Historical archaeology has grown exponentially since its inception. By the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, practitioners of the field had conducted research throughout the world in locales only imagined in the mid-twentieth century. The spread of historical archaeology in Europe, Asia, and Africa—and other places with long, rich documentary histories—has meant that two senses of ‘historical archaeology’ now exist. The creation of modern-world archaeology seeks to define an archaeology of the post-Columbian world as an archaeology explicitly engaged in investigating the historical antecedents of our present age. This chapter explains the rationale behind the creation of modern-world archaeology, outlines some of its central tenets, and provides a brief example of one subject of relevance to the field.
