Navajo Architecture

Navajo Architecture may well be the most complete study to date of the folk architecture of a tribal society. Enhanced by nearly 200 photographs and drawings, the book explores the whole range of a Native American tradition as it has evolved through the present day--and is already yielding to modernization.



Stephen C. Jett and Virginia E. Spencer have devoted years of fieldwork to studying the origin, evolution, and construction of Navajo buildings: not only hogans, houses, and summer dwellings, but also numerous other structures related to activities such as food preparation, hunting, sweat-bathing, and funerary observation. In addition, they have defined the geographic distribution of dwelling forms to reveal both utilization of local resources and local differences in degree of acculturation.