An Exploration of Navajo-Anasazi Relationships

Abstract

Through a rich body of traditional Navajo narrative, poetry, and song we examine the relationship of Navajo people to the Anasazi. This corpus includes descriptions of initial interactions and of intermarriage between ancestral Navajos and Anasazis and illustrations of complex economic, social, and ceremonial relationships between Navajos and Anasazis. We discuss standard methods of archaeological inference, historical documents, traditional Navajo history as told by contemporary hataałii, and traditional Navajo history recorded by anthropologists and others in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We present an example of how information from a Navajo ceremonial narrative, the Wind Chant, enhances interpretations of a protohistoric Navajo site, LA55979. Finally, we argue for the inclusion of pertinent traditional history in reconstructing a more ethnically complex and intricate past.