Gender, Gentility, and Revolution:  Detecting Women’s Influence on Household Consumption in Eighteenth Century Connecticut

Summary

Some historians and archaeologists argue that women were influencing their husbands’ spending habits by the middle 18th century. Using the archaeological remains from a farming community in southeastern Connecticut, this paper attempts to read gender into the archaeological record to elucidate household shopping patterns before, during, and after the Revolutionary War.  Were rural women’s consumer preferences influenced by emerging 18th century ideas regarding gentility? Would this genteel fashion sense result in fancier ceramics assemblages? How did women respond to the boycott propaganda that circulated during the Revolutionary War? Even if women stopped buying British goods during the Revolutionary War, how quickly did they resume consuming objects made in Britain after peace returned? It is possible that women’s consumer influences may be archaeologically visible even when documentation of their participation in the marketplace is absent.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Gendering Consumer Choice   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 166