Sifting Through the Papers of the Past: Using Archival Documents for Costume Research in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Quebec
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Quebec archival documents are a rich source for costume and textile descriptions particularly for the era of the French regime, a period for which we have no extant artifacts from which to draw costume evidence. Moreover, little costume history is available in English for this important chapter in Canada's history. In this paper, the author examines the French probate documents known as inventaires des biens, contrats de mariages, and testaments as potentially rich sources for research in Canadian costume history. Each type of document is discussed in terms of its importance and use in the lives of the early colonists, then analysed for its textile and clothing content. Examples are drawn from seventeenth and eighteenth century documents for those living in the town of Quebec from 1635 to 1760. Most of the garments are no longer known by their seventeenth and eighteenth century terms and many have disappeared from use altogether. Textiles have met the same fate and while some of the terms like taffeta remain today, their fibre content is quite different. As a result, a glossary of terms has been provided for both garments and textiles. Resume Les documents d'archives du Quebec offrent de precieuses descriptions des costumes et des tissus d'epoque, en particulier sous le regime francais, periode pour laquelle nous n'avons aucun vetement d'origine qui nous permettrait d'obtenir des preuves des costumes. De plus, nous ne possedons que tres peu de documents en anglais sur l'histoire vestimentaire de cet important chapitre de l'histoire du Canada. Dans cet article, l'auteur examine les documents homologues (en francais) - des inventaires des biens, des contrats de mariage et des testaments - en tant que riches sources potentielles pour la recherche sur l'histoire des costumes au Canada. Chaque type de document est aborde selon son importance et son utilisation dans la vie des premiers colons, puis on fait une analyse du contenu relatif aux tissus et aux vetements. Des exemples sont tires de documents de l'epoque a propos des habitants de la ville de Quebec entre 1635 et 1760. La plupart des vetements ne portent plus le meme nom qu'aux XVIIe et xvme siecles, et un grand nombre de ces termes ne sont plus en usage aujourd'hui. Les tissus ont subi le meme sort et, bien que certains termes comme taffetas soient encore employes de nos jours, leur teneur en fibres est passablement differente. Par consequent, un glossaire des termes relatifs aux vetements et aux tissus est annexe.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.018 | 0.027 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".