Thursday, January 16, 2025: FREE online via Zoom, 7:00-8:30PM (ARIZONA/Mountain Standard Time): Old Pueblo Archaeology Center’s “Third Thursday Food for Thought” program presents If the Shoe Fits: Subarctic-style Moccasins and the Apachean Journey from the Northern Dene Homeland to the Precontact Southwest by HDR Archaeologist Kevin P. Gilmore, PhD.
BSM Type 2(Bb) moccasin from Montezuma Castle, Arizona,
photo adapted from “If the Shoe Fits” article
by Kevin P. Gilmore, Edward A. Jolie, and John W. Ives
(2024, Journal of Arizona Archaeology 10(2):145-162)
The timing and routes taken by the ancestors of the modern Ndee (Apache) and Diné (Navajo) on their journey south from northern Canada to their current territory in the south has been a matter of speculation since the linguistic relationship between the northern Dene (Athapaskan speakers) and Southwest Apachean speakers was identified more than 100 years ago. Within the last decade, a three-piece Subarctic style BSM type 2(Bb) moccasin associated with proto-Apache Promontory phase migrants has been identified in museum collections from an increasing number of archaeological sites throughout the eastern Great Basin, Southwest, and Western Plains margin. Several recent publications documenting the direct dating, archaeological context, and materials analysis of these artifacts have provided more nuanced understanding of the story of the Dene arrival in the traditional territory of the Ndee and Diné. In this presentation, Kevin Gilmore will discuss factors that may have influenced the initial move to the south by Apachean ancestors, as well as when and how a relatively small group of people with a Subarctic adaptation became differentiated into the Ndee and Diné. Dr. Gilmore, the Archaeology Program Manager at HDR in Englewood, Colorado, has published on the archaeology of eastern Colorado, proto-Apache migration, precontact population, geoarchaeology, gender in precontact Plains society, landscape archaeology, and the paleoenvironmental records found in “pocket fens” in eastern Colorado.Register here for the Zoom webinar and/or contact Old Pueblo by email or telephone 520-798-1201for more info including how to order a color flyer of the talk.