Founding Daughters and Wives: Looking For Women in a Male Dominated Artifact Assemblage

Summary

While historical documentation is, for the most part, a deliberate system of record keeping, the archaeological record primarily exists because of the accidental deposition of artifacts. Often these artifacts cannot be coded as representing either male or female use or ownership; however, in certain artifact assemblages where the history of the site is well documented, the researcher can examine the artifacts with an eye toward gendering them and re-creating the story of the people who utilized the site. This paper will examine a collection of artifacts from the city of South Bend, Indiana, which the researchers have coded as belonging to females, including jewelry, buttons, a stocking clip, pen nibs, and other small household materials. The Gilded Age site contained residential and commercial structures later razed by two of the area’s founding families, the Studebakers and the Olivers, to create a grassy park-like area. Much is known about the men of these founding families, but little about their wives and daughters. In this paper, the researchers will show evidence about the leisure activities and social associations of these women’s lives.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage