Rolly Prager
On January 17, 2019 Friends of SaddleBrooke Libraries will welcome Dr. Patrick Lyons who will discuss Ancestral Hopi Migrations: Hopi Oral Tradition and Archaeological Evidence. The lecture will start at 4:00 p.m. in the MountainView Ballroom.
Dr. Lyons will describe the movements of groups ancestral to the Hopi people of northeastern Arizona, through many parts of what is now the southwestern United States, between the A.D. 1200s and 1400s. He will juxtapose Hopi oral accounts of their ancestors’ migrations with archaeological evidence that indicates a southward dispersal from the Four Corners region some 700 years ago. Lyons tracks ancient migrations based on their unique traditions of architecture and ceramics, as well as their funerary practices and other cultural markers, demonstrating connections between the Hopi people of today and many of the region’s ancient cultures, including the Kayenta, the Mongollon and the Hohokam.
Dr. Lyons is Director of the Arizona State Museum and an associate professor in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Dr. Lyons earned his B.A. and M.A. in anthropology, specializing in archaeology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Arizona. His research focuses on ancient population movements in the U.S. Southwest and the archaeology, history, ethnography and ethnohistory of the Hopi people. He has conducted field work in the Homol’ovi settlement cluster, near present day Winslow and in the San Pedro Valley of southeastern Arizona. He has written extensively on these topics for a number of journals. His latest book, The Davis Ranch Site: A Kayenta Immigrant Enclave in Southwestern Arizona, will be published by the University of Arizona Press in April, 2019.