ABSTRACT
Uniforms that defined military women in the Cold War belong to the larger story of military service and citizenship, mass mobilisation, and the concept of total war. Since the seventeenth century, soldiers’ uniforms have shaped the actions and habits of men, imposing a discipline that transforms individual strength into collective power. Central to the foundation of the military, uniforms are proof of an imposed discipline; they are also indisputably masculine (Roche 1994: 228–239). This study uses a form of material culture, the clothing of everyday life, which is usually unavailable to traditional archaeologists and which they are forced to reconstruct from perhaps a few bone buttons, brooches and lace ends.
