Landscape and Identity: Archaeology and Human Geography 9781407313603, 9781407343235

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BAR S2709 2015 SPRINGS (Ed) LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY: ARCHAEOLOGY AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

B A R 2709 Springs cover.indd 1

Landscape and Identity: Archaeology and Human Geography Edited by

Kurt D. Springs

BAR International Series 2709 2015 09/04/2015 08:46:26

Landscape and Identity: Archaeology and Human Geography Edited by

Kurt D. Springs

BAR International Series 2709 2015

ISBN 9781407313603 paperback ISBN 9781407343235 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407313603 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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PUBLISHING

Contents List of Figures ........................................................................................................................ii An Introduction to Landscape and Identity ............................................................................ 1 Kurt D. SPRINGS Monuments, Landscape and Identity in Chalcolithic Ireland ................................................. 3 Carleton JONES, Thor MCVEIGH, and Ros Ó MAOLDÚIN The Contiguity of Court Tombs and Wedge Tombs: Implications for the Continuity of Megalithic Identity in Northwest Ireland........................................................................ 27 Kurt D. SPRINGS Social Alterity and the Landscapes of the Upper Great Lakes, 1200-1600 .......................... 47 Meghan C. L. HOWEY Monumental Civic Architecture Signals Group Identity, Affiliation, and Effective Collective Action: Prospects for Investigation in the Greek Cities of Late Hellenistic and Early Roman Asia Minor as Explored for Roman Aphrodisias ............. 55 Lu Ann WANDSNIDER and Lauren NELSON The Transformation of Sacred Landscapes: Approaching the Archaeology of Christianization in the Eastern Alpine-Adriatic Region during the First Millennium AD ................................................................................................ 71 K. Patrick FAZIOLI Greenwashed: Identity and Landscape at the California Missions ....................................... 83 Elizabeth KRYDER-REID Multivocality in a Controlled Landscape: Memory and Heritage at the Gettysburg National Military Park ......................................................................... 103 J. Loyal STEWART

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List of Figures C. JONES, T. MCVEIGH, and R. Ó MAOLDÚIN: Monuments, Landscape and Identity in Chalcolithic Ireland Figure 1. Distribution of wedge tombs throughout Ireland .................................................... 6 Figure 2. Variation in Co. Clare wedge tomb chamber size................................................. 10 Figure 3. Clare wedge tombs with outer walling ................................................................. 11 Figure 4. Eanty More (Cl. 40), a small wedge tomb in the central Burren, County Clare................................................................................................................... 12 Figure 5. Parknabinnia (Cl 69), a medium wedge tomb on Roughan Hill, south-east Burren, County Clare..................................................................................... 13 Figure 6. Plan of Fanygalvan (Cl 33), a large wedge tomb in the south-central Burren, County Clare...................................................................................................... 14 Figure 7. Photo of Fanygalvan (Cl 33), a large wedge tomb in the south-central Burren, County Clare...................................................................................................... 15 Figure 8. Plans of Roughan Hill wedge tombs ..................................................................... 17 Figure 9. Plans of Roughan Hill wedge tombs continued .................................................... 18 Figure 10. Roughan Hill ....................................................................................................... 19 K. D. SPRINGS: The Contiguity of Court Tombs and Wedge Tombs: Implications for the Continuity of Megalithic Identity in Northwest Ireland Figure 1. Wedge tombs in Ireland ........................................................................................ 28 Figure 2. Wedge tomb in the townland of Aghamore, Co. Leitrim...................................... 29 Figure 3. Court tombs in Ireland .......................................................................................... 29 Figure 4. Court tombs within the study area ........................................................................ 30 Figure 5. Court tomb in the townland of Belderg Moore, Co. Mayo ................................... 31 Figure 6. Poulnabrone in the Burren, County Clare ............................................................. 31 Figure 7. Portal Tombs in Ireland ........................................................................................ 32 Figure 8. Portal tombs within the study area ........................................................................ 33 Figure 9. Labby Rock in County Sligo................................................................................. 33 Figure 10. Map of passage tombs in Ireland ........................................................................ 34 Figure 11. Passage tombs in the study area .......................................................................... 34 Figure 12. Passage tomb at Magheracar, Co. Donegal ......................................................... 35 Figure 13. Wedge tombs within the study area .................................................................... 38 Figure 14. Statistical number of monuments associated with court tombs (left) and wedge tombs (right) ................................................................................................. 38 ii

Figure 15. Map of prebog houses, court tombs, and wedge tombs in Ballycastle, Co. Mayo ........................................................................................................................ 39 Figure 16. Map of Thiessen Polygons around Ballycastle’s prebog house sites .................. 39 Figure 17. Map of Thiessen Polygons around Ballycastle’s court tombs ............................ 40 Figure 18. Map of Thiessen Polygons around Ballycastle’s wedge tombs .......................... 41 Figure 19. Proximity of court tomb and wedge tombs centers, both regional clusters and for the study area in Northwest Ireland....................................................... 42 Figure 20. Shift in geographic centers between court tombs and wedge tombs for Ireland ................................................................................................. 42 M. C. L. HOWEY: Social Alterity and the Landscapes of the Upper Great Lakes, 1200-1600 Figure 1. Coastal Lake Effect and Inland zones of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula ................ 48 Figure 2. The location of known paired earthwork enclosures in central northern Michigan .............................................................................................. 50 Figure 3. The location of identified cache pit clusters to-date on Douglas and Burt Lake in the Inland Waterway.................................................................................. 52 L. A. WANDSNIDER and L. NELSON: Monumental Civic Architecture Signals Group Identity, Affiliation, and Effective Collective Action: Prospects for Investigation in the Greek Cities of Late Hellenistic and Early Roman Asia Minor as Explored for Roman Aphrodisias Figure 1. Aphrodisias in Asia Minor (and modern Turkey) ................................................. 60 Figure 2. Summary of Aphrodisias construction history ...................................................... 61 Figure 3. Frequency diagram of annualized benefactions for Roman Aphrodisias inscriptions compiled by Pont (2008) ............................................................................. 62 Figure 4. Frequency diagram of benefactions for Roman Aphrodisias compiled by Pont (2008) and broken out by inscription date (Roman Epoch) and building referenced .................................................................................................. 64 K. P. FAZIOLI: The Transformation of Sacred Landscapes: Approaching the Archaeology of Christianization in the Eastern Alpine-Adriatic Region during the First Millennium AD Figure 1. Map of the eastern Alpine-Adriatic region with selected sites mentioned in text ............................................................................................................ 72 Figure 2. Iron Age artifacts from structure 1 at Tonovcov grad ........................................... 76 Figure 3. Column dedicated to Aquo from Rifnik ............................................................... 77 Figure 4. Smashed Jupiter altar from Kučar......................................................................... 77 Figure 5. Orientation of early medieval sites in Bled region, Slovenia ................................ 78 E. KRYDER-REID: Greenwashed: Identity and Landscape at the California Missions Figure 1. Vintage postcard of Mission Santa Barbara .......................................................... 85 Figure 2. Mission San Juan Capistrano plan with suggested tourist path............................. 87 Figure 3. The ‘nineteenth arch’ at Mission Santa Ines ......................................................... 89 Figure 4. Restrooms with artificially distressed stucco in the forecourt of Mission San Miguel ........................................................................................................ 90 Figure 5. A reconstructed carreta laden with barrels is a focal point in a flower bed at Mission San Juan Capistrano ................................................................. 91 Figure 6. Bells hanging in the corredo of Mission San Antonio de Pala .............................. 92 Figure 7. A reconstructed kiicha in the forecourt of San Juan Capistrano ........................... 93 iii

