In Contact: Bodies and Spaces in the Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Eastern Woodlands

by Diana DiPaolo Loren

Overview

The first two centuries of contact between Native and non-Native groups set into motion new social practices, definitions of personhood, and hierarchies of class, ethnicity, race, and gender. Diana diPaolo Loren focuses on the social and material interactions between groups living east of the Mississippi River during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Contact explores how these diverse groups lived, worked, fought, intermarried, and died while unpacking the baggage of colonial contact.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780759106604
Publisher:	AltaMira Press
Publication date:	12/14/2007
Series:	Issues in Eastern Woodlands Archaeology
Pages:	156
Product dimensions:	6.34(w) x 9.35(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

Diana DiPaolo Loren is a curator with Harvard University's Peabody Museum, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction to topics and themes of early colonial encounters
Chapter 2 Old World Departures, New World Endings and Beginnings
Chapter 3 Forging new identities by redefining space
Chapter 4 Identity strategies - recasting self
Chapter 5 Looking Forward
Chapter 6 References

Editorial Reviews

This book integrates the insights of the disciplines most concerned with the early colonial period and will serve as a useful text for undergraduate courses in both ethnohistory and archaeology, although it will likely be of greatest use to those concerned with historical archaeology of the Eastern Woodlands since it covers ground historians and cultural anthropologists have considered in some depth already. The book is strongest where it reflects the author's expertise in material culture. In particular, Loren's discussion of the construction of identity through the use of material objects will undoubtedly provoke thoughtful discussion. Her critical analyses of various ethnographic, archaeological and visual primary sources are especially interesting.. .. Loren offers a fresh perspective for the North American Eastern Woodlands and one that will be of interest to historical archaeologists and students of the region.

Northwest Ohio History

Diana Loren's exploration of the material and social outcomes of Native and non-Native interactions will clearly be a welcome addition to the literature. She is aware of the terminological morass associated with studies of this genre, and this book does a good job of sorting out the history of anthropological approaches to acculturation, contact, colonialism, and related themes. She also introduces relatively new concepts to frame the processes of contact and interaction as multi-faceted, situational, and negotiated processes.

Michael Nassaney