Ethnoarchaeology of the Black Hat Navajos: Historical and Ahistorical Determinants of Site Features

Abstract

This paper reports some results of an ethnoarchaeological study of Navajo sites on a coal mine lease near Black Hat, in northwestern New Mexico. Before the 1950s, features on Black Hat Navajo archaeological sites mainly reflect three ahistorical factors: the physical attributes of a site's occupants; responses of the occupants to weather; and how much of the year the occupants used a site. Historical changes in Navajo political economy interacted with these three factors to produce changes in the dimensions and other feature characteristics on Navajo sites. Navajo archaeological sites that date from the last twenty or thirty years, however, seem not to reflect the same ahistorical factors; industrialization has apparently caused this change. Thus, political economic change has in the end eliminated the influence of the three ahistorical factors.