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Season 2, Episode 1: The Clothes We Wore Part 1
Transcript
Dustin Baker
George Washington. It's one of the most recognizable names in the world. His story is a foundational stone in American history. Yet at the place he was born. Only remnants remain of the buildings and the stories of people who once lived here. One might think that the birthplace of a national icon is an easy story to tell, but it's actually one of the most complex and surprising historic sites preserved by the National Park Service. So join us as we piece together the past, present, and future of this place. Brick by brick. On this podcast series Upon This Land: History, Mystery and Monuments.
Thank you for joining us on this episode. This year, we're celebrating George Washington's 293rd birthday, and we're focusing on the theme We the People, and something that's really unique to all people, no matter where you live or what time you lived. Our clothing items, we all wear them. It's something truly unique to human beings, and we have someone on the show today that knows a lot about this subject.
Sarah Rivers Cofield
Hi, my name is Sarah Rivers Cofield and I am the curator of Federal Collections at the Maryland Archeological Conservation Laboratory at Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum, which I know is a really long name, so we just call it the Mack Lab for short. And we are the primary archeological repository for collections excavated, as required by law in Maryland when various laws kick in. And one of my specialties is the study of clothing related artifacts. And I also have a historic costume collection at home. So this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. However, as an archeologist, I'm not. I'm not actually a costume historian because that would require having a lot of textiles to work with, which I don't, although I do know them, and I've read a lot of their books, so, so yeah, I'm here to talk about what I know about clothing for you guys.
Dustin Baker
Well, thank you so much for being here with us. And we always want to connect our visitors and our listeners to the, stories and the people who are part of the Washington origin story. And the Washington family lived here for seven generations, from roughly 1660 to 1780. And I just want to start off by asking, how did clothing or fashion evolve during that time?
Sarah Rivers Cofield
Well, first of all, I'm really glad, that those are the bracket dates 1660 and 1780, because the 1660s and 70s was a really transitional time in costume, and so was the end of the 18th century. Whereas in between those time periods, for about 100 years, things were relatively stable. So I don't have to give you this whole evolution of clothing, you know, especially it's such a visual thing. So to do it in a conversation is a little challenging. But basically around 1660, is sort of this transitional time in England as, as most listeners probably have heard of, there had been something going on in England. The English Civil War, the first half of the 17th century was very tumultuous over there. There was a lot of fighting between, the Roundheads and the Cavaliers are sort of these personalities that people picture, and they had particular clothing styles that went with them, and there was a lot of, sort of political and moral fighting about conspicuous consumption and wearing fancy clothes versus being more modest and not showing off your wealth all the time in your clothing. And so in the 1660s is the restoration of Charles the Second and the monarchy. And they're coming in trying to sort of, they're trying to bridge that gap. They're trying to show, yes, I am aristocracy, I am wealthy, but I also can be modest. So that people don't have to overthrow my government again, and be insulted by it. And so Charles the second is really trying to set an example. And one of the things he does in this time period, in that decade is introduce the vest, which seems like not the first thing you would think of for this time period. But it really started a trend of the three piece suit for men that persists to this day. And at that time period, it was, your breeches, which sort of ended at the knee, waistcoat or what now we call a vest and, coat over that. So that's sort of the three piece suit and that has persisted. Women, at the time were wearing in the 1660s, usually sort of a bodice and a skirt or petticoat. And then they sort of transitioned to something called a mantua or gown, which is it went on like a robe. It opens in the front, and is sort of fitted to the body with a draping technique. And that is the style that really persists from the end of the 17th century, almost all the way through to the end of the 18th century for women. So men are wearing this three piece suit cross weeks and breaches, and women are wearing, a man to a gown. And under that, men, their undergarments are, men were wearing stockings. That's what covered up from their feet up to their knees, because they're wearing those knee breaches. Women wore stockings as well. And then the other men's undergarments, were a shirt. Just a shirt. They might have had drawers for certain occasions, different times. But for the most part, men were really long shirts that went down past the waist. And then they sort of tuck it in that bulky area around the waist and all of the, you know, all the private areas. And so that is the undergarment, and similarly for women, they were a shift which, later became known as a chemise, which is that's what would touch the skin. And it's very much like the man's shirt, but not quite as bulky, not quite as long sleeves, depending on the gown that they're wearing. And that's what they wore underneath everything. And then both of them would have garters to hold their stockings up. They would, you know, both men and women wear shoes. Obviously. And then they had various accessories depending on the garment. So. So you have women, stockings and shift covered by a gown and petticoat. And then another thing to mention, I think for women throughout this whole time period, a petticoat wasn't it was a, it was like what we think of as a skirt today. It was meant to be seen, and they're often very decorative. It wasn't considered an undergarment like it ended up later in the 19th century. And then you have men wearing stockings, shirt, waistcoat, reaches coat, and then, of course, headwear. All the accessories, all of those things. And, and that is really sort of the foundation of the wardrobe throughout this whole time period. There's, there's changes in the cut, the number of buttons, the popular trims and things like that. But but those are the basic things that sort of persist throughout that time.
