Dressing the Part: Power, Dress, Gender, and Representation in the Pre-Columbian Americas

The article explores how clothing, hairstyles, and personal ornaments were used to express status, power, gender identity, and group affiliations in ancient America. It highlights how costume elements represented empowered identities, how different costumes expressed gender and power, and how elite gendered costume elements may have been appropriated by people of other genders as symbols of power. The article emphasizes the importance of considering individual identity in larger schemes of social relationships and how the dynamics between power and gender are negotiated through costume.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 448 pages
Publication date: 16 April 2024
Publisher: University Press of Florida

From Olmec costume switching to Peruvian bundle burials, we see which types of power were gendered, which symbols or motifs were power-filled, and how these symbols were borne by the living and the dead. This collection showcases a mature gendered archaeology.

Cheryl Claassen, author of Beliefs and Rituals in Archaic Eastern North America: An Interpretive Guide, states that costume can reveal a wealth of information about an individual's identity within society. "Dressing the Part" looks at the ways individuals in the ancient Americas used clothing, hairstyle, and personal ornaments to express status and power, gender identity, and group affiliations, even from the grave. While most gender studies of pre-Columbian societies focus on women, these essays also foreground men and persons of multiple or ambiguous gender, exploring how these various identities are part of the greater fabric of social relations, political power, and religious authority.

The contributors to this volume discuss how costume elements represented empowered identities, how different costumes expressed gender and power, and how elite gendered costume elements may have been appropriated by people of other genders as symbols of power.

"Dressing the Part" examines how individual identity played a role in larger schemes of social relationship in the ancient Americas. Employing a variety of theories and methodologies from art history, anthropology, ethnography, semiotics, and material science, this volume considers not only how authority is gendered or related to gender but also how the dynamics between power and gender are negotiated through costume.

Contributors:

Katie McElfresh Buford
Billie J. A. Follensbee
Alice Beck Kehoe
Melissa K. Logan
Matthew G. Looper
Ann H. Peters
Kim N. Richter
Sarahh E. M. Scher

Dimension: 235 x 156 x 23 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780813080543