Editors' Introduction.

Material culture studies compel us to recognize the global nature of early North America. Objects of many sorts circulated within and across the colonies of the northern New World. Whereas matters of commercial trade have tended to frame analyses of material life in the Atlantic littoral, the studies in this issue of Winterthur Portfolio expand past the world of commodities to explore artifacts exchanged through gift giving, collecting, display, performance, theft, looting, and other practices. Moreover, by tracking objects from the Pacific to North America, they challenge existing models of Atlantic studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]