To and From Hopi: Negotiating Identity through Migration, Coalescence, and Closure at the Homol'ovi Settlement Cluster

Summary

The Homol’ovi Settlement Cluster (HSC) holds a significant place in Hopi history as a source of immigrants and a destination for emigrants. In addition to representing an important location along the migration route for groups from the South and East, these villages also housed people who temporarily emigrated from the Hopi mesas. As such, the HSC provides a unique perspective on the processes of population and social movement that contributed to the current form of Hopi society. Using the material record and ethnographic accounts, we examine the complex and multifaceted negotiations of identities that occurred within these villages. These negotiations began as immigrants arrived and established new villages in the region, and continued through the processes of coalescence and the final practices of closure that marked the end of occupation around 1400. We address the diversity of groups that persisted at the HSC through the expressions of passive and active identity in artifacts, such as ceramics, and practices of deposition and closure in order to highlight the accumulation, flexibility, and persistence of social identities that define Hopi people past and present.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Pueblo Movement and the Archaeology of Becoming

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14836