In these ten specially commissioned essays, contributors examine the archaeological evidence for Europe's colonisation of North and South America, Canada, South Africa and Australasia, and for the consequential transformation of both settlers and indigenous populations. Comparison is also made between continents in order to examine the colonial experience on a global scale. Supported by photographs, plans and maps, the essays discuss: the exchange of beads between the French and the indigenous peoples of North America; the maritime fur trade on the American north-west coast; ceramic evidence from the Pueblo mission of Abó, New Mexico; the transformation of indigenous societies in the south-western Cape during the rile of the Dutch East India Company; contact archaeology and pastoralism in north-western Australia; the first century of Maori-European settler contact on the Hauraki Plains of New Zealand; fur trade archaeology in western Canada; contact archaeology and the writing of Aboriginal history; the development of contact archaeology in temperate Aboriginal Australia.