A chronicle of the Navajo people describing the hardships and rewards of early band life, and how they dealt with the influences of Spanish, Mexican and American forces.

A treatise on the archaeology, history, ethnohistory, linguistics, and religion of the peoples of the Southwest-the Navajo, Keresans, Tanoans, Utes, Spaniards and Anglos, who are the tapestry of that land. This book is about people-where they lived, what they believed, and how they interacted with others. The chapters are entitled: The Navajo Eden: The Dinetah; The Eastern Ancestral Puebloans; The Spaniards Enter and Settle, 1540-1700; The Tanoan and Keresan Rio Grande Puebloans; Acculturation in the Dinetah; Keresan and Tanoan Religions and Societal Organizations; Navajo Origin Myth and Societal Organization; Protohistoric Rio Grande Ceremonialism; Gods of the Navajo Night Chant; Universal Female and Male Deities."

Among the most striking features of the northwestern New Mexico landscape are the more than 130 fortresses and towers built on boulders, promontories, and mesa rims. These "pueblitos" in the traditional Navajo homeland of Dinétah have been a key piece of evidence used by archaeologists to infer a massive immigration of Puebloans into the Navajo country following the Spanish re-conquest of New Mexico (ca. 1700), yet they have never been comprehensively analyzed. Using a database of tree-ring dates taken from beams and wood used to construct these pueblitos, Ronald Towner shows in this volume that most pueblitos are unrelated to Puebloan immigration or the re-conquest. He concludes that Navajos constructed the masonry structures and hogans contemporaneously for protection against Ute raiders and later Spanish entradas. Further, most were occupied for relatively brief periods and population density was much lower than has been assumed. Towner points to a new model of Navajo ethnogenesis, based on a revised early population distribution and a variety of other means of incorporating non-Athapaskan elements into Navajo culture, making Defending the Dinétah a major contribution to Navajo studies.

The American Southwest is one of the most important archaeological regions in the world, with many of the best-studied examples of hunter-gatherer and village-based societies. Research has been carried out in the region for well over a century, and during this time the Southwest has repeatedly stood at the forefront of the development of new archaeological methods and theories. Moreover, research in the Southwest has long been a key site of collaboration between archaeologists, ethnographers, historians, linguists, biological anthropologists, and indigenous intellectuals. This volume marks the most ambitious effort to take stock of the empirical evidence, theoretical orientations, and historical reconstructions of the American Southwest. Over seventy top scholars have joined forces to produce an unparalleled survey of state of archaeological knowledge in the region. Themed chapters on particular methods and theories are accompanied by comprehensive overviews of the culture histories of particular archaeological sequences, from the initial Paleoindian occupation, to the rise of a major ritual center in Chaco Canyon, to the onset of the Spanish and American imperial projects. The result is an essential volume for any researcher working in the region as well as any archaeologist looking to take the pulse of contemporary trends in this key research tradition.

The indispensable traveler's guide to the history of places throughout the Land of Enchantment.