Dustin Baker
So this is kind of the classic what you picture in your mind when you think of people in the Revolutionary War era.
Sarah Rivers Cofield
Yes. Oh, the, the war era, you're getting very close to this end of the 18th century transition when things change very dramatically. But but yeah, it's sort of, you know, when you picture George Washington, he's got the branches on, he's got the waistcoat, he's got the coat, you know, he's got the the hat, you know, the wigs. They didn't mention wigs, but wigs were obviously a thing during this time period. And really throughout that whole entire time period, though, the styles change. So yeah.
Dustin Baker
Yeah. And you mentioned earlier about how clothing, both then and now is really wrapped up in our identities and, how did clothing differ depending on not just where you were, but also who you were in society?
Sarah Rivers Cofield
Yeah. So it was very much, you know, there were a lot of people in this time period, especially in the 17th century. And I feel like I should put a plug in here. There's a really great book. If people want to read more about this. It's called the Three Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity. That's fantastic. I highly recommend it. I cannot remember the author, so I apologize for that. But, you know, there are people in the 17th century, through the 18th century that really believe strongly that it's a good thing to be able to look at a person and be able to tell what their role is in society that like, you know, nowadays we say, don't judge a book by its cover. But but there was really a lot of people saying, no, really. We need to be able to tell. We need to be able to judge you by what you're wearing. And to the point that they were laws passed, sumptuary laws and things like that, saying, you know, no, if you're not an aristocrat, you can't wear silk. If you are not knighted, you're not allowed to have gold spurs. You know, those are the kinds of things that people really cared about. So people wanted to be able to know by looking at you, what is your role? And so to an extent, some of that is related to your occupation. So you could usually be able to tell a sailor by what they're wearing because maybe they have slops instead of breaches, you know, something like that. But for most people, those foundation garments that I described as a three piece suit, the stockings, the gown, the petticoat, and I forgot to mention two stays, which are the women's, foundation garment that goes over the shift and under their gown to give them their shape. You know, everybody is wearing those same elements. What differs is depending on how wealthy you are, the quality of the fabric, whether or not it was made specifically for you. All of this clothing is handmade, so those who could afford it would get bespoke clothing made for them, but other people might buy it secondhand because clothing was very expensive and then alter it, to try to fit. So but the quality of the fabric, the, the fit, and how well it's kept up, you know, how many times has it been repaired? How many years out of style is it those are the kinds of things that would indicate to you how well off a person was. But one thing I think it's really important to think about this time period is that, yes, you can look at somebody and tell what their role is in society, but you can't always tell by how richly they're dressed, what their role is. So, I think the best example I can think of is, one of the trends throughout this time period, 17th century and 18th century, is to literally wear trims made of metal. So metallic thread like a silk thread, sort of wrapped in silver or metallic embroidery of various kinds, was very popular for the people who could afford it to decorate their outfits with lots of kind of embroidery or trim. And it would really sparkle in the candlelight. And it was very high maintenance. It was something that you had to have servants really, to help you take care of. So it was very much conspicuous consumption. You're literally wearing silver on your clothes. And so there's this tendency to think, oh, well, people who had that must have been the wealthy people. But one of the more popular applications for these metallic trims was livery for servants. So if you find that, say, in a slave quarter and the US, it's not actually necessarily that unusual, it might just be that that person is wearing a livery garment. So, that person's role is to wait on and to make their owner the person who literally has title to their body, look good, and