Amazon.com description: Product Description: This book is one of a series of more than 20 volumes resulting from the World Archaeological Congress, September l986. The series attempts to bring together archaeologists and anthropologists from many parts of the world, as well as academics from contingent disciplines and also non-academics from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. The series addresses world archaeology in its widest sense, investigating how people lived in the past and how and why changes took place, resulting in the forms of society and culture which exist today. In this particular volume, the essays are derived from discussions on the themes of "Material Culture and the Making of the Modern United States: Views from Native America". It presents a series of statements about the complexities of the interpretation of the past, together with case studies which demonstrate, in a wide variety of contexts, the way that particular interactions between "natives" and "Europeans" (in the very recent past as well as in the 16th and 17th centuries) have had diverse consequences. The insensitivity of archaeology's unquestioning assumption that lands are only really "discovered" when Europeans have arrived is explored and concludes that decision making must be in the hands of the social and cultural groups whose ancestors may be disturbed if archaeological investigations are allowed to proceed.