Absent or Overlooked: Addressing the Early Athapaskan Presence in the San Juan Basin of Northwest New Mexico

Summary

The San Juan Basin of New Mexico is one of the most archaeologically rich areas of the American Southwest. Three years in, the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project is the latest in a long history of infrastructure projects that provides the opportunity to conduct archaeological research and expand our understanding of the past. One question being addressed is when the Southern Athapaskans moved into the upper San Juan Basin and how long they occupied it before Navajo culture emerged. At the present time, archaeological evidence for the earliest emergence of Navajo culture (forked stick hogans, sweat lodges, characteristic ceramic and lithic technologies, maize agriculture) points to the A.D. 1500s. Archaeological evidence for an earlier Athapaskan presence has proven elusive, and interpretation of data has been prejudiced by hypotheses regarding the timing of migrations. Further complicating this issue is that most aceramic artifact scatters and camp sites encountered on large data recovery projects that may shed light on this issue have not been selected for investigation as they are considered to have minimum research potential. The current project seeks to devote more attention to defining and dating sites that may contribute to understanding the early Athapaskan occupation of the region.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage