The 14th century A.D. was perhaps the most dynamic of any for the Puebloan people of the American Southwest. In 1300, the Four Corners area had been abandoned and Puebloan people lived in at least 16 separate locales west of the Rio Grande Valley. One hundred years latter they had coalesced into only three—the same three that remain today—Hopi, Zuni, and Acoma pueblos. Through a century of unprecedented population movement these prehistoric groups evolved into the tribes of today.
Archaeologist Wesley Bernardini turns to Hopi oral tradition to help trace the movements of these people, and traditional archaeological techniques to confirm site locales. Hopi history is really a history of each of its clans that traces movements from village to village until arriving at the Hopi Mesas in northeastern Arizona. Archaeologists are turning more and more to native traditional knowledge to assist their research. In this volume Bernardini demonstrates how many sources of information can come together to give us a much clearer picture of what happened many centuries ago.
