965
LA 30966
LA 34149
LA 34377

One site and nine isolated occurrences. The historic Navajo site consists of a hogan base, a glass and procelain scatter, and two middens.

Museum of New Mexico project: 41-68.03.
Dog Eye Pond Survey Project
Archaeological surveying
Historical archaeology
Land settlement patterns
Ethnology
Lithic analysis
Navajo Indians -- History
Navajo architecture
Precontact period
Historic period
19th century
20th century
Navajo Nation, Arizona, New Mexico & Utah
San Juan County (N.M.)
LA 20220

The arrival of the ancestors of the Apaches and Navajo to the North American Southwest, the so-called Apachean migra- tion is one of the most widely discussed issues in American archeology. Since the 19th century, after connections were disco- vered between the Athabaskan language family, potential routes and directions of migration between the Arctic and Subarctic region (inhabited by the Northern Athabaskans) and the Southwest (inhabited by the Southern Athabaskans) began to be con- sidered. During the 1930s, the Edward Sapir’s linguistic research made it possible to determine that the migration flowed from north to south, but this conclusion merely sowed the seed of research on Apachean migration, which has since blossomed with archaeological discoveries from the last 20 or 30 years. Today, we are able to pinpoint what prompted the Athabaskans’ journey; we also know of cultures such as Promontory (around the Great Salt Lake) or Dismal River (Great Plains), which we associate with the presence of the Apachean people on both sides of the Rocky Mountains. Still, many questions remain unanswered, and previous hypotheses are being verified in the light of new discoveries. No less interesting proved the results of research into some auxiliary sciences of archeology: genetics and linguistics, and the analysis of historical sources and oral tradition.
The following article aims to introduce the reader to the most important and recent discoveries related to the issue of Apachean migration, and present hypotheses that have recently emerged in the scientific community, both in the context of the migration route itself and arrival in the Southwest, as well as the dates associated with them.

Research design report. Sites to be directly impacted include LA 16126, a multicomponent Archaic-Pueblo III artifact scatter; and, LA 16136, an early to mid-twentieth century Navajo structure. Three (3) sites subject to indirect impact are LA 16127, a possible Navajo burial; LA 16128, a 1920-1950 Navajo habitation; and LA 10822, a small Pueblo II pueblo.

Gamerco North Research Design Project
Research design
Excavations (Archaeology)
Lithic analysis
Projectile points
Hunting and gathering societies
Hunter gatherers
Paleoindians
  Mobility
  Mobility patterns
Ancestral Pueblo culture
Navajo Indians
Navajo architecture

Archaic period
San Jose phase
3000-1800 BC
Basketmaker III period
Pueblo I period
Pueblo II period
Pueblo III period
Historic period
20th century
San Juan Basin (N.M. and Colo.)
McKinley County (N.M.)
Gamerco (N.M.)
LA 6853
LA 10822 
LA 16126 
LA 16127
LA 16128
LA 16136
LA 16880
LA 16881
LA 16882

The Navajo have probably been the subject of as much ethnological study as any Native American group. Their capacity for assimilating both material and ideological culture traits from surrounding groups is well documented (Hester 1962; Witherspoon 1983: 533) and, as discussed by Aberle (1963) and Witherspoon (1975), may stem from a traditionally flexible lifestyle. This flexibility is evidenced socioeconomically by Navajo participation in railroad construction and maintenance from Chicago westward to California, including the Mojave Desert, and archaeologically by the establishment of rail associated occupation sites (Kluckhohn, Hill, and Kluckhohn 1971: 320). This article de scribes several Navajo structures in the Mojave Desert in terms of their architecture and ethnohistoric function. Documentation is also provided regarding the nature of general Navajo settlement patterns in southeastern California.

Many archaeologists and other scholars with a complex relation to actual prehistoric have accepted the idea that the Navajo and interruptions of communication; they are used Apache (hereafter called the Apachean) by some comparative linguists to give rough migrated from the north into the southwestern estimates of linguistic prehistory." The rest of United States around A.D. 1500 (for example, this paper sketches some of the archaeological Wilcox 1981:213). This idea is based on ambiguities and how they relate to Navajo linguistic studies and on the supposed lack of tradition. We honor Dave Brugge for his any earlier archaeological sites with material insights. culture that archaeologists recognize as Apachean. To connect the archaeological and AMBIGUOUS ARCHAEOLOGICAL

This report documents the results of Class III archeological survey of 134 acres for proposed mining project in the Star Lake area of McKinley County, New Mexico. Michael Meyer of Mineris Vitae, LLC contracted with the Office of Contract Archeology, University of New Mexico to perform the survey. The project area is located in Section 2, T19N, R6W of the Star Lake USGS Quadrangle, McKinley County, New Mexico. The survey resulted in the documentation of 22 sites and 23 isolated occurrences. The fieldwork was performed between March 5 th -15th, 2012. Of the 22 documented sites, four are recommended as eligible for the inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, twelve are recommended as not eligible while the eligibility recommendation for the remaining seven is undetermined. v vi

Concepts of archaeology, ethnology, linguistics, environmental change, genetics, radiocarbon dates, mapping, herd-following, migratory caribou, bison and pronghorn and their hunters, and the need to move south, form the basis of the Navajo-Apache descending from the Canadian Chipewyan.

