Introduction; Part I. Archaeology is Not Enough: 1. Legends, houses, families and myths: relationships between material culture and American ideology Anne E. Yentsch; 2. Perceptions of an artifact: Chinese porcelain in colonial Tidewater Virginia Julia B. Curtis; 3. Documentary insights into the archaeology of smuggling Peter R. Schmidt, and Stephen A. Mrozowski; 4. Words for things: linguistic analysis of probate inventories Mary C. Beaudry, Janet Long, henry M. Miller, Fraser D. Neiman, and Garry Wheeler Stone; Part II. Documents and the Archaeologist: The Data Base: 6. Artifacts are not enough Garry Wheeler stone; 7. The behavioural context of probate inventories: an example from Plymouth colony marley R. Brown III; 8. Occupational differences reflected in material culture Kathleen J. Bragdon; 9. On the use of historical maps Nancy S. Seaholes; 10. Military records and historical archaeology Lawrence E. Babits; 11. The material culture of the Christian Indians of New England, 1650-1775 Kathleen J. Bragdon; 12. Anthropological title searches in Rockbridge County, Virginia H. Langhorne and lawrence E. Babits; Part III. Ecological Questions In Historical Archaeology: 13. Farming, fishing, whaling, trading: land and sea as resource on eighteenth-century Cape Cod Anne e. yentsch; 14. Seasonality: an agricultural construct Joanne Bowen; Part IV. Consumerism, Status, Gender, and Ethnicity: 15. Classification and economic scaling of nineteenth-century ceramics george l. miller; 16. For gentlemen of capacity and leisure: the archaeology of colonial newspapers stephen A. mrozowoski; 17. What happened to the silent majority? Research strategies for studying dominant group material culture in late nineteenth-century California Mary Praetzellis, Adrian Praetzellis, and Marley r. brown III.