Identities in Flux at an American Frontier Fort: A Study of 19th Century Army Laundresses at Fort Davis, Texas

Summary

As spaces of translation, frontiers and boundaries are the ideal location to study personhood and identity as inhabitants of these landscapes constantly experience and actively negotiate between the multiple live realities that are shaped by often conflicting ideologies. I propose the use of third-space as a framework for understanding the fragmentation and fluidity of experience in the American frontier during the 19th century. Using materials related daily life at a multi-ethnoracial, western military fort in Fort Davis, Texas, I aim to show how army laundresses acted as cultural brokers, navigating often contentious social and physical landscapes. With their identity as citizens, Texans, women, care-takers, and racialized individuals constantly in flux, these women balanced their relationship with one another, the civilian community, and their military colleagues as a way of redefining and creating new personhoods and identities that were defined by their living on a geographic and cultural boundary. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Disrupted Identities: Colonialism, Personhood, and Frontier Forts   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 411