Early Navajo Social Organization and the Diné-Dibé-Tł’oh Relationship circa AD 1750

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Early Navajo Pastoral Landscape Project is an ongoing study that explores the potential ways that incipient Indigenous pastoralism influenced early Navajo community life circa AD 1750. The recent dung-based identification of potential livestock enclosure features at four different Gobernador Phase Navajo residential clusters presents an opportunity to explore the role played by human-animal-environment interconnection within the larger system of tiered relationships that have traditionally organized Diné society for centuries. In particular, a combined ethnographic and archaeological approach enables one to consider the ways in which increasing Diné reliance on dibé, or sheep, might be connected to hypothetical shifts in early Navajo land use strategies across the greater Four Corners region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36129.0