Figure 8. Visitors stop to look at a statue of Junípero Serra at Mission Dolores, San Francisco ................................................................................................................. 94 Figure 9. Santa Barbara Huerta Project containing more than 400 historic era plants......................................................................................................................... 95 Figure 10. A sign indicating a restricted area at Mission San Luis Rey ............................... 96 Figure 11. A lighted cross is stored in a corner of the garden at Mission San Gabriel ....................................................................................................... 96 Figure 12. The shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe at Mission San Gabriel .......................... 97 Figure 13. Italian statuary placed in the Mission San Antonio de Pala imported from Italy by the Vernona Fathers who serve the parish ................................. 97 Figure 14. Serra statue at Mission Santa Barbara with an offering of flowers laid at its feet in 2013 ..................................................................................................... 98 Figure 15. Graffiti inscribed into the adobe wall of Mission San Luis Rey’s lavandería ....................................................................................................................... 99 J. L. STEWART: Multivocality in a Controlled Landscape: Memory and Heritage at the Gettysburg National Military Park Figure 1. Veterans from both sides of the Battle of Gettysburg shake hands at the scene of Pickett’s Charge, during the 75th reunion of the battle ............................ 108 Figure 2. Photo in a Gettysburg College student scrapbook from 1926. Members of the KKK marching in the town of Gettysburg for a rally of 10,000 ....................................................................................................................... 109 Figure 3. Photo in a Gettysburg College student scrapbook from 1926. Members of the KKK marching in the town of Gettysburg for a rally of 10,000 ....................................................................................................................... 109 Figure 4. Pamphlet advertising a local Klan meeting in 1928, indicating the openness with which this organization was operating in the area at the time ..................................................................................................................... 110 Figure 5. The Longstreet equestrian statue, which breaks the unofficial rules of General Staff statuary on the field ............................................................................ 111

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AN INTRODUCTION TO LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY Kurt D. SPRINGS Liberal Arts Department, Manchester Community College, 1066 Front St., Manchester, New Hampshire 03102, USA [email protected]

These papers primarily address two questions, each with a series of subquestions. All of the authors, in some way, answer the question of how can landscape be used in understanding a group’s identity? Springs and Jones, et al. look at the subquestion of how can landscape and spatial analysis be used in studying how identities change over time? Howe looks at how economic shifts (e.g. hunter gatherer to farmer) lead to changes in identity.

Understanding cultural identity is a major goal in anthropology and archaeology, and land is a major element that ties a culture together. Groups often have a strong affiliation with a particular space. Groups have fought over space, denied other groups access to space, and desecrated places important to other groups. People’s identities, to this day, can be tied up in space, to the point where it is considered the gravest misfortune not to be buried on ancestral land. We also see groups, in their attempts to annihilate “the other,” deliberately target landscape elements projecting the identity of that other, as in Eastern Europe during the 1990s and the Middle East today (Chapman 1994).

The second main question is how do cultural identities evolve in response to different stimuli. Fazioli, Howe, Wandsnider/Nelson, Kryder-Reid, and Stewart refine this question to answer how the use of landscape conveys identity. Jones, McVeigh, and Ó Maoldún study the reemergence of megalithic tombs in County Clare during the Irish Chalcolithic and examine how distribution and scale on Ireland’s west coast might reveal clan affiliations, status, and interrelationships. Springs compares two Irish megalithic traditions to determine their relationship to each other. Howe focuses on earthwork enclosures in the Great Lakes region of the United States and how they provide a framework for external interactions set in a period of increased territorial tension. Wandsnider and Nelson examine how public architecture during the Late Hellenistic and Early Roman periods of Western Turkey was constructed to project a unique identity and to materially woo benefactors and intimidate enemies. Fazioli examines continued attachment to Roman identity in the post-Roman, southeastern Alpine region of Europe into the Early Middle Ages. Kryder-Reid explores the relationship of place, space, and identity at the contested landscapes of the postcolonial California ‘mission gardens.’ Stewart charts the process of memorialization and monumentation at Gettysburg National Military Park, focusing on the many voices of social memories etched into the landscape.

The archaeology of landscape has provided a useful suite of methodologies for many archaeologists, as evidenced in the recent literature. For instance, Erin McDonald (2012) looked at the reuse, placement, and types of monuments at the Irish royal site on the Hill of Tara while examining the motives and intentions of the prehistoric people who lived in the area. In Hungry, Roderick Salisbury (2012) used remote mapping and chemical mapping to characterize deposits, making inferences about prehistoric activities. Patrick Daly (2009) uses GIS to trace shifts in social organization in the downlands of Southern Britain through the Iron Age and into the Roman period. In one work that does deal with social identity, Heather Hatch (2011) explores links between material culture and maritime identity of piracy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as they maneuvered social landscapes at sea and on land. For archaeologists, identity has proved to be a more difficult ‘chestnut.’ One reason for this situation is that there are many levels of identity. For example, contributors to Timothy Insoll’s (2007) Archaeology of Identities: A Reader examine identity in terms of gender/sexuality, ethnicity/nationalism/caste, age, ideology/religion, and disability. In my PhD. research in the northwest of Ireland, I found that various elements of an identity changed over time, while the group’s overall identity endured (Springs 2010).

Taken together, these papers examine the human dimension of how landscape forms identity and identity goes into the formation of landscape. For landscape is itself a cultural construction. How landscape and the use of space are perceived is as much a product of culture as how one conceives of a person’s identity.

Yet very few works explicitly look at the relationship between space, place, and identity. The goal of this volume is to explore this topic in prehistoric, historic, and contemporary contexts.

Many of these papers are from a session given at the Theoretical Archaeological Group (TAG) USA Conference in Buffalo, New York in May of 2012. 1

LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY: ARCHAEOLOGY AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

HATCH, H. E. 2011. Material culture and maritime identity: identifying maritime subcultures through artifacts. In B. L. Ford (ed.), The Archaeology of Maritime Landscapes, 217-32. New York: Springer.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank all of my presenters from the Landscape and Identity session of the 2012 TAG Conference at the University at Buffalo. My heartfelt thanks to all of the contributors to this volume.

