Recent archaeological excavations have uncovered very early evidence of ironworking in colonial Rhode Island. The growth of a self-sustaining ironworking industry in the American colonies was arguably one of the most important developments leading to the late eighteenth century Revolutions in politics and industry. My dissertation is grounded in analyses of materials excavated at previously unexamined sites of colonial ironworking in Rhode Island. In conducting a multi-sited archaeology of these related ironworking sites, my dissertation examines how and why kinship-based ironworking operations thrived for over a century. I contextualize evidence from the material analyses within regional and global frameworks to trace the existence, character, and influence of indigenous technological innovation in the American colonies, a subject that is poorly documented and often overlooked. Set in the hybrid environment of colonial Rhode Island, the contexts surrounding the ironworking operations expose many of the smaller yet significant revolutions in craftsmanship, ideology, identity, and society that occurred alongside technological innovation. I combine data from a range of transdisciplinary analyses, including metallurgy, geophysics, geology, history, folklore, and anthropology to understand iron manufacture as constituted by inseparable and recirculating social, natural, individual, and scientific processes. The results also offer understandings of local ironworking processes that question the prevailing assumptions within models of the Industrial Revolution.