Mark,

Saw your query about mirrors from slave quarters.  Have you heard about a
folk tradition of "ghost mirrors"  in Alabama's Black Belt region?  In
fact, I still see them occasionally when I drive through very rural,
African American communities here.  (And in fact, I have have placed one on
our visitor center at an archaeological park along with a bottle tree to
protect our operations).

People reportedly put mirrors on the outside of their houses next to their
 front and/or back doors.  Sometimes it's just a fragment of a broken
mirror nailed to the wall.  The purpose is to keep the devil out of the
structure.  The reasoning is that Satan is a night time angel and  tries to
enter your home at night, but he is also very vain, so when he sees his
image in the mirror, he stops and admires himself until the sun comes up,
and then he has to leave.   This was documented in a little book of
folkways of Alabama's Black Belt region  by Kathryn Tucker Windham
called *Count
Those Buzzards!  Stamp Those Grey Mules*, published in 1981.

Windham was a journalist and in her elder years became a regionally famous
storyteller.

Of course this is not  an archaeological example and therefore not a direct
answer to your colleague's question, but it is contexual information that
might be helpful, depending on where he/she is finding the mirror pieces.
So, I guess I'm  trying to say that  some mirrors might not necessarily
have anything to do with "representation of self."     Just saying . . . .
its something to consider.




Linda Derry
Site Director, Old Cahawba Archaeological Park
Alabama Historical Commission
9518 Cahaba Road, Orrville, AL 36767
park:  334/ 875-2529
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On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 3:55 PM, Warner, Mark ([log in to unmask]) <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> All,
> I have a colleague in the history department here at Idaho who is not on
> Histarch but has an interest in material culture in historical contexts.
> He is doing a project on representation of self in slave communities in the
> 18th and 19th century U.S.  He was querying me about the archaeological
> recovery of mirrors/mirror fragments in slave contexts.  I said I'd do a
> Histarch post to see what the HA community has in their collections along
> these lines.  Feel free to respond to me or contact my colleague directly.
> His contact info is:  Matt Fox-Amato, email  [log in to unmask]<mailto:
> [log in to unmask]>
>
> Thanks,
> Mark Warner
> U. of Idaho
>