Foreword

Postcolonial scholarship continues to examine the constitution of society and find utility in the lens of identity. Archaeologists and other social scientists concerned with the social world investigate how individuals and collectivities are distinguished in their relationships with others. Many hold that social identities—a composite of the socially sanctioned roles that individuals enact as members of a group—are never created in isolation; they are the outcomes of interactions. Under conditions of colonial entanglements in the Americas and elsewhere, identities were conceived as fluid and malleable, under negotiation, and open to manipulation. Archaeologists can explore the forms that these new identities took in colonial America because identity was constructed and expressed through the material world.

In The Archaeology of Clothing and Bodily Adornment in Colonial America, Diana DiPaolo Loren examines the apparel and objects that people employed to enclose and attach to their bodies to interrogate the American experience. Though limited in number due to curation, perishability, and other factors, sartorial artifacts are among the remains that were lost, abandoned, or discarded at most archaeological sites. Such objects were used to construct a physical appearance and convey information about status, occupation, ethnicity, religion, and sexual preference. Consumers acquired clothing and adornment through an active selection process and employed them as visual enhancements to express personhood that literally became parts of their bodies. Beads, bracelets, buckles, and buttons are just a few objects that were powerful visual metaphors in the marking of personal and collective identities, and they reveal the choices that people made in daily life in colonial America. The analysis of sartorial expression can contribute to the study of colonial society in which material culture was manipulated to signal a range of messages about not only personal identity but also relations to the homeland and the new social opportunities that colonial life engendered.

Objects of clothing—most notably Yugoslavian hats—were instrumental in the archaeological literature of the 1970s that first posited that style had function. Rather than being merely epiphenomenal, style communicated information to casual observers provided they could decode the messages. Unlike auditory media, messages broadcast through material culture were enduring and could be received in the absence of the emitter. Clothing and adornment are ideal media for exchanging stylistic information, and they provide insight into social strategies of identity formation.

Fashion choices were constrained by sumptuary laws in seventeenth - and eighteenth-century America that sought to maintain social boundaries of class, race, and ethnicity. Yet people crafted fashions according to practicality, social context, and daily experience, creating a new world of clothing possibilities that rubbed against the grain of the legal restrictions colonists faced and were expected to follow. As archaeology has shown repeatedly, practice confronted principles, particularly among those segments of the population who lived “along the margins of historical narratives.” By viewing clothing at the intersection of multiple lines of evidence—archaeological, documentary, ethnographic, and pictorial—Loren challenges us to see beyond the essential identity ascribed to an object at the time of its production based upon its intended function and to envision the symbolic meanings and values that artifacts acquire through use. She also urges us to look beyond the static categories that analysts use to organize collections by raw material and function. The sources accessible to the historical archaeologist expose the varying ways and unique combinations of clothing styles that colonials used to express their place in society.

The population of the eighteenth-century site of Fort St. Joseph in the western Great Lakes included diverse occupants who varied by age, status, ethnicity, gender, and religious affiliation, all of whom had the potential to use material objects to express personal identities under unstable social and political conditions. In this historical context, the active manipulation of items of clothing and adornment was commonplace, and seemingly mundane items were poignant markers of tensions and contradictions. As an example, imported glass beads, buttons, and brooches were likely worn in combination with domestically produced shell beads and tinkling cones by both Native Americans and the French who donned shared, hybrid-style clothing that expressed their close alliance with Native peoples in opposition to the English and the conventions of the Crown. However, some segments of the population may have used forms of imported personal adornment such as glass-inset sleeve buttons, decorative buckles, and ornate finger rings to identify with Old World notions of status, patriarchy, loyalty, and civility, suggesting the multilayered and multivocal meanings of material mediations of the self.

As Loren notes, the archaeological record is a key component of interpreting the colonial past because all colonial relations were constituted with material culture. Indeed, all social relations are created and reproduced through the (albeit contextually situated) material world. Clothing and adornment are particularly significant in this regard because of their role in the presentation of the self. Not surprisingly, the approach advocated here to the colonial world has application to the analysis of more recent fashion trends. Such studies will serve to extend our understanding of the role of apparel and other accoutrements in the American experience. Witness the evolution of the T-shirt since the mid-twentieth century: each successive generation has employed this former undergarment in emblematic fashion to distinguish itself from its predecessors and make a political statement. Suffice it to say that clothing and bodily adornment have long been woven into the fabric of the American experience and that as long as people are losing buttons archaeology will have a contribution to make in understanding this dimension of our collective pasts.

Michael S. Nassaney Series Editor