Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

A Compact in the Rough: Beauty and Material Culture of Agrarian Women in Postbellum South Carolina

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Historical Archaeology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

A fragment of a makeup compact was recovered at a postbellum, rural home site in the South Carolina Sandhills. This article explores the meanings accumulated by this object through its interaction with various individuals during its design, manufacture, advertisement, and use. The life cycle of this compact reveals the many ways personal adornment can mediate sociopolitical and economic structures of racial and gender supremacy and oppression. This analysis finds that consideration of the meanings of even the smallest artifacts adds depth to the interpretation of rural agents’ everyday lives.

Resumen

Se recuperó un fragmento de un compacto de maquillaje en una casa rural de la era de reconstrucción en los Sandhills de Carolina del Sur. Este artículo explora los significados acumulados por este objeto a través de su interacción con varias personas durante su diseño, fabricación, publicidad y uso. El ciclo de vida de este compacto revela las muchas formas en que el adorno personal puede mediar en las estructuras sociopolíticas y económicas de supremacía y opresión racial y de género. Este análisis encuentra que la consideración de los significados de incluso los artefactos más pequeños agrega profundidad a la interpretación de la vida cotidiana de los agentes rurales.

Résumé

Un fragment de poudrier a été découvert sur le site d'une demeure rurale de l'après guerre dans les Sandhills de la Caroline du Sud. Cet article est une exploration des significations accumulées par cet objet au cours de ses interactions avec différents individus pendant sa conception, sa fabrication, sa publicité et son utilisation. Le cycle de vie de ce poudrier met en lumière les manières nombreuses dont l'embellissement personnel peut concilier les structures sociopolitiques et économiques de la suprématie raciale et du genre et de l'oppression. Cette analyse établit que la prise en compte des significations des artéfacts même les plus petits vient ajouter une profondeur à l'interprétation de la vie quotidienne des agents ruraux.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Adams, William Hampton 1990 Landscape Archaeology, Landscape History, and the American Farmstead. Historical Archaeology 24(4):92–101.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, Rachel 2015 Consuming Beauty: Mass-Market Magazines and Make-Up in the 1920s. IJAS Online 4:3–14. IJAS: Irish Journal of American Studies <http://ijas.iaas.ie/consuming-beauty-mass-market-magazines-and-make-up-in-the-1920s/>. Accessed 13 September 2021.

  • Aspers, Patrick, and Frédéric Godart 2013 Sociology of Fashion: Order and Change. Annual Review of Sociology 39:171–192.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barker, Bryce, and Lara Lamb 2009 The Archaeology of Poverty and Human Dignity: Charity and the Work Ethic in a 1930s Depression Era Itinerant’s Camp on the Toowoomba Range Escarpment, Queensland. Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress 5(2):263–279.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barnes, Jodi A. 2011 Land Rich and Cash Poor: The Materiality of Poverty in Appalachia. Historical Archaeology 45(3):26–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beaudry, Mary C. 2001 Trying to Think Progressively about 19th-Century Farms. Northeast Historical Archaeology 30–31:129–142.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bouzeau, Edgar 1938 “Jewelry Is My Line,” Says Providence Wizard; He Handles Big Orders for Woolworth and Others. Pittsburgh Courier 13 August:24. Pittsburgh, PA.

  • Brandon, Jamie C. 2013 Reversing the Narrative of Hillbilly History: A Case Study Using Archaeology at Van Winkle’s Mill in the Arkansas Ozark. Historical Archaeology 47(3):36–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cabak, Melanie A., Mark D. Groover, and Mary M. Inkrot 1999 Rural Modernization during the Recent Past: Farmstead Archaeology in the Aiken Plateau. Historical Archaeology 33(4):19–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carnevali, Francesca 2011 Fashioning Luxury for Factory Girls: American Jewelry, 1860–1914. Business History Review 85(2):295–317.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carter, Elmer A. 1935 Thomas R. Lewis—Master Craftsman. Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life 14:74–76. Google Books <https://books.google.com/books?id=8s4ZAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false>. Accessed 13 September 2021.

  • Clement, Christopher Ohm 2009 Late 19th and Early 20th Century Plantations and Farms in the Center and Lower Townships of Richland County, South Carolina. Report to South Carolina National Guard, Columbia, from South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

  • Clement, Christopher Ohm, and Audrey R. Dawson 2007 Archaeological Testing and Survey at Fort Jackson South Carolina. Report to U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Jackson, SC, from South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

  • Cohen, Karen L. 2004 The Art of Fine Enameling. Sterling, New York, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, James E. 1903 The Manufacturing Perfumers’ Association of the United States. Speaker, Detroit, MI.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawson, Audrey R., Christopher Ohm Clement, and Deborah A. Keene 2007 Archaeological Research at Sixty-One Sites, Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Report to U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Jackson, SC, from South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

  • Dawson, Audrey R., and Christopher Ohm Clement 2010 A Preliminary Look at Churches and Schools: U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Report to U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Jackson, SC, from South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

  • De Bow, James D. B. (editor) 1853 Art. XII.—Manufactures and Mines. De Bow’s Review and Industrial Resources, Statistics, etc. 14(6):618–623.