INSOLL, T. (ed.). 2007. The Archaeology of Identities: a Reader. London: Routledge.

Bibliography

MCDONALD, E. 2012. Memory and monuments at the Hill of Tara. Chronika, 2, 55-65.

CHAPMAN, J. 1994. Destruction of a common heritage: The archaeology of war in Croatia, Bosnia, and Hercegovina. Antiquity 68, 120-6.

SALISBURY, R. B. 2012. Soilscapes and settlements: remote mapping of activity areas in unexcavated prehistoric farmsteads. Antiquity, 86, 178-90.

DALY, P. T. 2009. Placing excavations in a digital landscape: towards holistic regional analysis. In T. L. Thurston, and R. B. Salisbury (eds.), Reimagining Regional Analyses: The Archaeology of Spatial and Social Dynamics, 18-41. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

SPRINGS, K. D. 2010. Continuity of Identity and Landscape: Court Tombs and Wedge Tombs in Northwest Ireland. Unpublished PhD dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo.

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MONUMENTS, LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY IN CHALCOLITHIC IRELAND Carleton JONES, Thor McVEIGH, and Ros Ó MAOLDÚIN School of Geography and Archaeology, National University of Ireland Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland [email protected]

Abstract: The Chalcolithic wedge tombs of Ireland represent a dramatic re-emergence of megalithism over a millennium after most Neolithic megaliths were built and many centuries after most had gone out of use. This resurgence of building monuments associated with the dead may well have been associated with a period of social instability caused by the expansion of exchange networks and associated with the introduction of metallurgy. Regional, group, and individual identities all seem to have undergone change at this time, probably in a dynamic demographic context. Variations in the distribution and scale of wedge tombs in Co. Clare, on the west coast of Ireland, provide an interesting study that may reveal a pattern of clan affiliations, status competition, and enduring links to an important and ancient locale. Keywords: Chalcolithic, megalith, monument, status competition, identity, Ireland, landscape, wedge tomb

In County Clare on the west coast of Ireland, the region focussed on in the present study, there is evidence for all of these important Chalcolithic phenomena. Beaker pottery has been found in domestic contexts (Jones 1998; Lyne 2009; 2012) as well as in mortuary contexts (Hencken 1935; Carlin 2012), and small numbers of copper axes and halberds as well as gold lunulae have also been found (Harbison 1968; 1969b; 1969a; Taylor 1980), even though Clare seems to have been peripheral to Chalcolithic sources of copper and gold (Jones et al. 2011). It should be noted, however, that a small piece of copper ore or slag recovered on the Burren might be contemporary (Gibson 2013) and copper ores have been identified on the Burren and elsewhere in County Clare (Jackson 1978). Significantly for the present study, around 150 wedge tombs are known in County Clare with a marked concentration of over seventy wedge tombs on the upland limestone region known as the Burren in the north-west of the county. Of these, at least fifteen are concentrated in a restricted area known as Roughan Hill, making it the densest concentration of wedge tombs in the country (see below).

The Irish Chalcolithic A strong case for the use of the term ‘Chalcolithic’ for the period c. 2500-2000 BC in Ireland has recently been put forward by O’Brien (2012) to describe a period characterised by technological developments, ideological changes, and social transformations. During these centuries, copper and gold metallurgy was adopted, Ireland became enmeshed in far-reaching Beaker exchange networks, megalithism re-emerged in the form of wedge tombs (burial in cairns and older megaliths was also practiced), populations seem to have been expanding, and societies in different regions seem to have been developing along different trajectories leading to a varied social landscape across the island. Of crucial importance in understanding this dynamic period is the wider context of a notable increase in maritime and riverine interaction and mobility around the Atlantic and southern-North Sea regions at this time. This appears to have been closely associated with the spread of the Beaker phenomenon and the development and spread of metallurgy (Vander Linden 2007b, 348; Cunliffe 2007, 106-7). Specialist knowledge of copper extraction and the non-slagging smelting of arsenic-rich ores, for example, was first established in Iberia, subsequently spread to France, and was introduced into south-west Ireland, probably via the Morbihan, c. 2500-2400 BC (O’Brien 2012; Cunliffe 2007, 106). As know-how and ideas could only move as far as people could carry them, the transfer of metallurgical knowledge to Ireland implies human mobility. The scale and nature of this mobility are issues which are still being debated, but most current interpretations envisage the movement of a small number of specialists, perhaps through marriage arrangements (Brodie 1997; O’Brien 2004; Vander Linden 2006b; 2007b), a phenomenon which has been ethnographically recorded elsewhere (Helms 1988, 132-4).

Wedge Tombs – Form and Function Wedge tombs are characterised by a chamber that lowers and narrows towards the rear. The simplest wedge tombs consist of no more than this wedge-shaped chamber, but more elaborate wedge tombs have an antechamber or ‘portico’ in front of the main chamber and/or a small closed chamber or ‘cell’ at the rear of the main chamber. In some cases where there is an antechamber, it is demarcated from the main chamber by flanking portal stones and a sill stone that can be crossed over. In other cases the antechamber is divided from the main chamber by a high ‘septal’ stone that blocks access to the main chamber. The chamber is sometimes surrounded by a ‘U’ shaped setting of stones that often increase in height 3

LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY: ARCHAEOLOGY AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

towards the front of the tomb, thereby increasing the overall wedge shape of the monument (de Valera and Ó Nualláin 1961; O’Brien 1999; Ó Nualláin 1989). In many cases, the surrounding stone setting ends even with the front of the chamber, thus creating a flat façade and an overall ‘heel’ shape to the monument, while in other cases the stone setting extends beyond the front of the chamber, creating a small funnel-shaped forecourt. Other architectural devices that serve to focus attention on the front of the tomb include a slightly raised platform in front of the chamber, as at one of the Parknabinnia wedge tombs on Roughan Hill (Cl 67), and deliberately laid stone spreads, as revealed in front of the excavated Toormore wedge tomb in County Cork (O’Brien 1999). Some regional variation in wedge tomb appearance is due to differences in the type of local stone used in their construction. In Clare, particularly on the Burren, the local limestone slabs from which wedge tombs are built give them a characteristic box-like appearance. Although traces of cairns are present at many wedge tombs, it is not clear whether all these cairns originally covered the chambers and whether or not they are original features. Some of the larger wedge tombs, however, were definitely covered by cairns (O’Brien 1999). Radiocarbon, stratigraphic, and artefactual evidence suggest that wedge tombs were first built between 25402300 BC and it is unlikely that any were built after 1700 BC (O’Brien 2002; Schulting et al. 2008).

