I. Introduction. - 1 Historical Dynamics in the Contact Era. - II. Theoretical Orientations on Culture Contact. - 2 Structure and History: Combining Archaeology and Ethnohistory in the Contact Period Caribbean. - 3 The Persistence of an Explanatory Dilemma in Contact Period Studies. - III. North America: Encounters with Villagers and Chiefdoms. - 4 Stone Tools Steel Tools: Contact Period Household Technology at Helo'. - 5 The Social and Material Implications of Culture Contact on the Northern Plains. - 6 Kee-Oh-Na-Wah'-Wah: The Effects of European Contact on the Caddoan Indians of Texas Louisiana Arkansas and Oklahoma. - 7 Economic and Adaptive Change among the Lake Superior Chippewa of the Nineteenth Century. - 8 Historic Creek Indian Responses to European Trade and the Rise of Political Factions. - 9 Assessing the Significance of European Goods in Seventeenth-Century Narragansett Society. - IV. Mesoamerica: Encounters with States. - 10 Socioeconomic Change within Native Society in Colonial Soconusco New Spain. - 11 The Living Pay for the Dead: Trade Exploitation and Social Change in Early Colonial Izalco El Salvador. - 12 Urban and Rural Dimensions of the Contact Period: Central Mexico 15211620. - V. Conclusion. - Afterword. Language: English