  • Dobres, Marcia-Anne 2001 Meaning in the Making: Agency and Social Embodiment of Technology and Art. In Anthropological Perspectives on Technology, Michael B. Schiffer, editor, 47–76. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

    Google Scholar 

  • Douglas, Amanda, Carl Steen, and Karen Smith 2018 Delineation and National Register Evaluation of Cultural Resources at the McCrady Training Center, FY 2017, Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Report to South Carolina Army National Guard, Columbia, from South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

  • Douglas, Amanda, and Stacey L. Young 2019 Delineation and National Register Evaluation of Cultural Resources at the McCrady Training Center, FY 2018, Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Report to South Carolina Army National Guard, Columbia, from South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

  • Drowne, Kathleen Morgan, and Patrick Huber 2004 The 1920s. Greenwood Press, London, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Entwistle, Joanne 2000 The Fashioned Body. Polity Press, Oxford, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Franklin, Maria 2020 Gender, Clothing Fasteners, and Dress Practices in Houston’s Freedmen’s Town, ca. 1880–1904. Historical Archaeology 54(3):556–580.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grant, Holly 2013 Between Venus and Mercury: The 1920s Beauty Contest in France and America. French Politics, Culture, and Society 31(1):47–68.

    Google Scholar 

  • Groover, Mark D. 2005 The Gibbs Farmstead: Household Archaeology in an Internal Periphery. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 35(4):38–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hardin, Alice Grogan 1980 Interview by Allen Tullos, 2 May. Manuscript, Southern Oral History Program, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

  • Hochschild, Jennifer, and Brenna M. Powell 2008 Racial Reorganization and the United States Census 1850–1930: Mulattoes, Half-Breeds, Mixed Parentage, Hindoos, and the Mexican Race. Studies in American Political Development 22(1):59–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hudnut, Richard 1915 Beauty Book Containing Some Account of Marvelous Cold Cream and Other Complexion Specialties. Richard Hudnut, New York, NY.

  • Hudnut, Richard [1925] How to Be Charming. New York, NY. Cosmetics and Skin <https://www.cosmeticsandskin.com/booklets/hudnut-charming.php>. Accessed 13 September 2021.

  • Hudnut, Richard 1928 Richard Hudnut Parfumeur: Advertisement. Ladies’ Home Journal 45. 1928 Richard Hudnut Le Debut Perfume & Cosmetics Ad, Vintage Health & Beauty Ads, Vintage Magazine Ads, attic Paper <https://www.atticpaper.com/proddetail.php?prod=1928-richard-hudnut-cosmetics-perfume-ad>. Accessed 28 September 2021.

  • Hudnut, Richard 1929 Le Début. Richard Hudnut Parfumeur, New York, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hudnut, Richard 1930 Richard Hudnut: Advertisement. Journal of the American Medical Association 95(15):39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, Geoffrey 2010 Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, Jacqueline 1992 Encounters, Likely and Unlikely, between Black and Poor White Women in the Rural South, 1865–1940. Georgia Historical Quarterly 76(2):333–353.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kearney, Belle 1900 A Slaveholder’s Daughter. Abbey Press, New York, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lowry, David S. 2010 “I Know You!”: Understanding Racial Experience and Racial Practice within the Lumbee Indian Community. Southern Anthropologist 35(2):26–51.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin, Jennifer F., Nicholas G. Theos, and Sarah A. Woodard 2002 Upper Richland County, South Carolina Historical and Architectural Inventory. Report to Richland County Conservation Commission and South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, from Edwards-Pitman Environmental, Inc., Durham, NC.

  • Matthews, Christopher N. 2011 Lonely Islands: Culture, Community, and Poverty in Archaeological Perspective. Historical Archaeology 45(3):41–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCandless, Peter 1999 A Female Malady? Women at the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum, 1828–1915. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 54(4):543–571.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Middleton, E. Harvey 1905 The Art Industries of America: VII. Enameling on Metal. Brush and Pencil 16(3):66–74.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, George L., and Terry H. Klein 2001 A System for Ranking the Research Potential of 19th- and 20th-Century Farmstead Sites. Northeast Historical Archaeology 30–31:155–166.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mullins, Paul R. 2011 Racializing the Parlor: Race and Victorian Bric-a-Brac Consumption. In Race and the Archaeology of Identity, Charles E. Orser, Jr., editor, pp. 158–176. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mullins, Paul R., and Lewis C. Jones 2011 Archaeologies of Race and Urban Poverty: The Politics of Slumming, Engagement, and the Color Line. Historical Archaeology 45(1):33–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mullins, Paul R., Modupe Labode, Lewis C. Jones, Michael E. Essex, Alex M. Kruse, and G. Brandon Muncy 2011 Consuming Lines of Difference: The Politics of Wealth and Poverty along the Color Line. Historical Archaeology 45(3):140–150.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olmstead, Frederick Law 1856 A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States: With Remarks on Their Economy. Dix and Edwards, New York, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Malley, Nancy 2002 Kinckeadtown, an African American Post-Civil War Neighborhood in Lexington, Kentucky. Winterthur Portfolio 37(4):187–218.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Orser, Charles E., Jr. 2011 Beneath the Surface of Tenement Life: The Dialectics of Race and Poverty during America’s First Gilded Age. Historical Archaeology 45(3):151–165.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Plaag, Eric W., and Steven D. Smith 2009 “As Other People Now”: A Settlement History of the Fort Jackson, South Carolina Region. Report to U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Jackson, SC, from South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