1994). There are indications that specific attributes of an individual may have sometimes caused them to be interred in a wedge tomb. This may have been the case for the adult woman with a deformed leg whose headless body was buried in a small chamber at the rear of the Labbacallee wedge tomb, while the skull that appears to belong to the body was placed in the main chamber (Jones 2007; Leask and Price 1936). Drawing on the evidence from Labbacallee and other wedge tombs, O’Brien (1999, 209-10) has explored the possible links between witches or ‘hags’ and some wedge tombs. In other cases, the manner of death may have been a factor influencing inclusion in a wedge tomb. At the Largantea wedge tomb, the tip of a burnt flint point was found amongst cremated remains, suggesting that a cremated individual interred in the tomb may have died violently (Herring 1938; Schulting et al. 2008). Discrete cists and pits containing cremations are sometimes found within the chambers or outside the tombs. In some cases, these cists are later insertions, in others they seem to be contemporary with the initial use of the tomb.

The majority of wedge tombs open toward the west or southwest and focus on points of the horizon where the sun sets in late autumn, winter or early spring (de Valera and Ó Nualláin 1961; 1982; Ó Nualláin 1989). O’Brien has pointed out that in many past societies the direction of the setting sun was associated with a ‘domain of the dead’ and suggests that wedge tombs may have ‘served as funnel-shaped openings to the otherworld, facing the descending or setting sun to emphasise the symbolic dualism of light/life and darkness/death’ (O’Brien 2002, 162). This interpretation is given strength by evidence for sun-related ritual practices, and ritual associations between the sun’s daily and yearly journeys and a belief in an ‘otherworld’ in Ireland from the Neolithic right up to the inception of Christianity (e.g. Waddell 2014). Of particular relevance may be mythological associations linking the death-god Donn to his dwelling, Tech Duinn, possibly a specific islet situated off the southwest of Ireland (O’Brien 2002, 165-166).

Beaker pottery and barbed-and-tanged arrowheads, elements of the ‘Beaker package’, have been found in and around wedge tombs. Other pottery types associated with wedge tombs are Food Vessels, Early Bronze Age urns, and coarseware vessels. The later pottery types are sometimes in recognizably secondary contexts. Other stone artefacts include leaf shaped arrow heads, scrapers, axe heads, hammer stones, debitage, and a stone bead. Metal and metal-related finds include a copper ring, a fragment of a bronze blade, a bronze axe, cakes of raw copper, moulds for making a palstave, an axe, a spearhead, and fragments of crucibles (O’Brien et al. 1989; O’Brien 1999; Schulting et al. 2008).

Where little or no bone has been recovered, acidic soils may be to blame, but the very open and accessible chambers are probably also in part responsible for the low volume of finds in some excavated wedge tombs. In addition to human remains, other organic finds consist of animal bones and shellfish (Jones 2007; O’Brien 1999).

Where excavations have revealed what appear to be undisturbed deposits within the chambers of wedge tombs, these deposits appear to be the result of repeated insertions of material into the chambers. In some cases the deposits are thick layers of soil with potsherds, bone, charcoal, stone artefacts and debitage mixed into the matrix, as at Cashelbane in County Tyrone where the chamber-fill was up to 60cm deep (Davies and Mullin 1940). A 6cm thick layer of bone and charcoal found within the Largantea wedge tomb in County Derry may have been the remains of a funeral pyre (Herring 1938; Schulting et al. 2008). In other cases, the deposits in wedge tombs are thinner but are also the result of successive activities and insertions, as at the Toormore and Altar wedge tombs in County Cork (O’Brien 1999). Excavations of these two wedge tombs produced sequences of pit features and thin depositional layers within the chambers that seem to be the result of various activities; these included fires being lit both within and

Wedge tombs do not appear to have been commonly decorated with rock art. However, there is incised rock art on one in Scrahanard, Co. Cork (Shee Twohig 2004), a cupmarked stone was found in the cairn of a wedge tomb at Ballyedmonduff, Co. Dublin (Ó Ríordáin and de Valéra 1952) and cupmarks have been recorded on several capstones (O’Brien 1999, 87; O’Sullivan and Downey 2010). Although some excavated wedge tombs have yielded very little, both inhumed and cremated human remains have been found in others. The remains of adults outnumber the remains of children (Cooney and Grogan 4

C. JONES, T. MCVEIGH, AND R. Ó MAOLDÚIN: MONUMENTS, LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY IN CHALCOLITHIC IRELAND

The excavation of the Lough Gur wedge tomb also provided evidence for a range of activities in addition to burial. Quite strikingly, not only did the excavations reveal deposits within the chamber and from the area surrounding the tomb, but the stony fill of the tomb walls were also found to contain potsherds, animal bones and human bones (Ó Ríordáin and Ó h-Iceadha 1955). This might reflect a conscious effort by the tomb-builders to incorporate materials of the dead and the living together into the very fabric of the tomb, and it resonates with ethnographically documented practices such as that of the Tzotzil Maya of southern Mexico who embed their own hair into cracks in the walls of their houses as a way of binding themselves to their houses (Beck 2007, 11). Outside of the tomb, scatters of potsherds, stone tools, human bone and animal bone may be in part the result of disturbance of the tomb’s contents, but the presence of hearths, child inhumations, and the burial of a complete bovine carcass adjacent to the tomb all point to structured ritual activities taking place around the tomb. Whether these rituals involved acts of magic or rituals that may have been directed at interacting with the spirits of the dead ancestors interred in the tomb is not clear, and both scenarios are certainly possible. In addition, a crucible from the portico at the front of the tomb and a fragment of a spearhead mould (probably Middle or Late Bronze Age) found outside of the tomb suggest metalworking magic (Jones 2007; Ó Ríordáin and Ó h-Iceadha 1955).

outside the chambers, and depositions of sea shells, fish bones and cetacean bones being made within the chambers. At Altar, these depositions continued into the Iron Age (O’Brien 1993; 1999). Intact deposits have also been found in front of, and around, wedge tombs. The bronze axe and cakes of raw copper mentioned above were found in a neat arrangement placed adjacent to a low upright stone and covered with a distinct spread of stone slabs in front of the Toormore wedge tomb (O’Brien et al. 1989; O’Brien 1999). Both the Toormore and the nearby Altar wedge tombs also had concentrations of white quartz pebbles and small stones around them (O’Brien 1999). The hearths, scatters of potsherds, and bovine burial around the Lough Gur wedge tomb are further examples of deposits indicative of various activities being carried out in the immediate surrounds of wedge tombs (see below). Wedge tombs are primarily, although not exclusively, a west of Ireland phenomenon. Until recently they were also thought to occur only in Ireland, but Bradley (2009) has now identified a few in the Outer Hebrides as well. Bradley has also suggested that wedge tombs are part of a larger group of contemporary monuments found in Scotland and Ireland which share a south to south-west orientation that seems to be linked to either the setting sun or perhaps movements of the moon, the occurrence of cup marks on some of the monuments, the use of quartz and sometimes other coloured stones, and associations with fire and sometimes burials. These possibly related monuments identified by Bradley are the stone circles of northeast Scotland, the Clava Cairns in the Inverness area, the four-posters of eastern and central Scotland, and some of the stone alignments on the west coast of Scotland and in northern Ireland (Bradley 2000; 2007b).

