Edited by Martin Hall and Stephen W. Silliman.

This volume offers lively current debates and case studies in historical archaeology selected from around the world, including North America, Latin America, Africa, the Pacific, and Europe. Authored by 19 experts in the field -- Explores how historical archaeologists think about their work, piecing together information from both material culture and documents in an attempt to understand the lives of the people and societies they study -- Engages with current theory in an accessible manner -- Truly global in its approach but avoids subsuming local experiences of people into global patterns -- Summarizes not only the current state of historical archaeology, but also sets the course for the field in decades to come.

CONTENTS: Introduction: Archaeology of the Modern World -- Dimensions of practice. Environments of History: Biological Dimensions of Historical Archaeology -- Material Culture and Text: Exploring the Spaces Within and Between -- The Place of Space: Architecture, Landscape, and Social Life -- Critical Archaeology: Politics Past and Present -- Themes in Interpretation. Engendered Archaeology: Women, Men, and Others -- Ideology and the Material Culture of Life and Death -- Struggling with Labor, Working with Identities -- Exploring the Institution: Reform, Confinement, Social Change -- A Class All Its Own: Explorations of Class Formation and Conflict / LouAnn Wurst -- World Systems and Local Living. Conquistadors, Plantations, and Quilombo: Latin America in Historical Archaeological Context -- Gold, Black Ivory, and Houses of Stone: Historical Archaeology in Africa -- Becoming American: Small Things Remembered -- Mission, Gold, Furs, and Manifest Destiny: Rethinking an Archaeology of Colonialism for Western North America -- Pacific Encounters, or Beyond the Islands of History -- The Tide Reversed: Prospects and Potentials for a Postcolonial Archaeology of Europe.