1999 Society for American Archaeology Symposium
Chicago Sheraton Hotel and Towers
Scheduled for March 25, 1999 morning session
Chair and Organizer: Douglas D. Dykeman
Over the past four decades the question of Navajo origins has been thoroughly treated; it is time to address the formation of Navajo culture in the southwestern United States. The symposium seeks to explore Early Navajo lifeways in the period AD 1500 to AD 1775 from interpretive, synthetic, and speculative perspectives. Recent interest in the period has been driven by research-oriented projects in Dinetah, the Navajo homeland, and supplemented by renewed interest in period sites on the Navajo Reservation. The nature of the subject invites the multidisciplinary approaches of archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnic oral history represented in the symposium.
Navajo rock art in the northwestern New Mexico region referred to as Dinetah is clearly ceremonial in nature, having figures that can be identified in modern Navajo dry paintings. Some panels depict phenomena of the sky including sets of dots that can be identified as groups of stars that are known to be important to the Navajos. Recent studies show that these star patterns were symbolic of principles that Navajo people used as guides for living in harmony with the universe. This paper will summarize research done on astronomical symbolism found in Dinetah rock art, suggesting that the significance of the stars depicted has extended from the early Navajo period into the present.
The origin and cultural identity of Gobernador Polychrome pottery from seventeenth and eighteenth century Navajo sites in northwestern New Mexico have long been topics of debate. Various researchers have identified the pottery as a product of Puebloan refugees who lived with the Navajo during the Pueblo Revolt. Others have suggested that the stylistic character and design configurations are an amalgamation of Puebloan and Navajo designs and symbolism. Our examination of Gobernador Polychrome focuses on the diversity of motifs and design layouts present. Cultural parallels among the pottery designs, rock art iconography, and Navajo traditions are explored.
This presentation focuses on defensive Dinetah sites in New Mexico, where further research is needed due to a lack of ethnographic data. Ethnographic information from the perspectives of Navajo oral history would be valuable for Dinetah studies. A selected number of recorded Dinetah sites in northwestern New Mexico will be our focus. Informants will include Navajo (Hatalii) medicine men and Navajo traditionalists from the Four Corners area. This study will help confirm the information already obtained from archaeological investigations in the Dinetah, as well as, clarify and enlighten us further about the early Navajo people.
Recent archaeological and ethnographic investigations of 18th century Navajo pueblitos and defensive sites west of the Chuska Mountains have shown that the social and cultural factors which influenced the construction of such sites, are remarkably similar to what the 18th century Navajo people of the Dinetah experienced. Ethnographic investigations have shown that Navajo oral traditions strongly support the archaeological interpretations of this recent data. The comparison of these two data sets (western Navajo and Dinetah Navajo) across time and space indicates that Navajo people occupied the areas west of the Chuska Mountains as early as the 1550s.
Data recovery was conducted on 17 early Navajo sites in northwestern New Mexico. These sites include special-use sites, single- and multiple-unit habitations, and one pueblito site which are attributed to Dinetah and Gobernador phase occupations. The faunal remains recovered from several sites include bone from both wild and domestic animals. This paper focuses on the use of domestic animals by the early Navajo occupants and attempts to place this utilization within the temporal framework represented by these sites. The implications to early Navajo subsistence strategies, resulting from the effects of herding, trade, and raiding are also addressed.
The Athabaskan people that entered the American Southwest brought with them a mobile hunting and gathering land use pattern, one very different than the Puebloan system they encountered. Contact with the Pueblos allowed for the development of a new land use and economic system. This new system, however, left their lithic technologies relatively unchanged. Milling implement efficiency improved, but chipped stone technology remained heavily focused towards faunal resources acquisition and processing. This paper explores how and why their lithic traditions became adapted to a new subsistence and economic system and ultimately a distinct early Navajo culture.
The pottery of Dinetah evidences a rich and diverse tradition. It hints at a local industry adapted to variety of needs and suggests far-reaching alliances. From their arrival in the Southwest through the often turbulent decades following the Spanish entrada, the Navajo who made and used this pottery adapted to new and changing natural and cultural environments. Issues related to that adaptation include: the changing role of pottery through time; how the composition of household assemblages mirrors larger group economic, political, and social organization; and finally, how pots may reflect the status and role of a hogan's occupants.
Recent archaeological studies in New Mexico's San Juan Basin have resulted in the identification of distinct patterning in the structure of early Navajo sites, suggesting that most are comprised of two to three concurrently occupied structures. Ethnohistoric studies indicate that such patterning results from site occupation by a large nuclear family, extended family or a polygynous marriage. Evidence of household contemporaneity at the early sites includes absolute dating of associated structures, patterns in abandonment mode, evidence of shared features and structure specialization. These characteristics form the site-level basis for arguments concerning land tenure and higher levels of social organization.
Case studies of early Navajo community formation and social organization are rare or non-existent, but recent archaeological work in New Mexico's San Juan Basin provides a special opportunity to examine early Navajo community. Successful tree-ring dating of a large number of residential and sudatory sites allows clusters of contemporaneous households to be identified and use histories of these clusters to be defined. The organization of potentially contemporary residential sites defined by site clusters likely represents a middle level of social organization that integrates multiple households, spanning the social gap between household and community.
Navajo interaction with contemporary Puebloan groups is documented in Navajo oral history and contemporary Spanish documents. Yet the identification of exactly which Puebloan peoples engaged with the Navajo has not been well defined. Characterization of ceramics through petrographic analysis and ICP-MS has allowed for the identification of the productive sources of Puebloan pottery recovered from several recently excavated Navajo sites. This study not only serves to identify the sources of Puebloan ceramics recovered from the Navajo proveniences under study, but also provides compositional and temporal data for interpreting variation in historic Pueblo ceramics.
The distribution of Jemez Mountains obsidian in the Four Corners and Plains regions during the late prehistoric through historic periods can be modeled to examine the temporal dynamics of exchange. This comparative paper focuses on the Dinetah and Gobernador phases associated with the Navajo in northwest New Mexico and various cultural complexes associated with the Wichita and Pawnee in the southern and central Plains. Beginning as simple linear or down-the- line exchange in both regions, the Dinetah and Plains peoples transform exchange into more complex regional systems. These are best modeled as Parteto systems, which utilize collection points for wider distribution.
Athabascan groups entering the American Southwest were successful foragers, however, by the seventeenth century Navajo bands had developed a more diversified economy. To the foraging base Navajos added trading, raiding, herding, and agriculture, thereby pursuing a remarkably flexible and diverse economy. This strategy is considered responsive to erratic environmental conditions of the Southwest and shifting alliances with neighboring cultural groups such as Utes, Pueblos, and Spanish. The mixture of economies may be characterized as the perfect Southwestern adaptation that mitigates volatile cultural conditions and unstable natural environments; an adaptation of proven effectiveness today, as it was in the seventeenth century.
Protohistoric sites indicating early Navajo occupation of the Southwest are difficult to identify and interpretation of material culture remains is often contentious. We review the evidence for how these sites manifest on the ground, and we discuss the activities that may have contributed to the formation of the archaeological record. Our discussion is enhanced by traditional history and ethnohistoric documents to create a model of 16th century Navajo culture. We offer a picture of early Navajo social, ceremonial, and economic interaction; and show how the material remains of these activities may be overlooked and thus under-represented in the archaeological record.