From the Land of Ever Winter to the American Southwest : Athapaskan Migrations, Mobility, and Ethnogenesis

The Athapaskan departure from the Canadian Subarctic centuries ago and their subsequent arrival in the American Southwest has remained the subject of continuous debate in anthropological research. This book examines archaeological, genetic, linguistic, and traditional oral history data and brings them together in fresh ways, in many cases for the first time. With a backdrop of these new and interrelated lines of evidence, each subfield must now reevaluate its approach and the forms of evidence it uses to construct arguments. The contributors here include the most knowledgeable scholars in each of the above fields, collectively providing the most up-to-date research on early Athapaskans and their movements and migrations. Each chapter approaches Athapaskan migration with data obtained from different regions, providing clarity as to the basis for individual arguments. Often, entrenched regional visualizations and localized conventions are clarified only when placed in juxtaposition to those of other regions. Because of this, conclusions rest on sometimes widely divergent theoretical and methodological underpinnings, thus expressing preference for and conveying weight to certain types of evidence and lines of reasoning. The goal of this volume is to expose these arguments in order to clarify appropriate directions for future research, making advances possible. Intro -- Contents -- Figures -- Tables -- 1. Athapaskan Migrations, Mobility, and Ethnogenesis -- 2. Apachean Archaeology of Rocky Mountain National Park -- 3. Looking for Lovitt in All the Wrong Places -- 4. Tierra Blanca -- 5. Isolating a Pre-differentiation Athapaskan Assemblage -- 6. Emergence of the Navajo People -- 7. Navajo Emergence in Dinétah -- 8. We Do Not Forget -- We Remember -- 9. Finding and Not Finding Athapaskans -- 10. Variation in the Production of Ceramics by Athapaskans -- 11. DNA Evidence of a Prehistoric Athapaskan Migration -- 12. Linguistic Evidence Regarding the Apachean Migration -- 13. Apache Names in Spanish and Early Mexican Documents -- 14. Southern Athapaskan Quotative Evidentials -- 15. The Ancestral Chipewyan Became the Navajo and Apache -- 16. Modeling Athapaskan Migrations -- 17. "Big Trips" and Historic Apache Movement and Interaction -- 18. Issues in Athapaskan Prehistory -- Contributors -- Index