Buttons, Buckles, and Buffalo Soldiers: Personal Adornment and Identity at Fort Davis

Summary

In recent years personal adornment artifacts and their relation to identity performance have gained interest among historical archaeologists. This paper analyzes personal adornment artifacts recovered from Fort Davis, Texas during FODAAP’s 2014 field season to show how Buffalo Soldiers negotiated identity within a frontier community. Fort Davis, a nineteenth century U.S. Army base located on a major frontier, was home to all of the army’s all-black regiments and an ethno-racially diverse civilian community. The assemblage used for this paper consists of buttons, buckles, and various fasteners, both military and civilian, recovered from a skirmish practice field and dumping area associated with the fort. Using historical documentation in conjunction with the artifacts, I show how dress and personal adornment shaped the way black soldiers performed a variety of identities within their peer groups, among their superiors, and among the community as a whole.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2017   •
• Tales of the Texas Frontier: Research Conducted by the Fort Davis Archaeology Project (FODAAP) in Fort Davis, Texas

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 335