Two common questions asked in archaeological investigations are: Where did a particular culture come from and which living cultures is it related to? In this book, Cook brings a theoretically and methodologically holistic perspective to his study on the origins and continuity of Native American villages in the North American midcontinent. He shows that to affiliate archaeological remains with descendant communities, we may often need to unaffiliate some of our well-established archaeological constructs. Cook demonstrates how and why Native American villages formed and responded to events such as migration, environmental change, and subsistence shifts. He focuses on the big picture of cultural relatedness over broad regions, illustrating the amount of social detail that can be gleaned from combining archaeological, biological, cultural, and historical data sets."--Jacket. Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-276) and index