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Costly Signaling and Gendered Social Strategies among Slaves in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake: An Archaeological Perspective

Galle, Jillian E.·2010·American Antiquity
DOI 10.7183/0002-7316.75.1.19
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Abstract

Evolutionary approaches to agency offer some of the most promising frameworks for identifying individual agents and their archaeological correlates. Agency theory calls attention to the individual as the fundamental feature of human relations, and evolutionary theory provides historically situated models that allow archaeologists to precisely investigate the complex behavioral strategies that underlie artifact patterns. The following paper offers one such model. Using data from 41 slave-site occupations from eighteenth-century Virginia, I explore how and why enslaved African Americans actively participated in the burgeoning "consumer revolution" that swept across the early modern Atlantic World. Artifact patterning suggests that the acquisition and display of costly imported goods functioned as a form of communication for slaves in both public and private venues. The data show that enslaved women and men used several different consumption strategies to solidify social and economic relationships within precarious and rapidly changing environments. Signaling theory, derived from evolutionary theory, illuminates the contextual factors that structured slaves’ consumer choices and provides a model for understanding their choices as the result of dynamic and mutually beneficial behaviors.

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  • In a study across eight plantations, Galle (2010) identified metal buttons and refined ceramics as costly items that served not only mundane functions, but also as signals of social worth to other residents of a plantation.

    “In a study across eight plantations, Galle (2010) identified metal buttons and refined ceramics as costly items that served not only mundane functions, but also as signals of social worth to other residents of a plantation.”

    From African American Archaeology, for Now (2022) · cites this paper as Galle 2010

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Metadata

Authors
Galle, J. E.
Venue
American Antiquity
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2010-01
Volume
75
Issue
1
Pages
19-43
ISSN
  • 0002-7316
  • 2325-5064
DOI
10.7183/0002-7316.75.1.19
Cited by
48
References
1
Language
en
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified, 2576 d)

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