Apparel in Peril: An archaeological study of how clothing becomes embedded with human suffering

Summary

 The Undocumented Migration Project has recovered over 4,000 articles of clothing once worn by migrants crossing the Mexico­Arizona border. This often darkly colored apparel is intended to help people furtively move across the desert and avoid detection by Border Patrol. When recovered archaeologically, this clothing is often torn, faded, and stained with bodily fluids that reflect different forms of physical pain experienced en route. Here we employ the concept of "use­wear" (i.e. modifications made to objects as a result of usage) to evince the types of routinized suffering that people undergo throughout the various stages of migration. We argue that both the specific forms of human suffering experienced by border crossers (e.g., extreme dehydration) caused by the harsh desert environment and people’s creative responses to pain are embedded in the archaeological record and offer unique insight into the social process of migration that may be difficult to get at ethnographically. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Crossing Borders and Erasing Boundaries: An Overview of the First Five Years of the Undocumented Migration Project   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 162