Looking Good at the Fort

Hello everyone! My name is Kaylee Hagemann, I am a Junior at Western Michigan University. I participated in the 2017 field season of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project last summer. I am currently taking an independent study with Dr. Michael Nassaney, the Project’s Principal Investigator. The independent study involves a careful examination of all the artifacts recovered during the 2017 field season and producing a detailed inventory. We clean, count, and weigh every artifact, and record all the information so we know exactly what was found.

While going through a bag with artifacts from the unit I had excavated, N24 W6, with my pit partner Bryan, Dr. Nassaney and I came across an artifact I had recovered in August, a few days after the annual Open House. The artifact is a complete 18^th-century cufflink, or sleeve button. The metal is pewter and contains a glass inset in the middle with brown swirls like a marble. A week later, we found another cufflink that matched the previous cufflink but it is incomplete. Other cufflinks have also been discovered on the Fort St. Joseph site.

The French have always taken great pride in their clothing and personal adornment, so even cufflinks have a history and have changed throughout the past 800 years. In the 13^th century, string pins and belts were used instead of buttons to fasten clothing. Later, buttons were used as fasteners when fitted garments became popular. During the Renaissance of the 17^th century, decorative lacy cuffs were used. Noblemen used ribbons to tie their cuffs; the elegance of them were a symbol of status in society.  By the late 17^th century, ribbons were replaced with jeweled buttons called “sleeve buttons” (also known as cuff links). By the 18^th century, buttons became more ornate. A favorite style was to create a miniature painting on the underside or glass (design similar to the specimen found at Fort St. Joseph). These were produced for the elite classes, as their raw materials were expensive and drove production costs up. Starting in the mid-1830s and spanning through the early 1900s, the middle class adopted the use of cufflinks as well. Although they could not afford gems, replicas were made. Rhinestones and pastels were used as fake diamonds, copper and zinc alloy were substituted for gold, and cut steel was used for silver. Cufflinks were in decline once shirts started to come buttons already fashioned in them in the 1970s. Only those who wanted to keep the tradition alive would wear cufflinks.

 

When French cuff shirts became popular in the 1990s, cufflinks became a mainstream fashion accessory for all ages. With the new fashion trend, the youth were introduced to the adornments of old. Paul Smith and Gucci started to produce cufflinks that were fashionable by today’s standards, bringing something that once seen as high-end to the mainstream. Once viewed as a formal jeweled accessory, cufflinks became accessories for both men and women to express style individuality.

Adornment and clothing has always been an important aspect of communication in civilizations. Since clothing decays, the only adornment left to study are objects made from stones, metals, glass, etc. that have stood the test of time. Archaeologists study adornment because it is a way to infer gender, status, politics, prestige, occupation, and religion through material in the absence of written documents. In this case, we know that the cufflinks were worn by middle and upper-class persons. Studying adornment can not only assist in the study for a specific archaeological site, but can also be useful to show the evolution of fashion and, depending on the times, the messages they communicate to the public. After all, adornment style is repetitive and trends have a way of coming back around.

- Kaylee