ABSTRACT
An examination of bodily objects in the context of settler colonialisms speaks broadly to the ways that individuals constituted identities using material culture, which has been described as “cosmopolitanism.” The lens of cosmopolitanism allows for a closer look at the engagements of peoples and objects in various colonial contexts, highlighting how new practices and identities developed drew on but were distinct from both European and Indigenous traditions. Dress was certainly one of those practices. In this discussion of dress, settler colonialism, and adornment, I take a closer look at one small but largely overlooked category of adornment objects—piercings—to explore nuances of gender and identity in eighteenth-century colonial Louisiana.
