This innovative collection of essays brings together archaeological research on French colonial sites from Maryland, South Carolina, the Gulf Coast and Lower Mississippi Valley, the Caribbean, and French Guiana to explore the nature of French colonisation. Specific contributions explore foodways, ceramics, plantations, architecture, and colonial interactions with Africans and Native Americans, all with an eye to what makes the French colonial endeavour distinct from better-known British or Spanish experience.

Crosscutting the volume are such questions as, how are ""French"" sites different from those of other nationalities, what is the nature of French colonisation, how can archaeology help identify particularly national histories in a given colonial setting, and how was French identity materialised and maintained in the New World?