Domesticating the Button: Household Consumption Patterns of Copper-Alloy Buttons In the 18th-Century Overhill Cherokee Towns

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Beyond Ornamentation: New Approaches to Adornment and Colonialism" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper examines the ways individuals and households living in the Overhill Cherokee Towns during the third quarter of the 18th century interfaced with the greater Atlantic World through the close examination of copper-alloy buttons. I take a materialist approach to consumer behavior, contextualizing the physical attributes of buttons from individual contexts within the distribution of variation in those attributes available through fur traders. By doing so, I demonstrate which attributes of copper-alloy buttons were most meaningful Cherokee consumers and make interpretations about the spatial extent of Cherokee households. By comparing Overhill Cherokee button consumption patterns to contemporaneous groups in Virginia and North Carolina, I show how Cherokee consumers domesticated this particular object within their own conceptions of proper consumption practices and imbued these foreign objects with a unique set of meanings and social functions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Beyond Ornamentation: New Approaches to Adornment and Colonialism   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 299