Ethnohistory and Archaeology Approaches to Postcontact Change in the Americas

Incorporating both archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence, this volume reexamines the role played by native peoples in structuring interaction with Europeans. The more complete historical picture presented will be of interest to scholars and students of archaeology, anthropology, and history.

I. Introduction.- 1 • Historical Dynamics in the Contact Era.- II. Theoretical Orientations on Culture Contact.- 2 • Structure and History: Combining Archaeology and Ethnohistory in the Contact Period Caribbean.- 3 • The Persistence of an Explanatory Dilemma in Contact Period Studies.- III. North America: Encounters with Villagers and Chiefdoms.- 4 • Stone Tools, Steel Tools: Contact Period Household Technology at Helo’.- 5 • The Social and Material Implications of Culture Contact on the Northern Plains.- 6 • Kee-Oh-Na-Wah’-Wah: The Effects of European Contact on the Caddoan Indians of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.- 7 • Economic and Adaptive Change among the Lake Superior Chippewa of the Nineteenth Century.- 8 • Historic Creek Indian Responses to European Trade and the Rise of Political Factions.- 9 • Assessing the Significance of European Goods in Seventeenth-Century Narragansett Society.- IV. Mesoamerica: Encounters with States.- 10 • Socioeconomic Change within Native Society in Colonial Soconusco, New Spain.- 11 • The Living Pay for the Dead: Trade, Exploitation, and Social Change in Early Colonial Izalco, El Salvador.- 12 • Urban and Rural Dimensions of the Contact Period: Central Mexico, 1521–1620.- V. Conclusion.- Afterword.