Wade Campbell, Isabel Beach, Zachary Dunseth new article in the Journal of Field Archaeology
The article was a co-authored endeavor with folks from BU Isabel Beach and Zach Dunseth (also note that BU Archaeology alum Adam Vitale helped with the fieldwork!).
Article (link & attachment): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00934690.2025.2521765#abstract
ABSTRACT
The introduction of sheep to the U.S. Southwest in a.d. 1598 and their embrace by non-colonized Diné (Navajo) communities over the next 150 years represents a unique cultural shift in Indigenous North America whose effects can still be seen today. Because the early history of this process remains poorly understood, the Early Navajo Pastoral Landscape Project (ENPLP) was developed to explore incipient pastoralism’s role in early Diné society. This paper reports a minimally invasive methodology for identifying Gobernador Phase (ca. a.d. 1625–1760) Navajo sheepherding sites in northwestern New Mexico through the identification of calcitic dung spherulites in archaeological soil samples associated with likely corral/pen enclosures. Dung spherulite-focused approaches have been successfully employed at dozens of sites worldwide, and the results of the ENPLP Phase 3 analyses suggest that this approach does work in the early Navajo context, although there are a series of potential limiting factors.
The photo is of Wade collecting soil samples from an early 18th century site in the Dinétah region of northwest NM.