In applying evolutionary concepts to the practice of archaeology, it is important to keep in mind that transmission mechanisms -the manner in which cultural units replicate -directly affect archaeological patterning. The artifactual record visible to archaeologists represents what I will call "learning lineages," historically related chains of transmitted or replicated information. If we are to effectively study the evolution of cultural systems, we must understand and properly identify these learning lineages. It is therefore crucial to understand exactly what is replicating culturally, and how the mechanisms of replication affect cultural patterning. We then need to construct units that reflect this understanding of replication mechanisms, and translate those into things visible archaeologically. To ignore replication mechanisms would be equivalent to using Darwin but ignoring Mendel. What follows is a preliminary attempt to identify learning lineages in Navajo pottery from northwest New Mexico.

The Grolier Codex (Codice Maya de Mexico, CMM) is discussed in the context of the archaeoastronomy of the ancient Americas on pages 98-99 of the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson. One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. A numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depictes the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Other photos: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

The Grolier Codex is discussed in the context of the archaeoastronomy of the ancient Americas on pages 98-99 of the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson. One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. A numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depictes the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Other photos: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

"Selected proceedings of the “First International Conference on Ethnoastronomy: Indigenous Astronomical and Cosmological Traditions of the World”held at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 5-9 September 1983."

Available on Amazon.com  - see link in listing. Ships internationally from the USA.

Rio de Janeiro 1992 > UN Year of Indigenous People summit & UN General Assembly 1992 > the CMPCC summit 2010 of Climate Change and Mother Earth's Rights: the long pursuit of Hopi to get their ethnoclimatology investigated.

Rio de Janeiro environmental summit became the watershed that brought some of the world's most isolated ethnic communities into the awareness of the environmental degradation, climate change, and global warming. One of these highly isolated communities were the Hopis who are highly revered among the indigenous Americans for their fierce cultural independence and ancient, truly indigenous history-keeping. The National Hopi Grand Council of 1947 appointed His Honourable faith-keeper Thomas Banyacya as the guardian of the nation's history-keeping.

The First Nations of the Americas, with a support of the entire patronage of the World Indigenous Peoples summit, appointed HH Thomas Banyacya as the closing speaker to end the United Nations' Year of Indigenous Peoples on 10th December 1992. As soon as the session was over and the lights were turned off from the United Nations' General Assembly Hall, the World Indigenous Peoples' appeal was immediately ignored and forgotten by the United Nations.

His Excellency President Evo Morales (an Aymara Indian himself) has carried many reforms to empower indigenous people and invited me to summarise for Conferencia Mundial de los Pueblos sobre el Cambio Climático y los Derechos de la Madre Tierra (the Peoples Climate Change and Mother Earths Rights Summit) CMPCC, at Cochabamba - Tiquipaya, Bolivia in 19-22 April 2010 the merits of the ancient Puebloan ethnoclimatology that formed the core of the UN Assembly Motion.

A mistrust, past disappointments, frustration and the residential school experiences, make the spiritual leaders and faith-keepers of the native Americans resentful, presenting a formidable and ihibiting barrier on dissemination of traditional knowledges for the broader public as the native Americans have turned introverted and prefer to view their past only for themselves and keep knowledge within themselves to protect of their innate spirituality and relationship with the outer world.

Deep indigenous mistrust is reflected in retention of information and artefacts also from the anthropologists thus hindering access to ancient Sun Ages ethnoclimatology documents.

The story of one of the longest-lived and most successful nomadic enclaves in North America provides a rare glimpse into the material expressions of Apache self-determination and survival. For nearly 200 years the Jicarilla Apache of New Mexico thrived in the interstices of Pueblo and Spanish settlements following their expulsion from the Plains. Critical to their success was their ability to extend key aspects of Plains-Pueblo exchange to Indian and mixed-blood communities on the fringes of colonial rule. More than other nomadic tribes, the Jicarilla played an enormous role in holding together the social fabric of New Mexican villages after the fall of the Spanish Empire.

This comprehensive study by Sunday Eiselt begins with the great Athapaskan migration out of Canada during prehis-toric times and ends with the forced settlement of the Jicarilla on the Dulce reservation in the 1880s. Eiselt combines archaeological and ethno­historical data in an examination of Jicarilla strategies for self-preservation. She reveals the ideological and political imperatives of “­belonging” that shaped their interactions with local communities and the state and that enabled them to avoid reservation life well into the 1880s. Throughout their long history, Jicarilla identity remained intact, distinctive, and discernable even as life on the reservation disrupted the intimate connections that once existed with their Hispanic and Pueblo neighbors.