Jordan (anthropology and American Indian studies, Cornell U.) draws largely on archaeological data collected at the Townely-Read site near Geneva, New York during a project he helped direct from 1996 to 1999. Challenging current scholarship, he argues that the Iroquois construction of dispersed communities during the period was an opportunistic innovation with a myriad of economic and ecological benefits, that their houses were much less influenced by Europeans than scholars assert, and that the fur trade of the western Iroquois nations remained viable at least through the middle of the 18th century. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)