'Doing trade': A sexual economy of nineteenth-century Australian female convict prisons

Within all penal institutions, networks of black market exchange circulate luxuries throughout the inmate population. Both material objects and sexual encounters fuel these systems of illicit barter. This paper presents some archaeological implications of such exchange. Exploring documentary and material records of the Ross Female Factory, a nineteenth-century Australian colonial prison for transported British female convicts, I relate the differential distribution patterns within the button assemblage to sexual dynamics of the convict black market. What were the same-sex implications of this 'trade'? What was the nature of these encounters? Can same-sex relationships be archaeologically interpreted?