Dressing the Part: Power, Dress, Gender, and Representation in the Pre-Columbian Americas

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Costume can reveal a wealth of information about an individual’s identity within society. Dressing the Part looks at the ways individuals in the ancient Americas used clothing, hairstyle, and personal ornaments to express status and power, gender identity, and group affiliations, even from the grave. While most gender studies of Pre-Columbian societies focus on women, these essays also foreground men and persons of multiple or ambiguous gender. Dressing the Part examines how individual identity played a role in larger schemes of social relationship in the ancient Americas. Employing a variety of theories and methodologies from art history, anthropology, ethnography, semiotics, and material science, contributors to this volume explore not only how power is gendered or related to gender but also how the dynamics between power and gender are negotiated through costume.