The Archaeologies of Contact, Colony, and Resistance

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The Archaeologies of Contact, Colony, and Resistance," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Since the first European contacts more than 525 years ago, the entire cultural history of the Western Hemisphere has been dominated by interactions and tensions between native peoples and foreign interlopers. Few areas of the world or extended periods of time have seen more dramatic social change. This session seeks to explore sociocultural, material, and documented responses in the "new world" through a broad range of case studies. These studies will focus on three major themes: initial cross-cultural contacts, attempts at and effects various colonizing efforts, and responses of native peoples through acts of resistance or assimilation. It is clear that the entire new world was not impacted uniformly by initial European contact, nor was native reaction to that contact or subsequent colonization uniform. A wide range of topics covering an extensive geographic area explores the way diverse groups responded to these challenges through creation of institutions, cultural reaction and change, and a varied range of accommodations and resistance.