Prostitution (Other Keyword)
1-21 (21 Records)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Sex work in the American west held a precarious position during expansion and as urban centers sought to establish themselves as legitimate cultural and economic centers in the nation at large. The relationship of the sex district in Central City, Colorado and its residents to their neighbors was no exception. Preliminary research...
"Beware of All Houses Not Recommended": Sensory Experience and Commercial Success of a Nineteenth-Century Boston Brothel (2015)
Places of organized prostitution in the nineteenth-century operated within a very particular sensory framework. In many ways male patrons were paying for ambiance and sensory experience as well as sex. Through analysis of the material remains of brothel sites, such as items related to dining, lighting, or even personal hygiene, archaeology can potentially recreate the experienced context of these spaces. Sites, such as the brothel at 27/29 Endicott Street in Boston’s North End, have the...
Clandestine, Ephemeral, Anonymous? Myths and Actualities of the Intimate Economy of a 19th-Century Boston Brothel (2017)
Although prostitution was illegal in 19th-century Boston, it was not carried out in secret, nor did it produce so ephemeral a trace as to render it invisible in the historical and archaeological record. Study of material remains from the 27/29 Endicott Street brothel demonstrates the multi-layered realities of brothel life as the residents of the brothel developed strategies for coping with being purchased for ostensibly intimate acts that were in fact commercial transactions. These strategies...
Class and reproductive control: birth control access and hygiene among prostitutes in turn of the century northern Idaho (2017)
Excavations of two brothels in the northern Idaho town of Sandpoint presented a unique opportunity to explore the nuances of economic differences in the lives of two groups of prostitutes. Over 100,000 artifacts were recovered, providing a rich accounting of a brothel that catered to local mill workers and a brothel whose clientele was more affluent. Further, such a large volume of materials resulted in the recovery of relatively esoteric materials such as douching nozzles and a variety of...
The Enterprising Career of Tom Savage in Los Angeles’ Red-Light District, 1870-1909 (2016)
In 1909, the "closure" of Los Angeles’s "tenderloin" represented the influence of progressive reform ending an era of the "tacit acceptance" of municipal red-light districts nationally. Existing scholarship has focused on progressive reformers who helped launch the new policy, but there has been scant examination of the male subculture that helped transform the business of prostitution even as the era of regulation came to a close. This paper examines Tom Savage, a saloon-owner, prize-fighter,...
Erasing Lines of Class and Color in Storyville(s), New Orleans (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 1941, the Housing Authority of New Orleans opened the Iberville Housing Project, one of a series of federally funded public housing developments built as components of a slum clearance effort happening all over the city. Iberville was unique among these developments, in that its footprint almost precisely coincided with the...
Ghosts in the Archives: Using Archaeology to Return Life to Historical Prostitutes (2016)
Studies in historical prostitution are uniquely poised to demonstrate the importance of partnership between historians and archaeologists. Sites of prostitution may be present in the historical literature; however, the transience of the women employed at these sites means that they often leave ephemeral traces in the written record. Though typically unable to illustrate individual actors within these sites, archaeology can help to reanimate the everyday lives of women in sex work. Using the...
"It Is the Devil’s Business": Acceptable Labor, Clandestine Labor, and Sex Work (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "“Historical Archaeology with Canon on the Side, Please”: In Honor of Mary C. Beaudry (1950-2020)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Slowly, twenty-first century Americans are beginning to accept the reality that sex work is real work. As a component of this, scholars exploring historical sex work in Boston explore this reality within the context of nineteenth century concepts of labor, acceptable versus...
Landscapes of Desire: Mapping the Brothels of 1880s Washington, DC (2016)
From 1860-1915, brothels were prominantly loaced within Washington, DC’s urban landscape. This paper focuses on brothels in 1880s Washington, examining the spatial dynamics of the main brothel neighborhood, the Hooker’s Division. I argue that experiences of Hooker’s Division brothels were shaped by the space within the city that the neighborhood occupied, and simultaneously, Washington’s sex workers contested social norms thereby changing the symbolic implications and tangible reality of the...
The Legal Language of Sex: Interpreting a Hierarchy of Prostitution Using the Terminology of Criminal Charges (2016)
It is generally acknowledged that there was a hierarchical structure to turn-of-the-century sex trade, with madams at the top and streetwalkers at the bottom. But what did this structure mean for the women who inhabited these roles? And how can we access all levels of the hierarchy? Police magistrate court dockets provide a valuable lens through which to analyze prostitution in Fargo, North Dakota during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Additionally, these documents speak to...
Melvina Massey: Fargo's Most Famous Madam (2016)
In my work as a professor and public historian, research material often unfolds from teaching. In my Spring 2013 Introduction to Museum Studies class at North Dakota State University, students conducting primary source research on early Fargo discovered a will and probate records for Melvina Massey. The records show that she was an African American and ran a brothel in Fargo for more than 20 years. The course concluded with an exhibit, "Taboo: Fargo-Moorhead, An Unmentioned History," and one of...
Painted Women and Patrons: Appearance and the Construction of Gender and Class Identity in the Red Light District of Ouray, Colorado. (2016)
Appearance-related artifacts from the Vanoli Block (5OR30), a late 19th and early 20th century sporting complex in the mining town of Ouray, Colorado, indicate that both the women working in the cribs and their patrons projected a working-class appearance. An examination of artifacts through the lenses of performance and practice theory is supplemented with historical data regarding class, gender, and costume, and suggests that the sartorial choices made by these women and men emerged from the...
Pirates, Pepper and Prostitutes – illicit trade in goods and pleasure in 17th-century West Cork. (2016)
The southern coast of Ireland in the early-17th century enjoyed a booming trade in exotic goods like pepper, cinnamon and other spices. This was underscored by an even brisker trade in pleasures of the flesh where the women in the pirates’ lives ran successful businesses of their own, providing safe houses, taverns, inns and brothels that tapped into the business of plunder. This was a time and place when illicit activity was the norm, when ships bringing plundered goods operated openly and...
Pleasure or All Customers?: Disrupting Heteronormative Perceptions of Nineteenth-century Prostitution (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Gender Revolutions: Disrupting Heteronormative Practices and Epistemologies" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Studies of nineteenth-century prostitution have always been tied in some manner to discussions of gender. In sites of organized prostitution, the narrative has been that women commoditized their sexuality and men purchased it from them. This subversion of nineteenth-century sexual norms has led to...
Red Light Ladies: a Perspective On the Frontier Community (1982)
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Sex Workers in the City: Presentation and Interaction in 19th-century Boston’s Urban Landscape (2016)
Historical and archaeological analysis of sex work in the 19th-century tends to focus on what happens inside brothels. What happens when sex workers venture out into the city in the course of their daily lives? In this paper I examine the historical and archaeological evidence recovered from the mid-19th century 27-29 Endicott Street brothel located in the North End neighborhood of Boston, MA, and consider where in the urban landscape the residents of the brothel—Madame, servant, sex worker and...
Soiled Doves and Fighting Men: Sexually Transmitted Diseases in 19th Century Tucson, Arizona (2019)
This is an abstract from the "POSTER Session 1: A Focus on Cultures, Populations, and Ethnic Groups" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Sexually transmitted diseases, such as syphillis and gonorrhea, were commonplace on the frontier in the 19th century. The spread of such diseases is often attributed to the fact that prostitution was also quite prevalent. In mid to late 19th century Tucson, Arizona, most Tucson residents accepted prostitution as an...
The Sporting Life: Archaeological Evidence of Pensacola’s Red Light District Customers (2015)
Archaeological studies have been conducted upon red light districts across the United States. While these studies have yielded great insight into the lives of prostitutes, relatively little has been recovered from their customers. Three collections from excavations conducted in 1975 and 2000 upon Pensacola, Florida’s red light district have also been studied, with a surprising number of artifacts associated with customers identified. This paper will provide an in-depth analysis of red light...
Studies of the Subaltern in Contemporary Archaeology: Prostitution in Saltpeter Boomtowns and Ports of Northern Chile (1880-1930) (2018)
Prostitution and prostitutes, despite their alleged ubiquity in time-space and exponential growth with industrialization, have rarely been the focus of historical inquiry, let alone of archaeology, with exceptional exceptions. With New Orleans’ red-light district Storyville as source of inspiration, this study seeks to archaeologically document prostitution in saltpeter boomtowns (salitreras) and ports of Northern Chile (1880-1930), aiming to identify and characterize the spaces of prostitution...
Wares of Venus: The sensoriality of sex for purchase at a 19th-century Boston brothel (2018)
The archaeological examination of brothel spaces has expanded significantly in recent decades to include compelling interpretations of these sites within the framework of embodiment, sexuality, and urbanization. By incorporating the sensory experiences of the individuals living, working, and seeking entertainment in places of prostitution, archaeologists have an opportunity to examine these spaces in terms of the fantasy experiences being sold. In terms of this paper’s case study, the 27/29...
"A WEAK MAN can now cure himself…" Exploring Sandpoint, Idaho Brothels as Alternative Venues for Treatment of "Private Diseases of Men" – and other afflictions. (2016)
Archaeological excavations of two brothels in the north Idaho town of Sandpoint resulted in the recovery of approximately 100,000 artifacts. The artifacts told rich stories of daily life in brothels yet the materials also provided an opportunity some of the ancillary aspects of the relationship between prostitutes and the men who visit them. Specifically, this work addresses the role of prostitutes in the treatment of some "private diseases," arguing that in addition to being a locale for sex,...