Defending the Dinetah
Subtitle: pueblitos in the ancestral Navajo homeland
By: Ronald H. Towner
Publisher: University of Utah Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Salt Lake City
Language: eng
Number of pages: 266
Subjects: Navajo architecture; Navajo Indians -- Dwellings; Navajo Indians -- History -- 18th century; Pueblos -- New Mexico; Hogans -- New Mexico; Dendrochronology -- New Mexico; Ethnoarchaeology -- New Mexico; New Mexico -- Colonization; New Mexico -- Antiquities
Description: "Using a database of tree-ring dates taken from beams and wood used to construct these pueblitos, Ronald Towner shows that most pueblitos are unrelated to Puebloan immigration or the reconquest. He concludes that Navajos constructed the masonry structures and hogans contemporaneously for protection against the 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 Dinetah a major contribution to Navajo studies."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-256) and index
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Laying a foundation; title: The Dinetah pueblito sites; title: Temporal and spatial patterns of the pueblito site occupations; title: Climate, the Navajo occupation, and abandonment of the Dinetah; title: A new model of Navajo ethnogenesis