Overview

The Iroquois confederacy, one of the most influential Native American groups encountered by early European settlers, is commonly perceived as having plunged into steep decline in the late seventeenth century due to colonial encroachment into the Great Lakes region. Kurt Jordan challenges long-standing interpretations that depict the Iroquois as defeated, colonized peoples by demonstrating that an important nation of that confederacy, the Senecas, maintained an impressive political and economic autonomy and resisted colonialism with a high degree of success. By combining archaeological data grounded in the material culture of the Seneca Townley-Read site with historical documents, Jordan answers larger questions about the Seneca's cultural sustainability and durability in an era of intense colonial pressures. He offers a detailed reconstruction of daily life in the Seneca community and demonstrates that they were extremely selective about which aspects of European material culture, plant and animal species, and lifeways they allowed into their territory.

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Reviews

"""I became thoroughly convinced by Jordan's argument that labor relations analysis explains many of the 'cultural' changes evident in the archaeological and ethnohistorical records.""--Ethnohistory ""This outstanding study is based on the author's archaeological analysis of the Senecas' Townley-Read site near Geneva, New York, as well as his thorough examination of the literature on the late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Iroquois. Anthropologist Jordan challenges numerous scholars, including Daniel Richter, who have maintained that the Senecas and other Iroquois were in decline by the early eighteenth century. . . . Essential.""--Choice ""Fascinating, compelling, and illuminating. . . . Weaves together the major source materials of ethnohistorical scholarship--archaeological, ethnographical, and historical--in ways that are consistently persuasive and revealing.""--Reviews in American History ""Quite eloquently challenges the tropes of decline in accepted Iroquois scholarship. . . . By using archaeological methodologies and a new evaluation of documentary source material, combined with a critical analysis of modern scholarship, Jordan produces new critical interpretations that cause the reader and observer of the Haudenosaunee to step back and engage the much larger picture being presented.""--American Indian Culture and Research Journal ""Provides a long overdue and thorough reinterpretation of eighteenth-century Iroquoian history. [Jordan] successfully situates the Iroquois as active agents in directing their own destiny, and he drives home the point that scholars cannot take a single Iroquois tribe and use it as a model for what happened throughout Iroquoia during the colonial period.""--Historical Archaeology"

This outstanding study is based on the author's archaeological analysis of the Senecas' Townley-Read site near Geneva, New York, as well as his thorough examination of the literature on the late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Iroquois. Anthropologist Jordan challenges numerous scholars, including Daniel Richter, who have maintained that the Senecas and other Iroquois were in decline by the early eighteenth century. . . . Essential. --Choice Fascinating, compelling, and illuminating. . . . Weaves together the major source materials of ethnohistorical scholarship--archaeological, ethnographical, and historical--in ways that are consistently persuasive and revealing. --Reviews in American History Quite eloquently challenges the tropes of decline in accepted Iroquois scholarship. . . . By using archaeological methodologies and a new evaluation of documentary source material, combined with a critical analysis of modern scholarship, Jordan produces new critical interpretations that cause the reader and observer of the Haudenosaunee to step back and engage the much larger picture being presented. --American Indian Culture and Research Journal Provides a long overdue and thorough reinterpretation of eighteenth-century Iroquoian history. [Jordan] successfully situates the Iroquois as active agents in directing their own destiny, and he drives home the point that scholars cannot take a single Iroquois tribe and use it as a model for what happened throughout Iroquoia during the colonial period. --Historical Archaeology I became thoroughly convinced by Jordan's argument that labor relations analysis explains many of the 'cultural' changes evident in the archaeological and ethnohistorical records. --Ethnohistory

Provides a long overdue and thorough reinterpretation of eighteenth-century Iroquoian history. [Jordan] successfully situates the Iroquois as active agents in directing their own destiny, and he drives home the point that scholars cannot take a single Iroquois tribe and use it as a model for what happened throughout Iroquoia during the colonial period. Historical Archaeology

Provides a long overdue and thorough reinterpretation of eighteenth-century Iroquoian history. [Jordan] successfully situates the Iroquois as active agents in directing their own destiny, and he drives home the point that scholars cannot take a single Iroquois tribe and use it as a model for what happened throughout Iroquoia during the colonial period. --Historical Archaeology Quite eloquently challenges the tropes of decline in accepted Iroquois scholarship. . . . By using archaeological methodologies and a new evaluation of documentary source material, combined with a critical analysis of modern scholarship, Jordan produces new critical interpretations that cause the reader and observer of the Haudenosaunee to step back and engage the much larger picture being presented. --American Indian Culture and Research Journal This outstanding study is based on the author's archaeological analysis of the Senecas' Townley-Read site near Geneva, New York, as well as his thorough examination of the literature on the late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Iroquois. Anthropologist Jordan challenges numerous scholars, including Daniel Richter, who have maintained that the Senecas and other Iroquois were in decline by the early eighteenth century. . . . Essential. --Choice I became thoroughly convinced by Jordan's argument that labor relations analysis explains many of the 'cultural' changes evident in the archaeological and ethnohistorical records. --Ethnohistory Provides a long overdue and thorough reinterpretation of eighteenth-century Iroquoian history. [Jordan] successfully situates the Iroquois as active agents in directing their own destiny, and he drives home the point that scholars cannot take a single Iroquois tribe and use it as a model for what happened throughout Iroquoia during the colonial period. Historical Archaeology I became thoroughly convinced by Jordan s argument that labor relations analysis explains many of the cultural changes evident in the archaeological and ethnohistorical records. Ethnohistory Quite eloquently challenges the tropes of decline in accepted Iroquois scholarship. . . . By using archaeological methodologies and a new evaluation of documentary source material, combined with a critical analysis of modern scholarship, Jordan produces new critical interpretations that cause the reader and observer of the Haudenosaunee to step back and engage the much larger picture being presented. American Indian Culture and Research Journal This outstanding study is based on the author s archaeological analysis of the Senecas Townley-Read site near Geneva, New York, as well as his thorough examination of the literature on the late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Iroquois. Anthropologist Jordan challenges numerous scholars, including Daniel Richter, who have maintained that the Senecas and other Iroquois were in decline by the early eighteenth century. . . . Essential. Choice

Author Information

Kurt A. Jordan is assistant professor of anthropology at Cornell University.

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