The Sinagua and the Western Pueblo Tradition: Perspectives from Material Culture and Burial Practices

Summary

The highland country of central Arizona has historically been interpreted as a region peripheral to the

more dominant Hohokam, Kayenta, and Mogollon traditions that surrounded it. However, peripheries are

defined by ones perception of where the center is located. Our case in point is the prehistoric Sinagua,

which has been the subject of a five-year long study and documentation of more than1500 human remains

and 4000 funerary objects that have been repatriated to the Hopi Tribe by the Coconino National Forest, as required by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. These remains span the entire

history of the Sinagua, from about A.D. 600 to 1400, and we believe they demonstrate a developmental

trajectory that merges into the Western Pueblo and its ancestral Hopi groups. Ceramic styles, technologies, iconography, unique artifacts, and burial customs suggest the Sinagua were part of a larger cultural pattern,

a Central Arizona Tradition, that, although populated by different social groups, maintained a distinctiveness

that is reflected by its relationships with surrounding cultural groups through time - relationships that

appear to come together with a coalescence that is evident at the sites of Nuvakwewtaqa, in Chavez Pass.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Pueblos at the Passageway: A Reassessment of Burial Collections From Nuvakwewtaqa, Chavez Pass, Arizona   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage