Mary C. Beaudry

Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology

DIRECTOR OF GRADUATE STUDIES

CHAIR OF THE AWARDS COMMITTEE OF THE SOCIETY FOR HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

MEMBER OF THE EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD, Post-Medieval Archaeology, Vestigios: Revista Latinoamericana de Arqueologia Historica, and Cultural Landscapes

website:people.bu.edu/beaudry/Mary_Beaudrys_Research/Welcome.html

PhD, Brown University, 1980

Areas of interest: historical and industrial archaeology of the Americas and British Isles, comparative colonialism, culture contact, gender and equity issues in archaeology, the archaeology of historical households and homelots, documentary archaeology, landscape, ceramic analysis and typologies

Excavations & Field Work

Her current field projects include investigations at several historical home sites in Massachusetts and at the colonial William Carr Estate at Little Bay, Montserrat, West Indies.

Mary C. Beaudry mines archaeological findings of sewing and needlework to discover what these small traces of female experience reveal about the societies and cultures in which they were used. Beaudry’s geographical and chronological scope is broad: she examines sites in the United States and Great Britain, as well as Australia and Canada, and she ranges from the Middle Ages through the Industrial Revolution.

The author describes the social and cultural significance of “findings”: pins, needles, thimbles, scissors, and other sewing accessories and tools. Through the fascinating stories that grow out of these findings, Beaudry shows the extent to which such “small things” were deeply entrenched in the construction of gender, personal identity, and social class.