Navajo Springs Architecture
Architecturally, the site includes a Great House and a Great Kiva encircled by an earthen berm. The Great House probably had as many as 40 rooms in it, with some two-story areas. The walls are constructed using Chaco-style masonry called core-and-veneer, in which two well-prepared or dressed wall facings are filled with rubble.The North Complex of Navajo Springs lies 150 meters northeast of the Great House. It consists of three rubble mound/room blocks and associated middens. A road connects the North Complex and the Great House, and others roads lead out of the Great House toward the northeast, seemingly towards Chaco, although the distance and direction is not known.
Twenty smaller sites, consisting of room blocks of 4 to 50 rooms, and fieldhouses for planting, field maintenance and harvesting, are located in the immediate region. None of these sites has a kiva, and researchers believe the people living in these houses used the Great Kiva at the Great House.
Archaeological Investigations at Navajo Springs
The initial investigations at Navajo Springs were conducted by John R. Stein and Andrew Fowler in the 1980s. Excavations in the 1990s and 2000s were undertaken by the Navajo Nation Archaeology Department (NNAD) and Northern Arizona University.Sources
Warburton, Miranda and Donna K. Graves 1992 Navajo Springs, Arizona: Frontier Outlier or Autonomous Great House? Journal of Field Archaeology 19(1):51-69.
This glossary entry is part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