reflect on them. And so you can't always necessarily say, oh, well, this is an expensive thing. Therefore it was worn by a wealthy person. Because that's not always necessarily the case. So yeah, you really could drill deep and look at somebody and say, I pretty much know who you are. And there's a really great quote by a traveler from the 1740s complaining that he was wearing his sort of old wool cap in a tavern, and he looked like, you know, a Carter. Like he was just, you know, driving the herd and not a very wealthy guy. And they gave him the scraps, when it was meal time. And he complained, and he was like, you know, well, I have I have really nice silver buckles at home and I have a linen hat. And so he switched out his will have for a linen hat, and he was like the other one was fine for Marilyns. But now that I'm in Pennsylvania, I have to wear this one. And, you know, it was very telling about how important each and every attribute of somebodys outfit might signal to somebody like, this is, this is who I am.
Another myth, people have the impression, people in the past that if you're not wealthy, maybe you're not wearing all the garments all the time. You know, maybe you're like in a shirt and pants or something, or you didn't wear stays, for example, which was sort of like the the earlier equivalent of a corset. You know, and that really, I think is not as much of a thing as people think. So every time you watch a historic show on television nowadays, they sort of set apart the main characters or the wealthy characters from the other characters, and by having the other characters be almost in rags, or these like really dumpy clothes that don't fit right and they're always really dirty and it's just so overemphasized. And you know, what I think that people should be picturing is that people are essentially wearing the same thing. It's just that it's it's not as good a quality, but it's not necessarily in rags either. You know, people didn't know how to mend things. And, you know, if you think about stars as sort of the equivalent of a modern bra, you would never be like, oh, well, people who can't afford, you know, people who don't have any money, they don't wear bras. You know, you wouldn't say that, right? That doesn't really apply. Like you would still wear stays. They're probably just hand-me-downs days or they're falling apart stays or, you know, whatever. But you still would have that same basic sense of decency and what a real wardrobe is. So it's sort of a myth that I think TV perpetuates this. Everybody's in rags or they're not fully dressed. Oh, that wasn't really so much a thing,
Dustin Baker
Yeah. I mean, that's I mean, still true today. Like, you can wear name brand or get a knockoff version. It's looks kind of the same, but.
Sarah Rivers Cofield
Right. But you would never be like, oh, well, you can tell that that person's poor because they don't have a shirt, you know, like like they would. It's just usually like hand-me-downs and stuff. You know, there are certain levels of decency, I think, and, and now this isn't clothing related at all, but one of from your time period, especially one of the big myths is, well, I think if some I have a little bit of a pet peeve about it, but everybody talks about how, you know, if you're poor in that time period, you drink like ale and beer and you have to be wealthy to have wine or liquor. But like, just because something is priced higher doesn't necessarily mean that everybody adhered to exactly their means. Especially in a, in an economy so based on credit, so that it does apply to clothes to people might dress beyond their means and end up in debt. That was certainly a thing. In terms of fashion, you know, I all, for all of this knowledge I have of clothing, you know, if you dropped me in New York City and told me to, like, pick out who's wearing Manolo Blahnik or who was wearing Prada or whatever, I would have absolutely no idea whatsoever. Like, I know that those things exist, and I know that those kinds of distinctions are very noticeable amongst certain classes. Still to this day, just like they would have been in the 18th century. But, you know, I, I can recognize it better from 300 years ago than I could in our modern society, even though a lot of the rules still apply.
Jonathan Malriat
So quick clarification questions. Just, because you mentioned a couple clothing terms that I know I am not as well versed in historic clothing, so I'm more interested even just learning a bit about them. So you mentioned sailor slops I think was the term.
