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Expressing Ideology Without a Voice, or Obfuscation and the Enlightenment

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Abstract

The consumer culture produced by the Industrial Revolution obfuscates diversity in the archaeological record. Mass-manufactured goods might be read as mass-manufactured culture. It is important for historical archaeologists to attempt to decode the complexities of consumption. Using a feminist approach, I examine one archaeologically visible way in which muted groups simultaneously embrace and resist the tenets of a dominant ideology. I compare ceramic assemblages from four nineteenth/twentieth-century sites in Annapolis, Maryland, two mid-nineteenth-century assemblages from New York City, and some additional selected examples from North America.

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Little, B.J. Expressing Ideology Without a Voice, or Obfuscation and the Enlightenment. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 1, 225–241 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1027301232312

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