Visions in Brass: Personal Adornment and the Politics of Race in Creole New Orleans, 1790-1865.

Summary

This is an abstract from the "One of a Kind: Approaching the Singular Artifact and the Archaeological Imagination" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Buttons, buckles, and jewelry have long fascinated historical archaeologists for their capacity to address questions pertaining to social identity and the presentation of self in everyday life. But such artifacts are valued for more than their mere historical associations, often inciting scholarship and public attention for their aesthetic qualities as well. Costume jewelry is particularly emblematic of this phenomenon, and its decorative character says as much about fashion in the past as it does about our curiosity in the present. This paper takes as its focus small finds from an early nineteenth-century plantation context in Creole New Orleans, interrogating the interpretive potential of such objects and situating them within the politics of fashion and race in the antebellum city. What stories did objects - especially those that might be considered pieces of costume jewelry - tell in the past, and what do they continue to say today?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• One of a Kind: Approaching the Singular Artifact and the Archaeological Imagination   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 369