ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter surveys the state of archaeological studies of colonial entanglements in the Americas. The archaeology of Indigenous-colonial interaction in the Americas is emerging from a decades-long shift in orientation, one that has moved the field to the forefront of theoretical and methodological debates in archaeology. Whereas many foundational works focused on the lasting legacies of European and American colonialism for the Native peoples of the Americas, such as demographic losses and acculturation, more recent approaches acknowledge the hardships of colonialism but also work from the premise that Indigenous societies persisted in various ways. Accordingly, the chapter primarily examines the approaches archaeologists employ to understand how Indigenous peoples dealt with the imposition of colonialism rather than the study of colonial institutions themselves. An important point is that colonial relations continue to this day, both between settler states and Indigenous peoples but also within the field of archaeology itself. We briefly highlight several key advances, critiques, and debates with reference to the chapters included in this volume.
