From the Land of Ever Winter to the American Southwest

Athapaskan Migrations, Mobility, and Ethnogenesis

By Deni J. Seymour

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.

Deni J. Seymour has research affiliations with the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Arizona as well as at Jornada Research. She is author of Where the Earth and Sky Are Sewn Together: Sobaipuri-O’odham Contexts of Contact and Colonialism (The University of Utah Press, 2011).

Table of Contents:

List of Figures
List of Tables

1. Athapaskan Migrations, Mobility,and Ethnogenesis: AnIntroduction
Deni J. Seymour
2. Apachean Archaeology of Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, and the Colorado Front Range
Robert H. Brunswig
3. Looking for Lovitt in All the Wrong Places: Migration Models and the Athapaskan Diaspora as Viewed from Eastern Colorado
Kevin P. Gilmore and Sean Larmore
4. TierraBlanca: A Complex Issue
David T. Hughes
5. Isolating a Pre-differentiation Athapaskan Assemblage in the Southern Southwest: The Cerro Rojo Complex
Deni J. Seymour
6. Emergence of the Navajo People
David M. Brugge
7. Navajo Emergence in Dinétah: Social Imaginary and Archaeology
Douglas D. Dykeman and Paul Roebuck
8. We Do Not Forget
We Remember: Mescalero Apache Origins and Migration as Reflected in Place Names
David L. Carmichael and Claire R. Farrer
9. Finding and Not Finding Athapaskans in the Archaeological Record Using Percentage Stratigraphy
Dale Walde
10. Variation in the Production of Ceramics by Athapaskans in the Western United States
David V. Hill
11. DNA Evidence of a Prehistoric Athapaskan Migration from the Subarctic to the Southwest of North America
Ripan S. Malhi
12. Linguistic Evidence Regarding the Apachean Migration
Keren Rice
13. Apache Names in Spanish and Early Mexican Documents:What They Can Tell Us about the Early Contact Apache Dialect Situation
Willem J. de Reuse
14. Southern Athapaskan Quotative Evidentials: A Discursive Areal Typology
Anthony K. Webster
15. The Ancestral Chipewyan Became the Navajo and Apache: New Support for a Northwest Plains–Mountain Route to the American Southwest
Bryan C. Gordon
16. Modeling Athapaskan Migrations
Martin P. R. Magne
17. “Big Trips” and Historic Apache Movement and Interaction: Models for Early Athapaskan Migrations
Deni J. Seymour
18. Issues in Athapaskan Prehistory
Roy L. Carlson

List of Contributors
Index

Praise and Reviews:

“Provides a ‘state-of-the-knowledge’ overview of research on Athapaskan origins and migrations that will serve as a point of reference and departure for future research on the subject.”—William L. Merrill, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution

“A set of lively, deeply informed, and current examinations... All of these essays are worth the close attention of anyone interested not only in the anthropology and history of the American Southwest but also in the worldwide debate about explanations of spread languages and in explanations for how science advances.”—Journal of Anthropological Research

“The most comprehensive, and latest, word on a topic that has intrigued anthropologists for more than a century. Seymour has done a yeoman’s job of seamlessly integrating papers and creating a volume that will be a significant contribution for the next decade and beyond.”—American Antiquity