Foragers and farmers of the northern Kayenta region

Foragers and Farmers of the Northern Kayenta Region presents the results of a major archaeological excavation project on Navajo tribal land in the Four Corners area and integrates this new information with existing knowledge of the archaeology of the region. The excavation of 33 sites provides a cross section of prehistory from which Navajo Nation archaeologists retrieved a wealth of information about subsistence, settlement, architecture, and other aspects of past lifeways.

The 58 separate temporal components that were excavated are grouped into three major intervals: (1) 16 components from Archaic foragers who occupied the area during two extended periods from about 8000 to 5000 BC and then again from 2500 to 800 BC, (2) 17 components, mostly residential in nature from the initial farmers of the area known as Basketmakers, that are well dated to a period from about 400 BC to AD 600, and (3) 25 Puebloan components, mostly small habitations, that date between AD 1050 and 1260. The project also included a limited study of Atlatl Rock Cave, which contains dry deposits dating back to the early Archaic (ca. 7000 BC). The project's most important contributions involve the Basketmaker and Archaic periods, and include a large number of radiocarbon dates on high-quality samples. The excavated Basketmaker sites complement and augment both geographically and temporally the findings from northern Black Mesa.

The project revealed long-duration use of a few favored locales--something not seen on Black Mesa--and several sites provided evidence for the Basketmaker II-III transition, which is not widely known throughout the Four Corners. The project found compelling evidence in favor of discontinuity from Archaic to Basketmaker for the northern Kayenta region and is backed by the findings from caves of the area, which likewise exhibit a lack of continuity in occupation and material culture. This volume is a summary of the four digital volumes that are available on The University of Utah Press website. They are a powerful record of ancient peoples and their cultures.--Book jacket.