Migration and the Movement of Southwestern Peoples

For the past several decades, migration, as an explanation of culture change, has been largely ignored by archaeologists in the American Southwest and elsewhere. Although the late 13th Century migration of peoples from the Four-Corners region of the American Southwest to the Rio Grande has long been accepted in popular accounts, it has not received recent archaelogical treatment. This paper examines the intellectual framework within which migration studies developed in the Southwest and explores the applicability of approaches developed in other fields, such as geography and demography, to this classic Southwestern migration.