The archaeological study of Native Americans during colonial periods in North America has centered largely oil assessing the nature of cultural change and continuity v through material culture. Although a valuable approach, it has beet) hindered by focusing too much oil the dichotomies of change and continuity, rather than oil their interrelationship, by relaying on uncritical cultural categories of artifacts and by not recognizing the role of practice and memory in identity, and cultural persistence. Ongoing archaeological research oil the Eastern Pequot reservation in Connecticut, which was created in 1683 and has been inhabited continuously since then by Eastern Pequot community, members, permits a different view of the nature of change and continuity Three reservation sites spanning the period between ca. 1740 and 1840 accentuate the scale and temporality of social memory and the relationships between practice and materiality. Although the reservation sites show change when compared to the "precontact baseline," they show remarkable continuity, during the reservation period. The resulting interpretation provides not only more grounded and appropriately scaled renderings of past cultural practices but also critical engagements with analytical categories that carry significant political weight well outside of archaeological circles.
