ABSTRACT
Cultural diffusion and the conjoining of cultural streams have characterized history and prehistory from their inception. In the Southwest, first the Spanish and then the Anglo-Americans both intentionally and inadvertently wrought changes which have transformed many aspects of native culture. The building of conical pole-and-brush shelters based on tripod foundations was brought to the Southwest by the migrating pre-Navajo. Refugee Puebloans settling among the Navajo in the 1690s began building small stone-and-mud masonry pueblos. Navajos may have participated in some of Modern Anglo-American frame house construction, and circular masonry structures fairly called stone hogans had appeared by the early eighteenth century. The conjunction of elements from at least four major cultural traditions created a set of unique dwelling types unequivocably and exclusively identifiable with one of those cultural traditions. Probably the essential condition of "hogan-ness" is the structure's being uniquely Navajo. Most hogan types are essentially unique.