Sarah Rivers Cofield
Yes.
Jonathan Malriat
What are those? Those were in lieu of breaches?
Sarah Rivers Cofield
Yeah. So they're basically pants. But instead of being super tight at the knee, they sort of open up like a, almost like a skirt. So it's almost like a divided skirt is what it looks like.
Jonathan Malriat
What was the use for that? Why would they do that versus breaches?
Sarah Rivers Cofield
I don't know for sure. Some of these things are just trends and there are a lot of details. You know, I mentioned I'm an archeologist coming into this as a hobbyist. I am not a costume historian, what archeologists know is how they were fastened. So, you know, the hardware that we find, and so in many ways, the cut of the garment, I don't have to know all of those details.
Jonathan Malriat
So even on those idea of fasteners, what were some different types of fasteners that you would find as like an archeologist? What would you find that differentiates between the different types of clothing?
Sarah Rivers Cofield
So, so as archeologists, what we find the vast majority of clothing is gone in the archeological record, unless you have a really good preservation environment that preserves fabric, which is very rare in our region. Most of what we find is the hardware. So, that means fasteners like buttons and buckles or accessories. So, like fan parts, jewelry, maybe watch parts, things like that. And a lot of people, you know, really want to be able to interpret clothing from these very few artifacts because, you know, it's very important to to think about what people were wearing because it was so central to their identity in this time period. And it's very hard when all you have are these little pieces, parts of what went there. So what we're given to work with for the most part, like I would say, what we have most of as buttons and throughout the late 17th and most of the 18th century, most buttons represent men because the waistcoat and the coat and the breeches all fastened with buttons, as a rule, but women's outfits, their gown that closed in the front, and maybe wood fastened over what's called a stomach or a triangular piece that would sort of go in between the front and maybe decorative of the woman's bodice. Oftentimes those garments might pin on with straight pins as opposed to like a button or a buckle or something. So most buttons tended to be for men. Women did wear them for riding attire if they if they had a writing habit and they sometimes had buttons as like just decorative accessories on their outfits. But the majority that we find as archeologists are from the menswear, and you can sort of tell by the size and time period which garment it's from. So earlier on, maybe like 1730s and before buttons tend to be pretty small. There is a lot of them on a suit, I think, one of James's suits. James the second, the one who was sort of pushed out in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. One of his surviving suits has over 200 buttons on it. Just those three pieces of clothing, a suit, waistcoat in breeches, so sort of very tightly spaced buttons that are fairly small and somewhat bulbous in shape. And then as the 18th century goes on, the buttons sort of flatten out and they get a little bit bigger over time until by the 1780s, the buttons, especially for coats, could be huge, like over an inch in diameter. And they're much further spaced out. So we can sort of look at trends and buttons. But one of the things a lot of people think about with this time period in archeological collections as well, if I have a silver button that is a higher class than a brass button, which is higher class than a pewter button, and all of that is true. But throughout this time period, some of the most expensive buttons would have been covered in a matching fabric. Because textiles were very expensive and because fabric covered buttons wore out the fastest, it was almost more conspicuous consumption to be using buttons every day that were more likely to wear out faster and couldn't be reused. And so a lot of fabric covered buttons we don't find archeologically except for possibly if the, if the mold that it was built over was made of bone, we might find that, but a lot of them are made of wood, and so we don't find them. And so fabric covered and and embroider, embroidery covered buttons may have been some of the most expensive ones, and yet we don't find them. So we always have to think in terms of okay, yes, we found this and we can say this much about it, but we have to take into account how much we, we don't know, might my things that might have been there but didn't survive. And if you don't take that into account, you can go down the road of doing really incorrect interpretations. Some other hardware that we study a lot are buckles, because the 18th century was huge on buckles. So men wore buckles at the knee, to close the breaches nice and tight at the bottom of the knee. And, both men and women wore shoe buckles, to fasten their shoes. Women also, there was a big trend for, matching bracelets that sometimes fastened with buckles and, neckwear for men, often had a buckle at the back called a stock buckle. And I've seen references from this time period to shirt buckles, sleeve buckles, there's garter buckles for boot garters to hold your boots up. So we find a lot of those, and some of them, we can figure out what they are. Not all of them. I would say. Can we necessarily figure out what they are? Because we really need a lot of artwork and surviving examples to sort of tease that out. So, yeah. So buttons and buckles are big. Agates are another thing we find relating to costume, although that tends to be a little bit more popular in the 17th century. Agates being the little metal tubes at the end of laces to keep them from fraying. We find the tubes, but not the laces. So a lot of people, you know, did wear lace to garments of various kinds. And then, like I mentioned, we have jewelry. We, parasols and umbrellas, fans, all of the accessories, those tend to be the easiest to really identify when we find them.
