Personal Adornment And The Construction Of Identity

Objects of adornment have been a subject of archaeological, historical, and ethnographic study for well over a century. Within archaeology, personal ornaments have traditionally been viewed as decorative embellishments associated with status and wealth, materializations of power relations and social strategies, or markers of underlying social categories such as those related to gender, class, and ethnic affiliation. Personal Adornment and the Construction of Identity seeks to understand these artefacts not as signals of steady, pre-existing cultural units and relations, but as important components in the active and contingent constitution of identities. Drawing on contemporary scholarship on materiality and relationality in archaeological and social theory, this book uses one genre of material culture - items of bodily adornment - to illustrate how humans and objects construct one another. Providing case studies spanning 10 countries, three continents, and more than 9,000 years of human history, the authors demonstrate the myriad and dynamic ways personal ornaments were intertwined with embodied practice and identity performativity, the creation and remaking of social memories, and relational collections of persons, materials, and practices in the past. The authors’ careful analyses of production methods and composition, curation/heirlooming and reworking, decorative attributes and iconography, position within assemblages, and depositional context illuminate the varied material and relational axes along which objects of adornment contained social value and meaning. When paired with the broad temporal and geographic scope collectively represented by these studies, we gain a deeper appreciation for the subtle but vital roles these items played in human lives.

The first comprehensive guide to identifying and interpreting items such as buttons, clasps, buckles, combs, and other items of personal adornment in early American museum collections and archaeological sites.

Collecting the perspectives of scholars who reflect on their own relationships to particular garments, analyze the politics of dress, and examine the role of consumerism and entrepreneurialism in the production of creating and selling a style, meXicana Fashions examines and searches for meaning in these visible, performative aspects of identity. Focusing primarily on Chicanas but also considering trends connected to other Latin American communities, the authors highlight specific constituencies that are defined by region (“Tejana style,” “L.A. style”), age group (“homie,” “chola”), and social class (marked by haute couture labels such as Carolina Herrera and Oscar de la Renta). The essays acknowledge the complex layers of these styles, which are not mutually exclusive but instead reflect a range of intersections in occupation, origin, personality, sexuality, and fads. Other elements include urban indigenous fashion shows, the shifting quinceañera market, “walking altars” on the Days of the Dead, plus-size clothing, huipiles in the workplace, and dressing in drag. Together, these chapters illuminate the full array of messages woven into a vibrant social fabric.

The first comprehensive guide to identifying and interpreting items such as buttons, clasps, buckles, combs, and other items of personal adornment in early American museum collections and archaeological sites.

This volume demonstrates how humans adapt to new and challenging environments by building and adjusting their identities. By gathering a diverse set of case studies that draw on popular themes in contemporary historical archaeology and current trends in archaeological method and theory, it shows the many ways identity formation can be seen in the material world that humans create. The essays focus on situations across the globe where humans have experienced dissonance in the form of colonization, migration, conflict, marginalization, and other cultural encounters. Featuring a wide time span that reaches to the ancient past, examples include Roman soldiers in Britain, Vikings in Iceland and the Orkney Islands, sex workers in French colonial Algeria, Irish immigrants to the United States, an African American community in nineteenth-century New York City, and the Taino people of contemporary Puerto Rico. These studies draw on a variety of data, from excavated artifacts to landscape and architecture to archival materials. In their analyses, contributors explore multiple aspects of identity such as class, gender, race, and ethnicity, showing how these factors intersect for many of the individuals and groups studied. The questions of identity formation explored in this volume are critical to understanding the world today as humans continue to grapple with the legacies of colonialism and the realities of globalized and divided societies.

Generally individuals in history are known for a particular reason - they somehow influenced history. Very little is known about the ordinary person who lived in the past. But historical archaeologists - through their interpretation of the material culture and historic record - can study the past on an individual level. This brings archaeological interpretation from a micro to a macro level - as opposed to the traditional level of society to community to individual interpretation. The cases presented in this volume engage material culture that is owned or used by a single person and is thus associated with an individual at some point in its uselife. The volume takes bodkins, shoes, beads, cloth, religious items, grave goods, as well as subassemblages from well-defined contexts from New England, the Chesapeake, New Orleans, Hawaii, Spanish colonial America, and London in the pursuit of the individual and the textured interpretation this analytical scale provides. This volume promises to present innovative approaches to a host of archaeological materials, drawing widely on the range of archaeological research for the historical period today. Capitalizing on several topics and research threads with great currency, such as the examination of material culture and interest in various and intersecting lines of identity construction, as well as presenting an international and multiregional approach to these topics, this volume will be of interest to archaeologists, anthropologists, material culture scholars, and social historians interested in a wide variety of time periods and subfields.

This volume gives an in-depth account of cultural heritage of Nagaland covering important themes like cultural beliefs, traditional knowledge, material culture, and social institutions. Contributors from diverse dis­ciplines and backgrounds have delved into the cultural heritage of the state’s variegated tribes. Nagaland a hilly state in North-East India had been the centre of British colonialism and American Baptist mission. This cultural contact is significantly reflected in the socio-cultural life, and the contributors have shed light on the continuities and changes. This volume highlights the multiplicity of cultural traditions that are specific to various tribes inhabiting sixteen districts of Nagaland, since their experiences of modernity and cultural contact with ‘others’ have been diverse. The contributors have mainly focussed on the cultural heritage of the majority Naga tribes, but other tribes like the Kukis and Kacharis are part and parcel of the cultural melting pot of Nagaland, and this volume in a way underscores the cultural exchange and interactions. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the print version of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.