Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T19:30:42.141Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Counter-monuments and the Perdurance of Place

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2018

Christopher M. Watts
Christopher M. Watts*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology|PAS 2010, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ONT N2L 3G1, Canada Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper, I critically examine contemporary commemorative forms and practices known as ‘counter-monuments’ from an archaeological standpoint, in the process interrogating the conceptual underpinnings of the monument taxon as it is currently understood. Drawing on Tim Ingold's notion of perdurance, and through an exploration of counter-monumental concerns with form, siting and proxemics, I argue that memorialization can be seen as relationally emergent in the experiences of particular places. This claim is advanced through a discussion of the Cedar Creek Earthworks, a Woodland Period (c. 1–1550 ad) enclosure near Windsor, Canada, whose status as a monument can be understood, not as an ostentatious appeal to past events, but as a magnet for drawing out and assembling human and non-human relations in place.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , August 2018 , pp. 379 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrams, E.M., 2009. Hopewell archaeology: a view from the Northern Woodlands. Journal of Archaeological Research 17, 169–204.Google Scholar
Augé, M., 1995. Non-places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Augé, M., 1996. About non-places. Architectural Design 66 (121), 82–3.Google Scholar
Beld, S., 1993. Lyons Township Archaeological Survey, S92-313. Archaeological Survey Completion Report Submitted to the Bureau of History, Michigan Department of State. Lansing (MI).Google Scholar
Belting, H., 2005. Image, medium, body: a new approach to iconology. Critical Inquiry 31 (2), 302–19.Google Scholar
Bennhold, K., 2007. In Paris, ‘pilgrims of the flame’ remember Diana. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/world/europe/31iht-flame.5.7338753.html, accessed 18 December 2017.Google Scholar
Bernardini, W., 2004. Hopewell geometric earthworks: a case study in the referential and experiential meaning of monuments. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23 (3), 331–56.Google Scholar
Burks, J. & Cook, R.A., 2011. Beyond Squier and Davis: rediscovering Ohio's earthworks using geophysical remote sensing. American Antiquity 76 (4), 667–89.Google Scholar
Crownshaw, R., 2008. The German countermonument: conceptual indeterminacies and the retheorisation of the arts of vicarious memory. Forum for Modern Language Studies 44 (2), 212–27.Google Scholar
Cummings, V., 2008. The architecture of monuments, in Prehistoric Britain, ed. Pollard, J.. Malden (MA): Blackwell, 135–59.Google Scholar
Dancey, W.S., 2005. The Hopewell of the Eastern Woodlands, in North American Archaeology, ed. Pauketat, T.R. & Loren, D.. Malden (MA): Blackwell, 108–37.Google Scholar
Dawdy, S., 2010. Clockpunk anthropology and the ruins of modernity. Current Anthropology 51 (6), 761–93.Google Scholar
Deloria, V. Jr, 1999. If you think about it, you will see that it is true, in Spirit and Reason: The Vine Deloria reader, eds. Deloria, B., Foehner, K. & Scinta, S.. Golden (CO): Fulcrum, 40–60.Google Scholar
Deloria, V. Jr, 2001. American Indian metaphysics, in Power and Place: Indian education in America. Golden (CO): Fulcrum.Google Scholar
Deloria, V. Jr, 2003. God is Red: A native view of religion. Golden (CO): Fulcrum.Google Scholar
Edmonds, M., 1999. Ancestral Geographies of the Neolithic. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fowles, S., 2010. People without things, in An Anthropology of Absence: Materializations of transcendence and loss, eds. Bille, M., Hastrup, F. & Sørensen, T.F.. New York: Springer, 23–41.Google Scholar
Fowles, S., 2013. An Archaeology of Doings: Secularism and the study of Pueblo religion. Santa Fe (NM): School for Advanced Research Press.Google Scholar
Gaff, D.H. & Brashler, J.G., 2011. The South Flats Earthwork, 20MU2. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 36 (2), 195–226.Google Scholar
Gaff, D., Sherrod, L. & Brashler, J.G., 2013. Interpreting the South Flats Earthwork (20MU2): insights gained from geophysical surveys. Michigan Academician 41, 261–88.Google Scholar
Gillespie, S.D., 2013. Early monumentality in North America: another comparative perspective for Africa. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 48 (2), 301–14.Google Scholar
Graves-Brown, P., Harrison, R. & Piccini, A., 2013. Introduction, in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World, ed. Graves-Brown, P., Harrison, R. & Piccini, A.. New York (NY): Oxford University Press, 1–23.Google Scholar
Harrison, R., 2011. Surface assemblages: towards an archaeology in and of the present. Archaeological Dialogues 18 (2), 141–96.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y., 2013. Archaeology and the Senses: Human experience, memory, and affect. New York (NY): Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y. & Theou, E., 2013. Enacted multi-temporality: the archaeological site a shared, performative space, in Reclaiming Archaeology: Beyond the tropes of modernity, ed. González-Ruibal, A.. New York (NY): Routledge, 181–94.Google Scholar
Heidegger, M., 1971. Poetry, Language, Thought (trans. A.t Hofstadter). New York (NY): Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Hinsdale, W.B., 1931. Archaeological Atlas of Michigan. (Michigan Handbook Series 4.) Ann Arbor (MI): University Museum, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Hively, R. & Horn, R., 1984. Hopewellian geometry and astronomy at High Bank. Journal for the History of Astronomy, Archaeoastronomy Supplement 15, S85–S99.Google Scholar
Hively, R. & Horn, R., 2016. The Newark Earthworks: a grand unification of earth, sky, and mind, in The Newark Earthworks: Enduring monuments, contested meanings, eds. Jones, L. & Shields, R. D.. Charlottesville (VA): University of Virginia Press, 62–93.Google Scholar
Holtorf, C., 1998. The life-histories of megaliths in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany). World Archaeology 30 (1), 23–38.Google Scholar
Holtorf, C., 2015. What future for the life-history approach to prehistoric monuments in the landscape?, in Landscape Biographies, eds. Kolen, J., Renes, J. & Hermans, R.. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 167–81.Google Scholar
Howey, M.C.L., 2012. Mound Builders and Monument Makers of the Northern Great Lakes, 1200–1600. Norman (OK): University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Howey, M.C.L. & O'Shea, J.M., 2006. Bear's journey and the study of ritual in archaeology. American Antiquity 71 (2), 261–82.Google Scholar
Ingold, T., 2011. Being Alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ingold, T., 2012. The shape of the land, in Landscapes Beyond Land: Routes, aesthetics, narratives, eds. Arnason, A., Ellison, N., Vergunst, J. & Whitehouse, A.. New York (NY): Berghahn, 197–208.Google Scholar
Ingold, T., 2013. Making: Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Knapp, A.B., 2009. Monumental architecture, identity, and memory, in Proceedings of the Symposium ‘Bronze Age Architectural Traditions in the East Mediterranean: Diffusion and Diversity’, ed. Kyriatsoulis, A.. Weilheim: Verein zur Förderung der Aufarbeitung der Hellenischen Geschichte, 47–59.Google Scholar
Lucas, G., 2005. An Archaeology of Time. New York (NY): Routledge.Google Scholar
Lynott, M.J., 2015. Hopewell Ceremonial Landscapes of Ohio: More than mounds and geometric earthworks. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Meskell, L., 2008. Memory work and material practices, in Memory Work: Archaeologies of material practices, eds. Mills, B.J. & Walker, W.H.. Santa Fe (NM): School for Advanced Research Press, 233–43.Google Scholar
Milner, C.M. & O'Shea, J.M., 1998. The socioeconomic role of Late Woodland enclosures in northern Lower Michigan, in Ancient Earthen Enclosures of the Eastern Woodlands, eds. Mainfort, R.C. Jr & Sullivan, L.P.. Gainesville (FL): University Press of Florida, 181–201.Google Scholar
Moshenska, G., 2010. Charred churches or iron harvests? Counter-monumentality and the commemoration of the London Blitz. Journal of Social Archaeology 10 (1), 5–27.Google Scholar
Nora, P., 1989. Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire. Representations 26 (1), 7–24.Google Scholar
Norton-Smith, T.M., 2010. The Dance of Person and Place: One interpretation of American Indian philosophy. Albany (NY): SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Olivier, L., 2004. The past of the present. Archaeological memory and time. Archaeological Dialogues 10 (2), 204–13.Google Scholar
Olivier, L., 2011. The Dark Abyss of Time: Archaeology and memory (trans. Greenspan, A.). Lanham (MD): Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Olwig, K.R., 2008. The Jutland cipher: unlocking the meaning and power of a contested landscape, in Nordic Landscapes: Region and belonging on the northern edge of Europe, eds. Jones, M. & Olwig, K.. Minneapolis (MN): University of Minnesota Press, 12–49.Google Scholar
Osborne, J.F. (ed.), 2014. Approaching Monumentality in Archaeology, Vol. 3. IEMA Proceedings. Albany (NY): SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Pauketat, T., 2013. An Archaeology of the Cosmos: Rethinking agency and religion in ancient America. New York (NY): Routledge.Google Scholar
Pauketat, T.R., 2014. From memorials to imaginaries in the monumentality of ancient North America, in Approaching Monumentality in Archaeology, ed. Osborne, J.F.. (Vol. 3, IEMA Proceedings.) Albany (NY): SUNY Press, 431–46.Google Scholar
Pollard, J., 2008. Deposition and material agency in the early Neolithic of southern Britain, in Memory Work: Archaeologies of material practices, eds. Mills, B.J. & Walker, W.H.. Santa Fe (NM): School for Advanced Research Press, 41–59.Google Scholar
Pollard, J., 2013. From Ahu to Avebury: monumentality, the social, and relational ontologies, in Archaeology after Interpretation: Returning materials to archaeological theory, eds. Alberti, B., Jones, A.M. & Pollard, J.. Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast Press, 177–96.Google Scholar
Prufer, O.H. & Shane III, O.C., 1976. The Portage-Sandusky-Vermilion River region in Ohio, in The Late Prehistory of the Lake Erie Drainage Basin, ed. Brose, D.S.. Cleveland (OH): Cleveland Museum of Natural History, 283–304.Google Scholar
Redmond, B.G., 2007. Hopewell on the Sandusky: analysis and description of an inundated Ohio Hopewell mortuary-ceremonial site in north-central Ohio. North American Archaeologist 28 (3), 189–232.Google Scholar
Romain, W.F., 2015. An Archaeology of the Sacred: Adena-Hopewell astronomy and landscape archaeology. Cleveland (OH): The Ancient Earthworks Project.Google Scholar
Rowlands, M. & Tilley, C., 2006. Monuments and memorials, in Handbook of Material Culture, eds. Tilley, C., Keane, W., Küchler, S., Spyer, P. & Rowlands, M.. London: Sage, 500–515.Google Scholar
Scarre, C., 2011. Monumentality, in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, ed. Insoll, T.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 9–23.Google Scholar
Speth, J.D., 1966. The Whorley Earthwork. Michigan Archaeologist 12 (4), 211–27.Google Scholar
Stevens, Q., 2009. Nothing more than feelings: abstract memorials. Architectural Theory Review 14 (2), 156–72.Google Scholar
Stevens, Q., Franck, K.A. & Fazakerley, R., 2012. Countermonuments: the anti-monumental and the dialogic. Journal of Architecture 17 (6), 951–72.Google Scholar
Stubblefield, T., 2011. Do disappearing monuments simply disappear? The counter-monument in revision. Future Anterior 8 (2), xii–11.Google Scholar
Sully, N., 2010. Memorials incognito: the candle, the drain and the cabbage patch for Diana, Princess of Wales. Architectural Research Quarterly 14 (2), 115–28.Google Scholar
Tuck, E. & McKenzie, M., 2014. Place in Research: Theory, methodology, and methods. New York (NY): Routledge.Google Scholar
Watts, C.M., 2016. Recent investigations at the Cedar Creek Earthworks (AaHq-2), Essex County, Ontario. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 41 (1), 1–26.Google Scholar
Watts, V., 2013. Indigenous place-thought and agency amongst humans and non-Humans (First Woman and Sky Woman go on a European world tour!). Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 2 (1), 20–34.Google Scholar
Watts, V., 2016. Re-meaning the Sacred: Colonial Damage and Indigenous Cosmologies. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Queen's University, Canada.Google Scholar
Young, J.E., 1992. The counter-monument: memory against itself in Germany today. Critical Inquiry 18, 267–96.Google Scholar
Young, J.E., 1993. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust memorials and meaning. New Haven (CT): Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Young, J.E., 2000. At Memory's Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in contemporary art and architecture. New Haven (CT): Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Zurel, R., 1986. The Indian Earthwork Survey, Contribution Number One: The Enclosures of Central and Southeastern Michigan. Manuscript on file, Michigan State Historic Preservation Office, East Lansing (MI).Google Scholar
Zurel, R., 1999. Earthwork enclosure sites in Michigan, in Retrieving Michigan's Buried Past: The archaeology of the Great Lakes state, ed. Halsey, J.R.. (Bulletin 64.) Bloomfield Hills (MI): Cranbrook Institute of Science, 244–8.Google Scholar