Dustin Baker
You know, when I think of even just the last century, of the kinds of clothing people wore and, how they wore it, its fashion and clothing just seemed like such an ephemeral topic. What makes it worth all the effort people put into studying and understanding what people used to wear?
Sarah Rivers Cofield
Well, I think because it really does reflect their role in society. And sometimes we can even get at what people were feeling and thinking, you know, just like now, you know, we might express our identity and our opinions through a t shirt or a hat or whatever that says. And it might just be really explicit, like in words. And in this time period, the same thing was true. So, you know, think about, for example, during the American Revolution, I'm sure most people have heard about this desire to wear homespun. You know, we want to we want to end our dependance on on imports, and we're severing our ties to England. And so we're going to wear homespun garments that were made here. You could see that. You could see it by looking at what people are wearing. And so if you're out and about, somebody could look at you and tell whether you were a revolutionary or a Tory, you know, and think about like we talk about during the American Revolution, it's not just the British, it's the Redcoats. Like they they're literally identified by the coats that they're wearing. I realize that they're red. And so it's like Captain Obvious, but it's not, you know, it's not a coincidence. And that's how we think of them. Like it is their identity. It is like, this is who I am. It's so if we're trying to understand people there, this is one of the best ways to do that. As long as we have the evidence. I mean, obviously, if they wrote a diary, we should take their diaries word for it to get at their thoughts and feelings and whatnot. But honestly, the clothing is kind of the next best thing. In terms of how they represent themselves. And a really good example, archeologically is, one of my big projects at work is helping with our we have a diagnostic artifacts website and diagnostic artifacts in Maryland. And it's it's fairly outdated right now. We're working on an update. And one of the things that I have worked on adding is linked buttons. So a lot of people nowadays, when you think of a linked button, you see what I'm talking about is cuff links. Right. So they're two buttonholes being fastened with a linked button of some kind. Well, in the 18th century, everybody wore cufflinks, men and women and children. And that's because those garments that I mentioned earlier, the shirts and the shifts that touch the skin, would be laundered most often. And so for the sake of prolonging their life, it made a lot of sense to have all of the fasteners on them be removable for laundering purposes. So everybody wore cufflinks at the at the cuff. Not all shifts had cufflinks, buttons, but some did. And men also might have linked buttonholes at the neck that you often don't see in paintings because of the various neckwear and stocks that they're wearing. But anyway, so everybody's wearing these and we find them archeologically a lot because everybody was wearing them. And it includes the enslaved population. We find them in slave quarters, oftentimes we only find them in slave quarters. So I've been doing a lot of research on these, and it turns out that those who could afford to buy more precious metals did, because these are the smallest accessories. And at the time, the material set the price. Not so much the labor to make it. Because human labor at the time was just extremely cheap. So if you had a more elaborately made button like, say, it has a glass molded inset and that's assembled with foil to make it look beautiful, and then it's in a metal setting that's not more expensive than a gold sleeve button. That's plain looking. It's all about the material. So we find all of these buttons of all these different materials. And they often have these glass inserts that have inscriptions on them or molded lettering on them, and they literally might have political statements on them. So one of the ones we have says liberty on it, and it's very it's from Annapolis. It's very much like this is the Revolutionary War. And it's tiny. It's like it's a little oval that is long. This side is only a half an inch, so they're taking a lot of effort into putting little messages on these barely visible buttons that their, their sleeve ruffles would, most of the time obscure. You wouldn't even necessarily see it. The most obscure one we have is labeled Fips, and the label which there are these two guys, Phipps and a label who ran for Parliament in 1774, in the Newcastle region of the UK. And they lost. They lost like horribly. But they were supporters of the movement to sort of lay off the Americans a little bit and like, let's restore the economy and not like get this conflict going. They wanted to hold government accountable. Anyway, the their opponent had more than twice the votes of them. But it's really interesting that in Baltimore, Maryland, we have a little sleeve button that has those two guys names on it. You know, like what? How did that political button end up over here? You know, who over here is voting for Parliament and, so I really do think that the clothing is a way to get at individual belief systems, and not necessarily just how wealthy you are, although that is true. Or what is your role in society like, whether you're a sailor or you're an enslaved person? That is also true, but also, you know, what do they think about things? And I think that that is really exciting. As an archeologist.
