Everyday Archaeology on the Navajo Nation

Summary

The role of archaeology in facilitating everyday life on the Navajo Nation is a day-to-day concern for many Navajo Nation citizens. Citizens and communities of the Navajo Nation and the nation itself engage with archaeology in three ways. Individual citizens require archaeology to secure the necessary permission to build a home on reservation land. For Navajo communities, archaeology is part and parcel with infrastructure and land use planning and development. At the government level archaeology is required for water and land claims litigation, NAGPRA claims, and TCP identification and protection. The traditional disciplinary goals of site preservation, data collection, and furthering knowledge of the past are secondary to these three more immediate needs of the Navajo people. Academics and CRM professionals who fail to recognize these three necessary engagements that Navajo people have with archaeology run the risk of further alienating the people they seek to engage in archaeological research.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2017   •
• Archaeologies Of Care: Rethinking Priorities In Archaeological Engagements

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 316