Buffalo Soldiers, Married Soldiers, and Laundresses at Fort Davis, Texas: A Nineteenth-Century Glass Analysis of Medicinal, Health and Hygiene Vessels

Summary

This paper investigates the general health practices of lower ranking military communities at Fort Davis, Texas, a nineteenth-century U.S. Army instillation. Focusing on an assemblage of glass medicinal vessels collected from sites occupied by enlisted black troops, married soldiers’ families, and army laundresses, this study considers health management practices within the changing notions of health and disease in the context of nineteenth-century medical movements, including temperance, humeric medicine, and germ theory. In recognition of a medical anthropological perspective, factors such as socioeconomic class, military rank, race, gender and geographic location are also considered when reconstructing individual health experiences at the post. Further I address questions of access to army doctors and consider the possible preference of some groups for self-treatment remedies.  As part of the larger Fort Davis Archaeology Project (FODAAP) this study provides valuable insight into how various communities at the fort met the challenges of frontier military life.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2017   •
• Tales of the Texas Frontier: Research Conducted by the Fort Davis Archaeology Project (FODAAP) in Fort Davis, Texas

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 329