Dress & Personal Accessories

The excavations of James Fort have produced unexpectedly large numbers of artifacts related to clothing and its production and care. These objects not only provide insights to the way individuals dressed in the early colony but to the importance of status and how it was communicated in the highly stratified colonial society. Similarly, jewelry and other objects of personal adornment are outward tangible signs of position and, sometimes, of gender. Some dress and personal accessories can be associated with known individuals in the settlement, while most represent the many nameless men, women, and children and the choices they made as they ventured on their perilous journeys to Jamestown.