Abstract
The colonial states of Europe have left behind a record of their past not only in the documents relating to their overseas adventures but also in the objects they discarded or left behind. Although archaeology is usually thought of as a discipline concerned primarily with prehistory and ancient high civilizations, it is also useful in investigating the relatively recent expansion of European settlement, a process about which much is still unknown (1). In America archaeology has often been successfully employed in studying colonial societies in all stages of their development (2). Archaeology's ability to add to our knowledge about the past is based upon the extent to which its methodology can extract information comparable to that commonly gleaned from documentary sources. It would please me greatly if historians who had hitherto worked only with documents would begin to consider whether or not there exist archaeological possibilities in their study fields; though I realize that this could not be so in every instance.
Published Version
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