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The overseas body provided an interesting and useful site of cultural understanding in early modern England. The marked body in particular was used by observers to address important questions concerning correct bodily deportment and its connection to civility, morality, and religiosity, resulting in an integration of the discourses of foreign and domestic somatic presentation. This study traces the changing English constructions of the marked body in the public discourse of the overseas world published between 1590 and 1660, a period that witnessed important changes in attitudes towards overseas corporeality. It challenges the common assumption that the marked body was an ephemeral and fleeting subject before Cook's Endeavour voyage, illustrating the textured and changing understanding that early modern English commentators displayed when confronted with corporeal alteration in the overseas world. In particular, it explores the reflexive contemplation overseas ornamentation engendered in England during the early years of English colonial endeavor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collection history and subsequent display in Exeter's Royal Albert Memorial Museum of the decorated shirt and leggings of the Blackfoot chief, Crowfoot, are explored in this article. Crowfoot was active in the 1870s, a time of mounting tension across the Western Plains in both Canada and the United States brought on by the arrival of the railroads and territorial expansion. Cecil E. Denny, who collected this sacred costume, was an officer in Canada's North-West Mounted Police and was involved in the negotiations between the Canadian government and the Blackfoot people which sought to pacify the region. This article argues that curatorial practices at Exeter in the late-nineteenth and throughout the twentieth century omitted the circumstances of Denny's acquisition, exhibiting these garments as generic examples of clothing. By recovering the circumstances of Denny's encounter with Crowfoot, the article restores some complexity to the items he acquired. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]