The North American Continental System: Interaction and Exchange across the Continent

The pre-Columbian peoples of North America inhabited a "known world" that stretched, at a minimum, from Canada to Panama. Archaeological discoveries show that items such as shell, obsidian, and bead-types were conveyed over thousands of miles, while ethnohistoric accounts document the movement of people across equally vast distances. Just as important, shared stories, oral narratives, ideologies, and traditions point to histories of interaction between distant places stretching deep into antiquity. How should archaeologists deal with these long-distance connections, and what do these connections mean for cultural narratives and models of social change we construct for regions where we work? This session will bring together archaeologists working in different parts of North America to compare our continent’s history of interregional interactions. By patching together a mosaic of different stories of interaction we will build towards a bigger history of North America’s dynamic past that will help us understand its unique indigenous present.