THE ORIGINS OF NAVAJO SETTLEMENT PATTERNS∗

Navajo population dispersal and socioterritorial units appear to derive from Northern Hunter practices. Navajo nuclear families occupy a hogan or house and its immediate surroundings. Larger socioterritorial units are: 1) homestead groups, typically consisting of matrilocal extended families which cooperatively utilize territories and whose hogans are loosely clustered into “camps” 2) resident lineages, made up of related extended families occupying adjacent territories; and 3) communities, which are probably the contemporary equivalent of historic bands or semibands, and which include a number of homestead-group or resident-lineage territories. These groupings are similar to those of the Navajo's Canadian and Southwestern linguistic relatives but contrast with the Navajo's Puebloan neighbors'practices. Various transhumant seasonal migration patterns occur among the Navajo according to local differences in land-use capabilities, especially for farming versus for grazing. The short-term mobility and seasonal migrations of the Navajo's northern hunting-and-gathering ancestors seem to have preadapted the Navajo for the Pueblo/Hispano-derivitive extensive-farming and sheep-herding economy adopted by the Navajo in the Southwest, which requires the use of sparse, scattered resources.