North America, Southwest: Ancient Peoples of the Four Corners Region

The archaeological record reveals more than 13,000 years of human occupation in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. Paleoindian hunters and gatherers represent the earliest residents of the region, with a highly mobile lifestyle that left ephemeral remains on the landscape in the long period from ca. 10,000–5500 BCE. Around 5500 BCE, the Archaic period began and lasted until the first millennium BCE. Toward the end of the Archaic period, maize agriculture was introduced. Maize cultivation led to the subsequent Ancestral Pueblo period from ca. 800 BCE until the Spanish Entrada in the 1540s. Pueblo descendants reside at numerous modern villages in New Mexico and Arizona. Later, early Diné-Navajo groups moved into the Dinétah area of the Four Corners. Diné families and villages grew and prospered over the decades and centuries, and ultimately migrated west to the area on both sides of the Chuska Mountains that is currently the heartland of the Navajo Reservation.