Despite its slow development, historical archaeology has been steadily maturing over the past three decades. Archaeologists today are exploring daily life in the post-1500 world at an increasing pace, investigating sites throughout the world--frequently locales where historical archaeology was never before practiced--using a variety of complex theories and perspectives. Given the explosion of worldwide research, it is now possible to create a new historical archaeology: a modern-world archaeology that explicitly explores modern life in all its variations, extending from local to global scales of analysis. Focused on four overarching elements of the post-Columbian world (colonialism, Eurocentrism, racialization, and capitalism), A Primer on Modern-World Archaeology is designed to introduce this new kind of historical archaeology to undergraduates, graduate students, and everyone interested in the material expressions of how the present world came to be. Major perspectives are presented in accessible language and study questions are provided at the end of each chapter.

Despite its slow development, historical archaeology has been steadily maturing over the past three decades. Archaeologists today are exploring daily life in the post-1500 world at an increasing pace, investigating sites throughout the world--frequently locales where historical archaeology was never before practiced--using a variety of complex theories and perspectives. Given the explosion of worldwide research, it is now possible to create a new historical archaeology: a modern-world archaeology that explicitly explores modern life in all its variations, extending from local to global scales of analysis. Focused on four overarching elements of the post-Columbian world (colonialism, Eurocentrism, racialization, and capitalism), A Primer on Modern-World Archaeology is designed to introduce this new kind of historical archaeology to undergraduates, graduate students, and everyone interested in the material expressions of how the present world came to be. Major perspectives are presented in accessible language and study questions are provided at the end of each chapter.

In this milestone work, William Fowler uses archaeology, history, and social theory to show that the establishment of cities was essential to Spanish colonialism. Fowler draws upon decades of archaeological research on the landscape, built environment, and architecture of Ciudad Vieja, a sixteenth-century site located in present-day El Salvador and the best-preserved Spanish colonial city in Latin America. Fowler compares Ciudad Vieja to other urban sites in the region and to the tradition of urbanism in early modern Spain to determine how the Spanish grid-plan layout was modified and implemented in the Americas. Using extensive archival material, Fowler describes how this layout reflected and perpetuated power structures that benefited the Spanish although the city’s Indigenous population was greater in number. Fowler analyzes recorded interactions between colonists, Indigenous peoples, and enslaved Africans to demonstrate the ways the cityscape affected the relationships among individuals and cultural groups. Offering an unparalleled view into a critical moment in Latin American history, this book offers new ways of looking at urbanism and colonialism as intertwined forces in the emergence of the early modern world.

The Routledge Handbook of Global Historical Archaeology is a multi-authored compendium of articles on specific topics of interest to today’s historical archaeologists, offering perspectives on the current state of research and collectively outlining future directions for the field. The broad range of topics covered in this volume allows for specificity within individual chapters, while building to a cumulative overview of the field of historical archaeology as it stands, and where it could go next. Archaeological research is discussed in the context of current sociological concerns, different approaches and techniques are assessed, and potential advances are posited. This is a comprehensive treatment of the sub-discipline, engaging key contemporary debates, and providing a series of specially-commissioned geographical overviews to complement the more theoretical explorations. This book is designed to offer a starting point for students who may wish to pursue particular topics in more depth, as well as for non-archaeologists who have an interest in historical archaeology. Archaeologists, historians, preservationists, and all scholars interested in the role historical archaeology plays in illuminating daily life during the past five centuries will find this volume engaging and enlightening.

Explores the tremendous discoveries historical archaeologists have made about English life in the Americas during the seventeenth century.

This book provides a short, readable introduction to historical archaeology, which focuses on modern history in all its fascinating regional, cultural, and ethnic diversity. Accessibly covering key methods and concepts, including fundamental theories and principles, the history of the field, and basic definitions, Historical Archaeology also includes a practical look at career prospects for interested readers. Orser discusses central topics of archaeological research such as time and space, survey and excavation methods, and analytical techniques, encouraging readers to consider the possible meanings of artifacts. Drawing on the author’s extensive experience as an historical archaeologist, the book’s perspective ranges from the local to the global in order to demonstrate the real importance of this subject to our understanding of the world in which we live today. The third edition of this popular textbook has been significantly revised and expanded to reflect recent developments and discoveries in this exciting area of study. Each chapter includes updated case studies which demonstrate the research conducted by professional historical archaeologists. With its engaging approach to the subject, Historical Archaeology continues to be an ideal resource for readers who wish to be introduced to this rapidly expanding global field.

