An Appraisal of the Indigenous Acquisition of Contact-Era European Metal Objects in Southeastern North America James B. Legg 1 & Dennis B. Blanton 2 & Charles R. Cobb 3 & Steven D. Smith 1 & Brad R. Lieb 4 & Edmond A. Boudreaux III 5 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Investigations at two sites in southeastern North America have yielded an unanticipated abundance of European artifacts that largely date to the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries CE. On other sites in the region, such objects have been documented in mortuary and special-use contexts. However, the volume and provenience of these recent finds, many of which were recov- ered in apparently domestic loci, are suggestive of a more secular context than is typical. These assemblages indicate that, even in the early era of Contact, Native Americans had developed a variety of ways to obtain European goods that were equally important as gifting. Despite strides that are being made in research on European commodities in Indigenous contexts, comparative studies continue to be hampered by lack of consistency in recovery techniques. Keywords Spanish colonialism . Southeastern Indians . European metal artifacts . Consumption Int J Histor Archaeol https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-018-0458-1 * Charles R. Cobb ccobb@flmnh.ufl.edu 1 South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA 2 Department of Sociology and Anthropology, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA 3 Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA 4 Heritage Preservation Division, Department of Culture and Humanities, Chickasaw Nation, Ada, OK 74821, USA 5 Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS 38677, USA