The available evidence from Lough Gur and other wedge tombs suggests, therefore, that wedge tombs were sites of varied rituals carried out both within, in front of, and adjacent to the monuments. Rituals at wedge tombs appear to have focused on death and the dead (with an emphasis on adults over children), possibly attempts to commune with dead ancestors, possibly acts of magic including metalworking magic, and probably acts of votive offering. Wedge tombs were often sited near habitation sites. At Lough Gur, as already mentioned, the wedge tomb is located across the water from and in view of the settlement; on Roughan Hill the wedge tombs are even closer to the habitations, with many on slopes overlooking habitation enclosures.

Where evidence for contemporary settlement exists, wedge tombs have been found to be located quite close to habitations. This is certainly the case on Roughan Hill in County Clare where some wedge tombs are located as close as 100 meters from Chalcolithic-Early Bronze Age habitation enclosures (Jones 1998; Jones et al. 2011). At Lough Gur in County Limerick another notable pattern is evident. Here the wedge tomb is sited on sloping ground not far from the south-eastern shore of the lake, with a view directed across the water towards contemporary settlement on the Knockadoon peninsula (Jones 2007). Interestingly, although the Lough Gur wedge tomb was certainly an important focus for local burial, seemingly contemporary child burials were also found associated with one of the habitation sites on Knockadoon. Striking contrasts in mortuary rituals between these two locations include the presence of both cremated and inhumed remains at the wedge tomb but only inhumed remains on the habitation site, and the dramatic contrast in ages of the people buried at the two locations. At the wedge tomb, adults predominated in a 2:1 ratio but the only adult buried on the habitation site was a woman with a foetus (Grogan and Eogan 1987; Jones 2007; Ó Ríordáin and Ó h-Iceadha 1955).

Wedge tombs range from 2m to over 10m long. At the small end of the scale, there is a degree of ambiguity in classification, as some very small wedge tombs could alternatively be classified as cists (de Valera and Ó Nualláin 1961, 101-2), but examples such as the 2m long Eanty More wedge tomb in County Clare do have wedge shaped plans and elevations, and southwest to west orientations. In terms of distribution, in the north-west of the country, wedge tombs are dispersed across the landscape in a pattern not too different from the earlier Neolithic court tombs (Springs 2005; 2009), but this pattern does not hold true elsewhere. In the south-west of the country there are distinct concentrations of wedge tombs in counties Cork and Clare, where there are few or no earlier court tombs. The densest concentration of wedge tombs in the country occurs on the Burren in north-west Clare, and in particular on Roughan Hill on the south-east corner of the Burren (Figure 1). 5

LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY: ARCHAEOLOGY AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Figure 1. Distribution of wedge tombs throughout Ireland. Note the unusually dense concentration of wedge tombs clustered on the Burren in Co. Clare as shown in the enlarged window and also the even denser concentration on Roughan Hill, located at the south-east corner of the Burren (Co. Clare is marked ‘Cl.’). (from de Valera, R. and Ó Nualláin, S. 1982. Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume IV, Counties Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary, Dublin, The Stationary office) 6

C. JONES, T. MCVEIGH, AND R. Ó MAOLDÚIN: MONUMENTS, LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY IN CHALCOLITHIC IRELAND

2012), and a purely indigenous development (Cooney and Grogan 1994, 84; Flanagan 1998, 91-4; Waddell 2010, 109). But O’Brien (2012) has also recently suggested that wedge tombs are best interpreted as having arisen from a combination of indigenous development and external influences.

Megalithism, Competition, and Ancestral Geographies The foregoing summary still leaves some important questions unanswered. This paper attempts to address three of these. Why was there a re-emergence of megalith building around 2540-2300 BC? What is the significance of the variation in size amongst wedge tombs? And finally, what is the significance of the densest concentration of wedge tombs in the country, namely the concentration on Roughan Hill in Co. Clare?

Those that argue for an external stimulus normally point to northwestern France and the allées couvertes tombs, which they argue are architecturally similar, share features such as occasional double walling and antechambers, and occasionally face west (ApSimon 1986; 1997; de Valera and Ó Nualláin 1961; 1982). These arguments normally postulate a point of arrival in the peninsular southwest, because of the density of wedge tombs there and the region’s proximity to France, but Shee Twohig (1990, 57) has also put forward the Shannon estuary as a likely point of arrival.

The Re-emergence of Megalithism The study of megalithic architecture has a long history stretching back to early work by antiquarians and from these early days the question of why people chose to build with massive stones has been pondered (cf. Borlase 1987; Ferguson 1872). Modern explanations have tended to focus on the collective effort that building a megalith demonstrates (Trigger 1990; Tainter 1977), the potential symbolic properties of stone such as its hardness and durability (Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina 1998), and possible associations between particular features and locations in the landscape where the stones originated (Scarre 2004). Interpretations have also highlighted the effectiveness of megaliths in conveying messages of identity, status and power; all of which are lent further weight by the frequent association of remains of the dead with megaliths (DeMarrais et al. 1996; Vander Linden 2006b; Scarre 2004).

Those in favour of an indigenous origin, argue that the Breton allées couvertes tombs are rectangular rather than wedge shaped and are not usually orientated to the west, and that no supporting evidence has been found in the excavation of any the south-western wedge tombs (Waddell 2010, 109). They look to court tombs as the source of inspiration for the wedge tomb builders, point out shared features with those predominantly northern tombs, such as jamb stones, and argue that the idea of the French connection has its roots in outdated culturehistorical models (Waddell 2010, 109). The idea of a French connection does arguably stem from a time when culture-historical models were in the ascendancy, when migration and invasion were the favoured mechanism to explain cultural change. However, similar arguments could be levelled against arguments for a purely insular origin; that they stem from a time when processual and post-processual models focused so entirely on internal developments that it was difficult to include any external impetus to considerations of cultural change (Kristiansen and Larsson 2005, 5).

The wedge tombs are a final flourishing of megalith building in Ireland. The earliest wedge tombs were built around 1300 years after court tombs were built and around 600 years after the zenith of passage tomb building (Schulting et al. 2012; Sheridan 1985). As wedge tombs are primarily a western phenomenon, it is interesting that some western court tombs show particularly late use episodes (Schulting et al. 2012). The Parknabinnia court tomb on Roughan Hill is one of these western court tombs with an extended use, up to sometime between c. 3000-2600 BC. Whether or not there was a significant gap between the final use of the Parknabinnia court tomb and the construction of the wedge tombs that surround it is uncertain.

A recent review and statistical modelling of the available dating suggests the practice of building wedge tombs may have arrived relatively suddenly in both the north and southwest (Schulting et al. 2008, 12), however, this does not necessarily support an indigenous or immigrant origin. Currently, there is not enough dating evidence to say whether the earlier wedge tombs are in the southwest, the Shannon basin, or the north. In the absence of this, the arguments have had to rely on architectural similarities and differences.

It is quite clear, however, that the Parknabinnia court tomb and other court tombs around the country were constructed much earlier in what seems to be an islandwide phase of construction c. 3750-3570 BC (Schulting et al. 2012). Wedge tombs are, therefore, a demonstration of a renewed focus on the construction of megalithic mortuary monuments after many centuries without such an emphasis. A pertinent question is, therefore, what were the particular circumstances around c. 2540-2300 BC that may have been related to this re-emergence?

A potentially more rewarding avenue of inquiry into the origins of wedge tombs may be provided by a focus on the social contexts they arose in. As early as the work of Gordon Childe (1945, 18), it has been proposed that episodes of impressive mortuary monument construction can be correlated with periods of social change where status must be legitimated. More recently, this idea has been supported by studies of a wide variety of societies

In the past, explanations have oscillated between the arrival of newcomers, either in substantial (Shee Twohig 1990; ApSimon 1986; 1997; de Valera and Ó Nualláin 1961; 1982) or small numbers (Case 1969, 19; O’Brien 7

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associated ‘package’ of artefacts was associated with a particular ‘ethos,’ and that connected with the core of this ideology was a figurative warrior/archer ‘persona’ and possibly other recognizable personae including various craft practitioner identities such as leather-workers (Case 1995, 55, 60; Brodie 1997, 298-311; Turek 2004). Similarly, in the Czech Republic, VanderLinden (2006b, 325-6) has argued that some ‘prestige burials’ may be signalling individuals of influence or reputation.

throughout the world (Kolb et al. 1994, 156; Parker Pearson 1999, 86-7; Earle 2004). The types of social situations now recognised as likely to give rise to monumental mortuary architecture have also now been expanded to include more stable social situations, but ones that still require that status must be achieved or demonstrated to others (Wason 1994). It seems that when mortuary rituals are emphasised, it is often because the ancestors are called upon to legitimise social statuses that may be open to challenge, whether the statuses open to challenge are traditional or newly conceived statuses. This may occur in contexts of changing ideologies, changes in the status system, or both (Wason 1994). A dramatic re-emergence of monumental mortuary ritual, such as the appearance of wedge tombs in the Chalcolithic, may well be explained in terms of a context of unstable or challenged social statuses. The expansion of Beaker exchange networks and the advent of metallurgy in the Chalcolithic are both potentially very disruptive events that could have precipitated challenges to existing social systems.

In Ireland, the distribution of Beaker pottery and early metal artefacts in the Chalcolithic suggests that this new ethos and its associated personae/statuses did reach western Ireland and so we should expect that some response was triggered. One aspect of that response in western Ireland appears to have been the construction of wedge tombs. In the case of wedge tombs, the fact that the re-emergence of prominent mortuary ritual took the form of megaliths suggests that groups who built wedge tombs may well have been harking back to Neolithic social structures and ideologies, whether real or imagined, to legitimize their claims to status (cf. O’Brien 2012).

The significance of the later 3rd millennium BC as an era of increased mobility within new social networks (seemingly facilitated by exogamous marriage practices), technology transfer, and changing social structures has been highlighted by much recent research (Brodie 1997; Vander Linden 2004; 2006b; 2007b; 2006a; 2007a; Desideri 2008; Desideri and Besse 2010). Also relevant are studies of aDNA (Ricaut et al. 2012; Brotherton et al. 2013) and dental variability (Desideri and Besse 2010) which have identified considerable demographic change during the Chalcolithic of Western and Central Europe. These changes are generally characterized as Beaker associated population movements from Iberia into France and Central Europe. Additionally, isotope studies of Beaker burials from Central Europe have identified high levels of movement between neighbouring regions (Grupe et al. 1997; Price et al. 2004).

Looking at the Burren and County Clare, a region with numerous wedge tombs, the small number of recognized Neolithic mortuary monuments in the same region and the uniformly small scale of many of these monuments, suggests a Neolithic context of segmentary societies at relatively low population densities. For example, although the ruined nature of many of the seven definite and possible court tombs in the county precludes exact measurement, they seem to typically measure between eight and nine metres long from the front of their court areas to the rear of their chambers. The obvious exception, although not dramatically larger, is the example at Doolin (Cl. 134) which measures a little under ten metres (de Valera and Ó Nualláin 1961; Jones 2003; Jones and Walsh 1996). Furthermore, the dates we have so far for Neolithic monuments in the region indicate that they were constructed in either the early 4th millennium BC (Poulnabrone portal tomb), the early/mid 4th millennium (Parknabinnia court tomb), or in the mid 4th millennium BC (Poulawack Linkardstown cist) (Schulting et al. 2012, Fig 10, 33).

This period of change, however, should not automatically be assumed to be part of a uni-directional evolutionary trajectory towards more hierarchical social structures as has sometimes been argued in the past (cf. Harrison 1980, 10). For example, a transitory period of ‘emulatory competition’ among proto-Beaker groups in Bohemia and Moravia does not seem to have been followed by a more stratified social organisation (Brodie 1997, 309-10), and in eastern and southern France the arrival of metallurgy and the Beaker phenomenon does not seem to have coincided with a climax of social competition or with the onset of a process leading to more complex societies in the region (Pétrequin and Pétrequin 1988, 262; Vander Linden 2006a, 325-6).

Interestingly, just as periods of social upheaval and the elaboration of mortuary rituals are correlated, periods of political stability seem to be correlated with a dramatic lessening of emphasis on mortuary ritual (Wason 1994). While the Neolithic monuments on the Burren were used for many centuries, and one of their uses was probably to legitimise social statuses, it seems that between the mid 4th millennium BC and c. 2540-2300 BC when the first wedge tomb on the Burren was probably built, social structures and ideologies in the region may have been sufficiently stable that the construction of new monuments was not necessary.

Instead of experiencing an inevitable march towards greater complexity, therefore, societies across Europe at this time may have been experiencing the advent of new social statuses that may have challenged the status quo but also which may have been open to challenge and interpretation as well. For instance, since the mid-nineties it has been argued that the Beaker phenomenon and its

During the Chalcolithic, the social landscape of Ireland was certainly diverse and O’Brien (2004, 568-73) has 8

C. JONES, T. MCVEIGH, AND R. Ó MAOLDÚIN: MONUMENTS, LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY IN CHALCOLITHIC IRELAND

argued for contemporary segmentary and more hierarchical societies occupying different regions. Most wedge tombs are probably best interpreted as ritual foci for small-scale segmentary societies (cf. O’Brien 1999; 2004) and so these types of societies seem to have prevailed in most regions where wedge tombs occur. In the Late Chalcolithic (c. 2160-2000 BC), as defined by O’Brien (2012), the appearance of the ‘single burial tradition’ in cists and pits in the east and north of the country is generally interpreted as evidence for emergent ranking in those areas where it occurs and it is also seen as emerging in a context of contact with Beaker burial traditions across the Irish Sea to the east (Cooney and Grogan 1994; Mount 1997; Waddell 2010; O’Brien 2012). This burial tradition does not occur in County Clare, but quite interestingly, the cairn of the Poulawack Linkardstown cist on the Burren is re-used at this time (c. 2140-1682 BC1) as a burial cairn for several cist burials of multiple individuals, one of which was accompanied by a single sherd of Beaker pottery (Hencken 1935; Brindley and Lanting 1991).

Variation in the Size of Wedge Tombs Most wedge tombs are fairly modest-sized constructions. Working on the Mizen Peninsula in County Cork, O’Brien concluded that ‘... these small tombs were probably built over a period of weeks rather than months. Their construction was probably less laborious than the breaking in of a new cultivation field or the operation of a single Mount Gabriel-type copper mine’ (O’Brien 1999, 255). This is also true for many of the wedge tombs further north in County Clare which do not seem to be built on a scale that would require the efforts of a huge number of people and which seem, therefore, to be monuments that were associated with fairly modest-sized corporate groups. There is, however, quite a large variation in the size of wedge tombs. As shown in Figure 2, the external length of the longest chamber side on wedge tombs throughout County Clare ranges from the very small (2.0m long) to the very large (7.2m long). The range on Roughan Hill is from 2.2m long to 4.9m long. Some of the Clare wedge tombs (approximately 40% in the 1961 Megalithic Survey) have outer rows of walling that both widen and lengthen the monument. In many cases, this outer walling can substantially increase the monumentality of the megalith (Figure 3).

Unfortunately, without yet having excavated wedge tombs on the Burren, we cannot say whether these burials at Poulawack are exactly contemporary with the construction of the surrounding wedge tombs or perhaps slightly later. The single radiocarbon date from a wedge tomb on the Burren (c. 2033–1897 BC2), obtained from a human bone from the Baur South wedge tomb, suggests contemporary use (Grant 2009), but construction could, of course, have been earlier. A much smaller cairn on the Burren at Coolnatullagh contained a central cist which held the partial remains of an adult inhumation, an adult cremation, and a single bone from an infant (Eogan 2002). A single radiocarbon date from the adult inhumation gave a date of c. 2460-2190 BC which probably dates the construction of the cairn. This date is a much clearer indication of contemporary practices of wedge tomb burial and cist/cairn burial on the Burren in the Chalcolithic and shows that there were ways of disposing of the dead in the Chalcolithic on the Burren that did not involve either the construction or the use of an existing wedge tomb.

The main source for measurement data on the wedge tombs used in the present study and shown in Figure 2 was de Valera and Ó Nualláin’s (1961) survey of the megalithic tombs of County Clare. From this survey, only those with the definitive label ‘Wedge-shaped Gallery Grave’ (n=91) were considered. Those labelled ‘Wedgeshaped Gallery Grave (?)’ (n=9) and those labelled ‘Unclassified’ but described as probable wedge tombs (n=5) were not considered. Not only is there a degree of uncertainty in these later two groups, but the uncertainty was a result of the ruined state of these megaliths, thus making accurate measurement impossible anyway. Of the 91 definite wedge tombs in the 1961 Megalithic Survey, seven were still too ruined to obtain an accurate measurement (or in one case recently buried). Additional wedge tombs and possible wedge tombs have also been recorded subsequent to the 1961 Megalithic Survey, and the total count of definite and possible wedge tombs in County Clare now stands at around 150 (this count includes many ruined examples which have a degree of uncertainty in their classification, including some considered uncertain by de Valera and Ó Nualláin). Of these newer additions to the record, most have not been published. Five which have been published are included in the present study (Megalithic Survey no.’s Cl. 131, 141, 152, & 155 and SMR no. CL 016-164) (Jones 2000; Jones and Walsh 1996; Ryan 1981). This brings the total count of clearly identifiable wedge tombs which are intact enough to accurately measure, and for which a published plan exists, to eighty-nine. These are the wedge tombs included in the present study and they probably represent about 59% of the total wedge tombs in County Clare.

The construction of wedge tombs was, therefore, a deliberate choice to monumentalize some mortuary rituals with a distinctive megalithic architecture. Given our understanding of the circumstances likely to encourage this type of behaviour, it seems likely that this choice was made in a social context where status had to be achieved or demonstrated to others by calling upon the authority of the ancestors and, given the wider context of what was happening elsewhere in western Europe at the time, it seems likely that the introduction of new social statuses into the region, perhaps through marriage exchanges, was the trigger that caused this response. 1 Range as based on statistically most likely dates from all phase 2 graves (4, 5, and 6/6a) as presented in Brindley and Lanting 1991. 2 Where dates are specified to be single radiocarbon dates, they are given at 2σ.

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Figure 2. Variation in Co. Clare wedge tomb chamber size. The measurement shown is the external length of longest chamber side. This measurement includes the thickness of the front stone and back stone if they were placed beyond the ends of the side slabs. In other cases where the side slabs extend beyond the front and back stones, this measurement is the length of the side slab(s). This measurement also includes the length of any ‘portico’ features which were formed by setting additional orthostats beyond the front of the chamber. In other words, the measurement used here is the length of the chamber as it appears to a viewer standing beside the tomb, and is therefore, a good measure of its monumentality. Darker bars represent Roughan Hill measurements

The utility of ethnographic analogy in helping to explain archaeologically known societies has been a subject of debate for some time. Early processualists criticised the use of any analogy that could not be rigorously scientifically tested (Binford 1967), a train of argument that has led some writers to denounce the usefulness of any analogical reasoning (Gould and Watson 1982). Others, notably Hodder (1982, 13), have tried to seek out the causal relationships behind the variables in analogies and thereby establish what they term ‘relational analogies’. However, as early as the 1950s Childe (1958) recognized the main value of such comparisons was to broaden our interpretative horizons and it is in this vein, following other remote but useful analogies (cf. Dickins 1996), that the present study proceeds

The different sizes of the wedge tombs can be interpreted as reflecting differing expenditures of energy and ultimately probably differing numbers of participants in their construction (Figure 4 – Figure 7). Although other scenarios could be postulated to explain this variation in size, the scenario of individuals and/or groups competing for social status through the construction of wedge tombs and through the enactment of rituals within and around them, fits the available evidence well. As discussed above, the re-emergence of megalithic architecture may have been an attempt to evoke an archaic Neolithic society where status structures were more stable, but the variation in wedge tomb size suggests that wedge tombs may have been built in a new context of status competition between individuals or groups where status had to be achieved and demonstrated.