In the second edition of Archaeological Thinking, Charles E. Orser, Jr. provides an updated guide to the critical thinking skills archaeologists use to unravel the stories of history’s buried past.

In recent decades, the vast and culturally diverse Indian Ocean region has increasingly attracted the attention of anthropologists, historians, political scientists, sociologists, and other researchers. Largely missing from this growing body of scholarship, however, are significant contributions by archaeologists and consciously interdisciplinary approaches to studying the region’s past and present. Connecting Continents addresses two important issues: how best to promote collaborative research on the Indian Ocean world, and how to shape the research agenda for a region that has only recently begun to attract serious interest from historical archaeologists. The archaeologists, historians, and other scholars who have contributed to this volume tackle important topics such as the nature and dynamics of migration, colonization, and cultural syncretism that are central to understanding the human experience in the Indian Ocean basin. This groundbreaking work also deepens our understanding of topics of increasing scholarly and popular interest, such as the ways in which people construct and understand their heritage and can make use of exciting new technologies like DNA and environmental analysis. Because it adopts such an explicitly comparative approach to the Indian Ocean, Connecting Continents provides a compelling model for multidisciplinary approaches to studying other parts of the globe. Contributors: Richard B. Allen, Edward A. Alpers, Atholl Anderson, Nicole Boivin, Diego Calaon, Aaron Camens, Saša Čaval, Geoffrey Clark, Alison Crowther, Corinne Forest, Simon Haberle, Diana Heise, Mark Horton, Paul Lane, Martin Mhando, and Alistair Patterson.

"For more than a century, scholars have critiqued, misinterpreted, and bickered about Marx's concept of mode of production. Modes of Production and Archaeology cuts through the dense and thorny intellectual thicket that grew up from these debates. The book presents an easily understood discussion of Marx's concepts and demonstrates how archaeologists can analyze modes of production to explain long-term patterns in cultural change."--Randall McGuire, author of Archaeology as Political Action "Shows clearly how historical materialist ideas and concepts are productive in developing the theory and practice of archaeology."--Robert Chapman, author of Archaeologies of Complexity "Covers a huge range of ground and brings together ideas and analyses in a way that has not really been done yet in archaeology."--Colin Grier, Washington State University Contributors to this volume explain how archaeologists can use Karl Marx and Frederick Engels' mode of production concept to study long-term patterns in human society. Mode of production analysis describes how labor is organized to create surplus which is then used for political purposes. This type of analysis allows archaeologists to compare and contrast peoples across distant continents and eras, from hunter-gatherer groups to early agriculturalists to nation-states. Presenting a range of different perspectives from researchers working in a wide variety of societies and time periods, this volume clearly demonstrates why historical materialism matters to the field of archaeology.

Pākehā Settlements in a Māori World offers a vivid account of early European experience in these islands, through material evidence offered by the archaeological record. As European exploration in the 1770s gave way to sealing, whaling and timber-felling, Pākehā visitors first became sojourners in small, remote camps, then settlers scattered around the coast. Over time, mission stations were established, alongside farms, businesses and industries, and eventually towns and government centres. Through these decades a small but growing Pākehā population lived within and alongside a Māori world, often interacting closely. This phase drew to a close in the 1850s, as the numbers of Pākehā began to exceed the Māori population, and the wars of the 1860s brought brutal transformation to the emerging society and its economy. Archaeologist Ian Smith tells the story of adaptation, change and continuity as two vastly different cultures learned to inhabit the same country. From the scant physical signs of first contact to the wealth of detail about daily life in established settlements, archaeological evidence amplifies the historical narrative. Glimpses of a world in the midst of turbulent change abound in this richly illustrated book. As the visual narrative makes clear, archaeology brings history into the present, making the past visible in the landscape around us and enabling an understanding of complex histories in the places we inhabit.