Constructing identities: Personal adornment from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1680--1820

This dissertation is an examination of items of personal adornment from the period of 1680 to 1820, recovered from ten archaeological sites in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Personal adornment as a class of material culture has been overshadowed by research on those classes of material culture found in larger quantities on archaeological sites from the historical period in North America. When personal adornment has been analyzed it has been assigned meaning within a present-day context, an approach that fails to apprehend its significance in the past. This study employs multiple lines of evidence to create an interpretive framework to consider how personal adornment carried meanings, focusing on how people used adornment to create and negotiate self identity and group affiliation according to gender, class, age, and ethnicity. Personal appearance is one of the main venues for communicating information about the self through the mundane and ritualized acts involved in getting dressed and choosing what to wear. Personal adornment is an archaeologically-recoverable remnant of the constructed appearance of a person. Clothing fasteners, jewelry, items for the hair, and accessories and miscellaneous items are examined and interpreted using documentary and archaeological evidence.;An identification guide for artifacts of personal adornment is a major component of the research presented here. The guide collects technical and temporal information gleaned from visual and documentary sources from the study period and combines it with social standards and attitudes toward particular items of dress I use the guide to interpret 257 artifacts recovered in archaeological investigations in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. By examining artifacts of personal adornment I reconstruct the clothing, jewelry, and dress accessories worn in the past by residents of a variety of households in Portsmouth. I also employ the artifacts as evidence for the ways in which individuals created and physically displayed their affiliations with gender, class, age, and ethnic groups. Although items of personal adornment comprise a small percentage of artifacts recovered from archaeological sites, they are potent tools for understanding the construction of individual identity and group affiliation in the past.