Building a Better Chronology for Fifteenth–Eighteenth-Century Eastern North America through Radiocarbon Dating and Collaborative Research Agendas

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Building a Better Chronology for Fifteenth–Eighteenth-Century Eastern North America through Radiocarbon Dating and Collaborative Research Agendas" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Participants in this session recognize the need to emancipate sites and events dating to the later fifteenth through early eighteenth centuries from outdated culture-historical taxa. Terms such as Mississippian, Woodland, protohistoric, and periodization based on ceramic types and European-manufactured objects have little relevance to contemporary descendant communities and collaborative research agendas focused on this crucial period in Indigenous and early colonial history. Advances in radiocarbon dating, including sampling strategies, laboratory methods, and statistical modelling incorporating informative priors are allowing researchers to overcome previous challenges associated with the calibration curve. Enhanced chronologies are transforming understandings of settlement patterns, population movement, the circulation of material goods, and permitting the articulation of historical and traditional knowledge in ways that are providing new insights about Indigenous agency, the timing and pace of cultural transformations, and processes of accommodation and resistance to colonial incursions. The aim of this session is to highlight research involving contact-era chronology-building in the eastern Woodlands of North America, collectively evaluate the current coverage of radiocarbon dated sites and components, and take steps towards developing collaborative research agendas that consider continental- to local-scale questions about Indigenous and early colonial transformations in eastern North America.