Tau of doors: footprints of the past

White, Sean William (2023) Tau of doors: footprints of the past. Masters thesis, Northern Arizona University.

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Abstract

T-shaped doors are an enigmatic architectural feature. These features were built in the US Southwest and Mexican Northwest (SW/NW) first at Chaco Canyon around 1020 CE, then expanding throughout the region. T-shaped doors interest archaeologists because of their apparent sudden appearance and potential connection to structures in Mesoamerica. Lekson (2015) has used these features in his argument for the “Chaco Meridian,” a singular social and political group that began at Chaco and later migrated to two monumental sites along a north-south meridian in the SW/NW, first Aztec, New Mexico, then Paquimé, Chihuahua. His argument is bolstered by a perceived scarcity of T-shaped doors outside of this north-south corridor. T-shaped doors do occur outside that corridor in what is now Arizona but have not been systematically identified and counted prior to this research. Callis (2021) has further argued T-shaped doors originate in Mesoamerica because of the similarity of Maya symbols to the T-shape in the SW/NW. This paper addresses the following research questions. What are T-shaped doors? Where do T-shaped doors occur in Arizona? Is there a connection between the Chaco Canyon and Arizona T-shaped doors? To address these questions, I created a data set to systematically identify and count T-shaped doors in Arizona. Based on the following research, T-shaped doors in Arizona do not coincide with Lekson’s and Callis’s theories, and instead Bernardini’s Indigenous Hopi framework as presented in Becoming Hopi (2021) is a far better explanation of this enigmatic feature.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Publisher’s Statement:	© Copyright is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the Cline Library, Northern Arizona University. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.
Keywords:	Arizona; Hopi; Interaction; Southwest; T-shaped doors; Archaeology; Lekson
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology
NAU Depositing Author Academic Status:	Student
Department/Unit:	Graduate College > Theses and Dissertations College of Social and Behavioral Science > Anthropology
Date Deposited:	22 Oct 2025 21:44
Last Modified:	22 Oct 2025 21:44
URI:	https://openknowledge.nau.edu/id/eprint/6231

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