Among the most striking features of the northwestern New Mexico landscape are the more than 130 fortresses and towers built on boulders, promontories, and mesa rims. These "pueblitos" in the traditional Navajo homeland of Dinétah have been a key piece of evidence used by archaeologists to infer a massive immigration of Puebloans into the Navajo country following the Spanish re-conquest of New Mexico (ca. 1700), yet they have never been comprehensively analyzed. Using a database of tree-ring dates taken from beams and wood used to construct these pueblitos, Ronald Towner shows in this volume that most pueblitos are unrelated to Puebloan immigration or the re-conquest. He concludes that Navajos constructed the masonry structures and hogans contemporaneously for protection against Ute raiders and later Spanish entradas. Further, most were occupied for relatively brief periods and population density was much lower than has been assumed. Towner points to a new model of Navajo ethnogenesis, based on a revised early population distribution and a variety of other means of incorporating non-Athapaskan elements into Navajo culture, making Defending the Dinétah a major contribution to Navajo studies.

For the first time, a sweeping history of the Diné that is foregrounded in oral tradition. Authors Klara Kelley and Harris Francis share Diné history from pre-Columbian time to the present, using ethnographic interviews in which Navajo people reveal their oral histories on key events such as Athabaskan migrations, trading and trails, Diné clans, the Long Walk of 1864, and the struggle to keep their culture alive under colonizers who brought the railroad, coal mining, trading posts, and, finally, climate change. The early chapters, based on ceremonial origin stories, tell about Diné forebears. Next come the histories of Diné clans from late pre-Columbian to early post-Columbian times, and the coming together of the Diné as a sovereign people. Later chapters are based on histories of families, individuals, and communities, and tell how the Diné have struggled to keep their bond with the land under settler encroachment, relocation, loss of land-based self-sufficiency through the trading-post system, energy resource extraction, and climate change. Archaeological and documentary information supplements the oral histories, providing a comprehensive investigation of Navajo history and offering new insights into their twentieth-century relationships with Hispanic and Anglo settlers. For Diné readers, the book offers empowering histories and stories of Diné cultural sovereignty. “In short,” the authors say, “it may help you to know how you came to be where—and who—you are.”

Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country offers a fresh interpretation of the history of Navajo (Diné) pastoralism. The dramatic reduction of livestock on the Navajo Reservation in the 1930s -- when hundreds of thousands of sheep, goats, and horses were killed -- was an ambitious attempt by the federal government to eliminate overgrazing on an arid landscape and to better the lives of the people who lived there. Instead, the policy was a disaster, resulting in the loss of livelihood for Navajos -- especially women, the primary owners and tenders of the animals -- without significant improvement of the grazing lands. Livestock on the reservation increased exponentially after the late 1860s as more and more people and animals, hemmed in on all sides by Anglo and Hispanic ranchers, tried to feed themselves on an increasingly barren landscape. At the beginning of the twentieth century, grazing lands were showing signs of distress. As soil conditions worsened, weeds unpalatable for livestock pushed out nutritious native grasses, until by the 1930s federal officials believed conditions had reached a critical point. Well-intentioned New Dealers made serious errors in anticipating the human and environmental consequences of removing or killing tens of thousands of animals. Environmental historian Marsha Weisiger examines the factors that led to the poor condition of the range and explains how the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Navajos, and climate change contributed to it. Using archival sources and oral accounts, she describes the importance of land and stock animals in Navajo culture. By positioning women at the center of the story, she demonstrates the place they hold as significant actors in Native American and environmental history. Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country is a compelling and important story that looks at the people and conditions that contributed to a botched policy whose legacy is still felt by the Navajos and their lands today.

This fourth edition of David Grant Noble's indispensable guide to archaeological ruins of the American Southwest includes updated text and many newly opened archaeological sites. From Alibates Flint Quarries in Texas to the Zuni-Acoma Trail in New Mexico, readers are provided with such favorites as Chaco Canyon and new treasures such as Sears Kay Ruin. In addition to descriptions of each site, Noble provides time-saving tips for the traveler, citing major highways, nearby towns and the facilities they offer, campgrounds, and other helpful information. Filled with photos of ruins, petroglyphs, and artifacts, as well as maps, this is a guide every traveler needs when exploring the Southwest.

The American Southwest is one of the most important archaeological regions in the world, with many of the best-studied examples of hunter-gatherer and village-based societies. Research has been carried out in the region for well over a century, and during this time the Southwest has repeatedly stood at the forefront of the development of new archaeological methods and theories. Moreover, research in the Southwest has long been a key site of collaboration between archaeologists, ethnographers, historians, linguists, biological anthropologists, and indigenous intellectuals. This volume marks the most ambitious effort to take stock of the empirical evidence, theoretical orientations, and historical reconstructions of the American Southwest. Over seventy top scholars have joined forces to produce an unparalleled survey of state of archaeological knowledge in the region. Themed chapters on particular methods and theories are accompanied by comprehensive overviews of the culture histories of particular archaeological sequences, from the initial Paleoindian occupation, to the rise of a major ritual center in Chaco Canyon, to the onset of the Spanish and American imperial projects. The result is an essential volume for any researcher working in the region as well as any archaeologist looking to take the pulse of contemporary trends in this key research tradition.

A treatise on the archaeology, history, ethnohistory, linguistics, and religion of the peoples of the Southwest-the Navajo, Keresans, Tanoans, Utes, Spaniards and Anglos, who are the tapestry of that land. This book is about people-where they lived, what they believed, and how they interacted with others. The chapters are entitled: The Navajo Eden: The Dinetah; The Eastern Ancestral Puebloans; The Spaniards Enter and Settle, 1540-1700; The Tanoan and Keresan Rio Grande Puebloans; Acculturation in the Dinetah; Keresan and Tanoan Religions and Societal Organizations; Navajo Origin Myth and Societal Organization; Protohistoric Rio Grande Ceremonialism; Gods of the Navajo Night Chant; Universal Female and Male Deities."

In Art in the Pre-Hispanic Southwest: An Archaeology of Native American Cultures, Radosław Palonka reconstructs the development of pre-Hispanic Native American cultures and tribes in the American Southwest and Mexican Northwest. Palonka also examines the wider context through the lenses of settlement studies and social transformation, while paying close attention to the material manifestations of pre-Hispanic beliefs, including intricately decorated ceramics and rock art iconography in paintings and petroglyphs.