Pewter Shank Button (Archaeological Find)

Pewter Shank Button

Religious and class systems are central to our understanding of the material culture of colonial adornment, and looking at this button helps us interrogate the presence of these systems at Harvard (Heath 1999). Pewter (alloyed tin with some lead, zinc, or copper) was a typical material for buttons from the 17th century until the early 19th century (Button Country 2012). This button also has part of the shank snapped off, but it was likely a cast or integral shank – a popular 17th century 2-piece mold method and the most common attachment method of this time (Button Country 2012; Hume 1970, 88; Hinks 1988, 56; Loren 2011, 52). Knowing that this button is likely 17th century fits in with understandings of sumptuary and modesty laws at Harvard and the colonies.

This button is simple in design, a tear-shaped, convex, hollowed-out design in plain pewter, suggesting the influence of Puritan regulations on adornment and clothing, and the avoidance of wearing “all lavish dress of excess of apparel whatsoever” (Evans 2010, 75; Loren 2016, 144; “The Lawes and Orders of Harvard Colledge, 1655-1708”). Although it is impossible to now determine who wore this button and in what context, buttons like this would have been wider signifiers of class and social standing in colonial society, especially after the 1651 sumptuary laws were passed (Loren 2011). These laws still attempted to uphold Puritan modesty and sobriety, but they were more lenient in allowing certain adornment for certain people and “gentlemen” (Bagley 2016, 68). This button therefore could have been worn on the clothing of a lower class, less wealthy Harvard student who was still being held to the full severity of the Puritan sobriety and modesty laws.

Bagley, Joseph M. 2016. A History of Boston in 50 Artifacts. Hanover: University Press of New
England.

Button Country. 2012. “Section 10 – Metals (Page 1).” Buttoncountry.com. Accessed April 30, 2017. http://buttoncountry.com/Metals1.html.

Button Country. 2012. “Section 23-3 – Back Types (Page 2).” Buttoncountry.com. Accessed April 30, 2017. http://www.buttoncountry.com/BackTypes2.html#.

Evans, Mary. 2010. Historic American Costumes and How to Make Them. New York: Dover Publications.

Heath, Barbara J. 1999 “Buttons, Beads, and Buckles: Contextualizing Adornment Within the Bounds of Slavery.” In Historical Archaeology, Identity Formation: and the Interpretation of Ethnicity, edited by Maria Franklin and Garrett Fesler. Colonial Williamsburg Research Publications, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Hinks, Stephen. 1988. A Structural and Functional Analysis of 18th Century Buttons. Unpublished M.A. thesis, Department of Anthropology, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.

Hume, Ivor Noël. 1970. A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America. New York: Knopf.

“John Winthrop (1588-1649).” Harvard University Portrait Collection, Gift of Thomas L. Winthrop to Harvard College in 1835. Object Number: H9. Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge.

Loren, Diana DiPaolo. 2011. The Archaeology of Clothing and Bodily Adornment in Colonial America. Florida: University Press of Florida.

Loren, Diana Di Paolo. 2016. “Bodily Protection: Dress, Health, and Anxiety in Colonial New England.” In The Archaeology of Anxiety: The Materiality of Anxiousness, Worry, and Fear, edited by Jeffrey Fleisher and Neil Norman, 141-156. Springer: New York.

“The Lawes and Orders of Harvard Colledge, 1655-1708.” 1655. Harvard University Archives. Accessed April 30, 2017. https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:51409343$3i.

Pewter Shank Button

2016.29.390

H931 Level 3

68-80cm

Metal

Personal

Button

1

2.4

1.2

0.2