The emergence of village societies out of hunter-gatherer groups profoundly transformed social relations in every part of the world where such communities formed. Drawing on the latest archaeological and historical evidence, this volume explores the development of villages in eastern North America from the Late Archaic period to the eighteenth century. Sites analyzed here include the Kolomoki village in Georgia, Mississippian communities in Tennessee, palisaded villages in the Appalachian Highlands of Virginia, and Iroquoian settlements in New York and Ontario. Contributors use rich data sets and contemporary social theory to describe what these villages looked like, what their rules and cultural norms were, what it meant to be a villager, what cosmological beliefs and ritual systems were held at these sites, and how villages connected with each other in regional networks. They focus on how power dynamics played out at the local level and among interacting communities. Highlighting the similarities and differences in the histories of village formation in the region, these essays trace the processes of negotiation, cooperation, and competition that arose as part of village life and changed societies. This volume shows how studying these village communities helps archaeologists better understand the forces behind human cultural change.

The emergence of village-communities profoundly transformed social organization in every part of the world where such societies developed. Contributors to 'The Archaeology of Villages in Eastern North America' employ archaeological and historical evidence to explore the development of villages among eastern North American indigenous societies of the deep and recent past. Rich data sets from archaeology and contemporary social theory are employed to document the physical attributes of villages, the structural organization and aggregation of such entities, what it means to be a villager, cosmological and ritual systems, and how villages were entangled with one another in regional networks.

This volume highlights the similarities and differences in the historical trajectories of village formation and development in eastern North America, as well as the larger processes by which villages have the power to affect large-scale social transformations. Contributors to this volume employ archaeological and historical evidence to explore the development of villages among eastern North American societies of the deep and recent past.

This is the first detailed analysis of a completely excavated northern Iroquoian community, a sixteenth-century ancestral Wendat village on the north shore of Lake Ontario. The site resulted from the coalescence of multiple small villages into one well-planned and well-integrated community. Jennifer Birch and Ronald F. Williamson frame the development of this community in the context of a historical sequence of site relocations. The social processes that led to its formation, the political and economic lives of its inhabitants, and their relationships to other populations in northeastern North America are explored using multiple scales of analysis. This book is key for those interested in the history and archaeology of eastern North America, the social, political, and economic organization of Iroquoian societies, the archaeology of communities, and processes of settlement aggregation.

The Oxford Handbook of North American Archaeology reviews the continent's first and last foragers, farmers, and great pre-Columbian civic and ceremonial centers, from Chaco Canyon to Moundville and beyond.

'The Archaeology of Removal in North America' examines the material implications of human dislocation, focusing on the 17th through 21st centuries. This text shows how archaeologists are investigating the catalysts, dynamics, and meanings of removal. The contributors to this edited volume illustrate the diverse factors that uproot humans and their material culture. They also explain peoples' roles in removal, their responses to dislocation, and the consequences of being uprooted. A variety of themes are examined, such as forced migration, dispossession, social engineering, value, agrarian labour, class, memory, forgetting, landscapes, racialization, capitalism, violence, government intervention, preservation, neighbourhoods, identity, cultural transformation, networks, and social confinement.

Cook demonstrates that we can better allow for affiliation of archaeological sites with living descendants by more fully examining the complexity of the past.