Dustin Baker
So why should people care about historic clothing?
Sarah Rivers Cofield
it is a really fun topic. And it's especially fun to make sure that you sort of can envision everything, especially, you know, when you're an archeologist trying to picture how, you know what I mostly known as, just like the little metal things person. You know, I study all these little metal things, whether it's horse related or clothing related or you hardware, you know, any of that stuff. And if I didn't have in my head these sort of images floating around of what people were wearing and how they got dressed, thanks to all the costume historians out there, I wouldn't be able to answer any of those questions. And so, I'm always really appreciative, appreciative of the work that other people are doing, whether it's at Williamsburg, making the clothing, and the milliner's shop or, the mantle makers that are working there, or the people who are writing the books and, and sharing their museum collections online. You know, it really is an amazing field. Now that so many people are making their collections and images available online, it's getting much more accessible. And I think it's something that everybody can relate to.
Jonathan Malriat
So changing topics a little bit. Going back to earlier, you mentioned that one of your projects is working on a diagnostic artifacts website, Can you tell us what the role of the Maryland Archeological Conservation Laboratory or the MAC lab is?
Sarah Rivers Cofield
so the Mac lab is a repository for artifacts. And so most of the time when archeology is done in our country, it's either done like in a museum setting or a historic site setting, like at George Washington's birthplace. And then those collections stay with that institution, or it's required by law for some reason or other, whether state dollars or tax dollars, from the federal government are going into a project. So say, highway is being built or a school or something along those lines, or you have to do an erosion project. And it's the Army Corps has to be involved. These laws kick in basically saying, okay, the government is doing this undertaking. You don't have the right to destroy our nation's heritage without doing something about it. So that's essentially what the laws are trying to do is mitigate that issue. So most of the questions we have at the MAC lab are coming from these very individual projects. So a highway went in, a school was built whatever and when. That can't be avoided. When that historic site, when you can't reroute the road around it and you can't avoid digging it up, you have to do what's called a data recovery. So a lot of our collections are from these data recoveries, and they're really significant, really amazing collections that that have had a lot of excavations. And they tend to have larger collections and so a company, there are private companies out there who are hired to do these projects, and they see that project from start to finish. So they do the research goals, they go out, they do the field work, they do the paperwork, they tie it all together into a report, and then they submit it. It gets reviewed, it gets approved, they get paid. If they hand the collection over to a repository for long term care, because part of the point of a data recovery and archeology in general is that, you know, when you do archeology, it's destroys the site. You can never go back and excavate that site again because we need all of the layers, of soil to tell time. The deeper you dig, the older you get. And we need to know where all those artifacts came from in terms of, you know, their horizontal location. Like if you were to find a series of buttons that were all clustered together, that means something very different than a series of buttons that are scattered all over a landscape. We want the association of artifacts with each other, so we control for the layers, both depth and also horizontal location. And that helps us read the soil and really tell what's going on. So anyway, so the point of what I'm saying is that, you know, archeologists go out, they do all these important studies, but it is never part of their, well not never, but it's rarely part of their mandate when they're doing those projects to relate that to everything else that's already been studied. They do have to do sort of a mention of how it fits in with the area and what other sites might exist, but one of the advantages that we have at the MAC lab and that I have is one of the curators there is that, you know, whereas each of those sites might find 2 or 3 buckles and not be able to say much about it. I have the benefit of having 10 million artifacts to choose from, from thousands of different sites across the state. So I can pull all the all the NI buckles together into one, draw all the sleeve links together into one draw and by doing that, it allows you to do a much bigger analysis