Kurt Jordan's research centers on the archaeology of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) peoples, emphasizing the settlement patterns, housing, and political economy of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Senecas. The empirical evidence provided by archaeology can do much to combat inaccurate narratives of Indian decline and powerlessness that pervade scholarly and popular writing about Native Americans. For example, fieldwork at the 1715-1754 Seneca Townley-Read site near Geneva, New York, recovered data indicating substantial Seneca autonomy, selectivity, innovation, and opportunism in an era usually considered to be one of cultural disintegration.