The Navajo Depopulation of Dinétah

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2964091
AutoresR H Towner (0000-0003-4811-734X, autor correspondente)
Ano2008
Volume64
Fascículo4
Páginas511-527
Data de publicação2008-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Anthropological Research (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0091-7710 • E-ISSN: 2153-3806
EditoraUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.3998/jar.0521004.0064.404
OpenAlexW2321618402
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas6
Referências citadas14

The ancestral heartland of the Navajo people (Diné) is Dinétah, an area of northwestern New Mexico centered around the Largo and Gobernador drainages. The date of the Navajo entry into the area remains the subject of debate, but there is abundant evidence of an intensive and extensive Navajo occupation of the area in the 1500s-1700s. There is also ample evidence that the area was depopulated, if not abandoned, by the 1770s. Traditionally, the Navajo "abandonment" of Dinétah as a habitation region in the mid-1700s has been considered a seminal event in Navajo cultural development. Drought and Ute raiding have been invoked as causes for a Navajo migration toward the south and west. In this paper, I suggest that the emigration was a long-term social process that involved many push and pull factors. It began much earlier than previously thought, and the area continued to be used intermittently for many years after it was supposedly abandoned. This reevaluation of the abandonment has important implications for the protohistoric and early historic period archaeology and history of large areas of northern New Mexico and Arizona

Abandonment (legal · Archaeology · Emigration · Ethnology · Geography · Navajo · Political science · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law