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North America During the European Contact Period

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Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology

State of Knowledge and Current Debates

Introduction

Beginning in the age of discovery and exploration, European powers made contact with Native peoples in North America and subsequently colonized the continent. The cultural encounters that took place in North America during the European contact period have had a profound influence on world history with a lasting material legacy. In conjunction with ethnologists, historians, and demographers, archaeologists have employed documentary sources, ethnographic materials, oral accounts, and pictorial images to decipher the archaeological traces of contact to understand the interactions between Natives and newcomers (e.g., Galloway 1991; Nassaney & Johnson 2000a; Paterson 2011: 133-196). Many of the central questions pertaining to the contact period revolve around the ways in which Indigenous peoples, Europeans, and Africans influenced each other and how they impacted the environment in the process of cultural interaction and colonial...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Anthropology, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA

    Michael Shakir Nassaney

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  1. Michael Shakir Nassaney
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Correspondence to Michael Shakir Nassaney .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Claire Smith

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Nassaney, M.S. (2014). North America During the European Contact Period. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_1641

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_1641

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