  • Pope, Natalie Adams 2011 We Made a Day: History and Archaeology of Tenancy on the L. E. Gay Plantation. Report to Georgia Department of Transportation, Atlanta, from New South Associates, Stone Mountain, GA.

  • Pudney, Stephen 1999 Alexander Fisher: Pioneer of Arts and Crafts Enameling. Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850–the Present 23:70–85.

  • Richard, François G. 2011 Materializing Poverty: Archaeological Reflections from the Postcolony. Historical Archaeology 45(3):166–182.

  • Roberts, Blain 2014 Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women. Race and Beauty in the Twentieth-Century South. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rushing, Wanda 2009 Poverty. In The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Vol. 13, Gender, Nancy Bercaw and Ted Ownby, editors, pp. 223–227. University of North Carolina Press, Charlotte.

  • Schultz, Mark Roman 2005 The Rural Face of White Supremacy: Beyond Jim Crow. University of Illinois Press, Champaign.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shogren, Michael 1992 An Intensive Cultural Resource Management Survey, Fort Jackson Military Reservation, Richland County, South Carolina. Report to U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Jackson, SC, from Alabama Museum of Natural History, University of Alabama, Moundville.

  • Simon, Bryant 1996 The Appeal of Cole Blease of South Carolina: Race, Class, and Sex in the New South. Journal of Southern History 62(1):57–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Karen Y., Carl Steen, Anita Lehew, and Tamara Wilson 2017 Delineation and National Register Evaluation of Cultural Resources at the McCrady Training Center, FY 2016, Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Report to U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Jackson, SC, from South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

  • Smith, Karen Y., Tamara Wilson, and Katherine Goldberg 2015 By the Run of Colonels Creek: Boundary Delineation and National Register Evaluation of Sixteen Late 19th- to Early 20th-Century Rural Home Sites, U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Jackson, Richland County, South Carolina. Report to U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Jackson, SC, from South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

  • South, Stanley 1978 Pattern Recognition in Historical Archaeology. American Antiquity 43(2):223–230.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Southerlin, Bobby G., Dawn Reid, James Hill, Eric Poplin, and Paul E. Brockington, Jr. 1995 Archaeological Testing of Ten Sites, Fort Jackson Military Reservation, Richland County, South Carolina. Report to U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Jackson, SC, from Brockington and Associates, Inc., Atlanta, GA.

  • Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M. 2011 Commentary: How Feminist Theory Increases Our Understanding of the Archaeology of Poverty. Historical Archaeology 45(3):183–193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stoeber, E. M. 1870–1880 Richland County, State of South Carolina. Geological and Agricultural Map, Compiled from Railroad, Coast and State Surveys. William Sloane, Columbia, SC. University of South Carolina Libraries Digital Collections <https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/sclmaps/id/692>. Accessed 28 September 2021.

  • U.S. Bureau of the Census 1880 City of Columbia, Richland County, South Carolina. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington, DC. Ancestry <https://www.ancestry.com>. Accessed 27 September 2021.

  • U.S. Bureau of the Census 1920 Town of Fair Lawn, Richland County, South Carolina. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington, DC. Ancestry <https://www.ancestry.com>. Accessed 27 September 2021.

  • White, Carolyn L. 2008 Personal Adornment and Interlaced Identities at the Sherburne Site, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Historical Archaeology 42(2):17–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Winders, Jamie 2003 White in All the Wrong Places: White Rural Poverty in the Postbellum US South. Cultural Geographies 10(1):45–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wooten, Melissa E., and Enobong H. Branch 2012 Defining Appropriate Labor: Race, Gender, and Idealization of Black Women in Domestic Service. Race, Gender and Class 19(3&4):292–308.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments:

I am grateful to Paul Mullins for editing this article and to the reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive feedback. Comments by Shawn Keyte and Brandy Norton in initial reviews of this article were also very helpful. Kelsey Thachik and Christian Schluter also provided much needed help in georectifying historical aerials.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1 National Guard Road, Columbia, SC, 29201, U.S.A.

    Rachel Morgan

Authors
  1. Rachel Morgan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

The author acknowledges no known conflict of interest influencing the contents of this article.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Morgan, R. A Compact in the Rough: Beauty and Material Culture of Agrarian Women in Postbellum South Carolina. Hist Arch 56, 324–340 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41636-021-00317-0

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41636-021-00317-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation