Knee, Garter, Girdle, Hat, Stock, and Spur Buckles from Seven Sites in Portsmouth, New Hampshire Carolyn L. White Published online: 17 February 2009 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009 Abstract Material culture studies have begun to take new directions within the field of historical archaeology. Shoe buckles are the most familiar and readily identifiable type of buckle to archaeologists, but there are many other buckles worn as part of a person’ s dress that may be identified on archaeological sites. Knee, garter, girdle, hat, stock, and spur buckles are regularly recovered. These buckles can be used as an aid to dating archaeological strata and features, and can be employed to understand the kinds of clothing worn by site inhabitants. This paper presents and interprets an assemblage of buckles of assorted types recovered from seven 18th-century domestic sites in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Keywords Buckles . Dress . Eighteenth century . Gender . Portsmouth . New Hampshire Introduction How far historical archaeology has come since the publication of Ivor Noël Hume’ s Artifacts of Colonial America (1969)! Why is it, then, that this volume remains our most dependable resource for identifying unusual artifacts? Since the 1970s, archaeologists have been content to use a few comprehensive guides (Deagan 1987, 2002; Noël Hume 1969) as well as resources from other fields to interpret many classes of artifacts. Historical archaeologists are beginning to throw enthusiasm behind refining and developing an understanding of material culture beyond its use as a means toward understanding archaeological sites on a broad scale and to examine uncommon artifacts alongside the standard list. To be sure, archaeologists have put their excavated assemblages to work to understand broad questions about landscapes, households, institutions, and communities, but these Int J Histor Archaeol (2009) 13:239–253 DOI 10.1007/s10761-009-0077-y C. L. White (*) Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, Nevada, USA e-mail: clwhite@unr.edu