With this volume, we hope to invigorate the study of past communities. Archaeologists have long pursued theoretically and methodologically innovative research on social institutions like polities, households, and regions. However, research on the community has stagnated, despite a multitude of sociological, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric studies that have shown it to be one of the most important and meaningful contexts for social interaction. Given the community's central place in most societies, it is incumbent upon archaeologists to contribute to this study by finding ways to recover ancient communities embedded within the archaeological record. First, however, archaeologists must define "community" and then seek ways to make that definition archaeologically meaningful. Because we feel this goal is best achieved through comparative analysis, this volume brings together ten studies in which scholars with diverse models of community examine specific archaeological cases in the Americas, from Formative-period South America to nineteenth-century Appalachia. Joyce Marcus and William Isbell each provide concluding chapters that examine the themes unifying the contributions and assess the potential contributions of what we call an "archaeology of communities."