and study either by time period or region, or any other little sort of mini studies. So, as an example, again, with the sleeve lengths, we have sleeve lengths from a tannery in Frederick County where we know that laborers were working there to make leather, which is extremely labor intensive and smelly, disgusting work. We have sleeve lengths from an iron furnace where we know that a lot of enslaved people were employed. We have sleeve lengths from lots of different slave quarters at different tobacco plantations. And we have sleeve lengths from urban contexts, Annapolis and Baltimore. And so we can sort of look at those how they change from site to site in a way that the people who initially did the research and they were just focused on one site, they can't necessarily do. And so one of their mandates is to make sure that people know that this is a resource that they can access. We're we're sort of like a special collections library. Like, you can't just come in and check out the artifacts and take them home with you, but you can come in by appointment and tell us what you want to look at, and we will pull it for you. And, and that is really one of the things that we want more people to take advantage of. There's not much point in having all this stuff if you don't do something with it. So we've created a lot of finding Aids online that tell people about the sites and the collections that we have at the Mac lab, and we've also created this diagram Stick artifacts website, which especially archeologists love to use because you can go to it with your ceramic or your, small find or whatever artifacts you have. Maybe it's related and, and look for a section on that website that might help you tell what it is. And so by diagnostic, what we mean is that it's datable or identifiable or we can we know we can help you do some interpretation of it. And most of the time the diagnostic artifacts are ceramics because people have been using ceramics ever since the colonists first came here. And ceramics tend to be fragile. So they break and they tend to be used every day. So again, breakable things that are used every day are more likely to, to break and get thrown out. And they changed, pretty quickly in terms of their fashion ability. So new styles are introduced on a fairly rapid basis. So there's a lot of literature on ceramics. There is less literature on clothing related artifacts and how those change over time. And a lot of that is because we don't find as much of them, you know, when a dish breaks, you might find 20 pieces of that dish like, and that accumulates over the years. But people don't deliberately throw away their buckles and buttons and things. It's, they try to hold on to those if they can. So by pulling all of the different sites together and doing studies on that, what I'm trying to do by adding those to our diagnostic website is saying, okay, here's all the links in Maryland and all the time periods of those sites to help build up enough data to make those more diagnostic, to look for trends. So, for example, very small copper alloy linked buttons with a figure eight shaped link and a faceted piece insert that looks like a jewel. Those are super common before 1750, and they're not really common after 1750. And we didn't know that before. So that's part of what we're trying to do with our collections. And our website is, you know, get the word out, get people to come use them, and then also make the diagnostic artifacts website, a tool that people can use based on our collections to help them understand their collections better and and better interpret all these sites everywhere that are being excavated across the country.
Jonathan Malriat
Thank you for joining us on our first episode of the second season of Upon This Land history, Mysteries and monuments. Our presenter today was Sarah Rivers Cofield, and big thank you to Sarah for taking the time out of her busy schedule to join us for this episode. If you enjoyed the conversation, it does continue into a second part. In that second part, Sarah will talk about the projects that she has done for the Maryland Archeological Conservation Laboratory, as well as some of her own personal connections to historic clothing, including a well-known story of a dress that she has uncovered. Until next time for our next episode of Upon This Land.
Description
What were people wearing in the world that George Washington came from, and what can their clothing tell us about their lives? We are joined by Sara Rivers Cofield to discuss the relationship between culture and clothing. As the curator of Federal Collections at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, Sara helps us stitch together the world of 18th century clothing and fashions to the people who wore them, and about studying clothing remnants as an archaeologist.
Date Created
02/28/2025
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