One of the most important insights provided by the Adams and Kusumawati (2010) study is that while there are various motivating forces leading to monumental tomb construction in West Sumba, including establishing long-lasting physical links to specific locales, maintaining relationships with dead ancestors, and fostering group solidarity amongst the living, the most important factor motivating people to build megalithic tombs is the acquisition of power. Building large stone tombs in West Sumba results in the acquisition of power, both by the individual in charge of the building and by

Related to the observation that mortuary rituals are often emphasised at times when social statuses are open to challenge, Adams and Kusumawati (2010) have also shown that in various ethnographically documented societies in island Southeast Asia, monumental tombs are built in a context of individual and group competition. Adams and Kusumawati (2010) focus in particular on West Sumba in Indonesia where megalithic tombs continue to be built today and their study offers many useful insights relevant to the interpretation of wedge tombs. 10

C. JONES, T. MCVEIGH, AND R. Ó MAOLDÚIN: MONUMENTS, LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY IN CHALCOLITHIC IRELAND

Figure 3. Clare wedge tombs with outer walling. Outer walling, where present, can significantly increase the overall length of wedge tombs but as it is constructed from smaller slabs, it would not have required as much cooperative labour and was not, therefore, used in the present study as a measure of the length of wedge tombs. (adapted from de Valera, R. and Ó Nualláin, S. 1961. Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume I, Co. Clare, Dublin, The Stationary office) 11

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Figure 4. Eanty More (Cl. 40), a small wedge tomb in the central Burren, County Clare. The wedge-shaped plan and westerly orientation of this very small wedge tomb are clear in the plan, while the position of the rear capstone in the section drawing and the view of the south side stone in the photo show the monument’s wedge shaped profile. (adapted from de Valera, R. and Ó Nualláin, S. 1961. Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume I, Co. Clare, Dublin, The Stationary office) 12

C. JONES, T. MCVEIGH, AND R. Ó MAOLDÚIN: MONUMENTS, LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY IN CHALCOLITHIC IRELAND

Figure 5. Parknabinnia (Cl 69), a medium wedge tomb on Roughan Hill, south-east Burren, County Clare. (adapted from de Valera, R. and Ó Nualláin, S. 1961. Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume I, Co. Clare, Dublin, The Stationary office)

13

Figure 6. Plan of Fanygalvan (Cl 33), a large wedge tomb in the south-central Burren, County Clare. (adapted from de Valera, R. and Ó Nualláin, S. 1961. Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume I, Co. Clare, Dublin, The Stationary office)

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C. JONES, T. MCVEIGH, AND R. Ó MAOLDÚIN: MONUMENTS, LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY IN CHALCOLITHIC IRELAND

Figure 7. Photo of Fanygalvan (Cl 33), a large wedge tomb in the south-central Burren, County Clare

sometimes centralized organization do seem to fit the evidence well (Trigger 1990; Earle 2004, 156). It seems more likely, therefore, that the variation in wedge tomb size would probably have elicited responses similar to those of the West Sumba informants than otherwise if we were able to ask the Chalcolithic inhabitants of the Burren what wedge tombs ‘meant’. And while archaeologists should always be aware that ethnographic examples should not be treated as timeless and universal behaviours (cf. Parker Pearson 1999, 84), it remains true that the ethnographic record does provide us with models of human behaviour that are based on documented patterns.

the clan affiliated with tomb (Adams and Kusumawati 2010). As archaeologists, we often struggle to understand the ‘meaning of monuments’ in their proper historic and cultural context; in the ethnographic study of West Sumba, the following responses were elicited when informants were asked what meaning the size of a tomb conveyed: When asked about what they thought when they saw a large tomb, informants indicated that (1) they believed the person who built it must be wealthy and socially prominent and (2) the person’s clan must be prominent. (Adams and Kusumawati 2010, 25)

The Significance of Roughan Hill Roughan Hill is located at the south-east corner of the upland limestone region known as the Burren and at the topographical and ecological divide between the limestone uplands of the Burren to the north and the lowland watershed of the River Fergus to the south. Roughan Hill is not an isolated hill but is actually the southernmost tip of the south-west to north-east trending ridge that forms the eastern edge of the Burren. Although the soils on the hill are thin rendzinas (Finch 1971) and areas of bare bedrock are exposed in places, the soil cover is generally better than in many parts of the upland Burren. The hill rises to a little over 130m and has a concentration of prehistoric activity on its gentle north slope. The south slope is a steep dropto the River Fergus, approximately 100m below the crest of the hill.

These interpretations may not be correct in all societies and Parker-Pearson’s (1999, 103-4) example of the overly monumental and lavish graves of gypsies and showmen can be cited as an example of low status members of modern society building more monumental graves than those with higher status, but the case of the gypsies and showmen can probably be accounted for by the fact that within their sub-culture, lavish burial monuments do correlate with status. Furthermore, lavish burial monuments amongst the gypsies and showmen may also reflect a more fluid status context within their sub-culture than that which prevails in mainstream society. In general, when archaeologists are faced with the task of trying to assign meaning to monuments, interpretations which highlight the role of monuments as broadcasters of messages of social accomplishment, power, and

The remarkable concentration of archaeology on Roughan Hill seems to be due in part to the location of 15

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Roughan Hill at this ecological divide (Cooney 2000). The two ecological zones of the Burren uplands and the Fergus lowlands (including nearby Lough Inchiquin) are quite complementary. Roughan Hill provides welldrained pastures that do not get water-logged in the winter; Lough Inchiquin and the River Fergus provide abundant fresh water, summer meadows when the level of the river drops, fish and birds. The River Fergus is also navigable in small boats and it provides an easy transport route starting at the base of Roughan Hill in the north, flowing east and then south through the central lowlands of County Clare, and finally meeting the Shannon estuary, the mouth of the largest river in Ireland.

in the archaeological literature for some time now. Dispersed patterns of megaliths have been interpreted as being the result of ‘local’ autonomous burial groups that could be equated with particular lineages or corporate groups within a segmentary social structure (Renfrew 1976; Darvill 1979; ApSimon 1986; Bergh 1987), while some pairs of megalithic tombs have been viewed in a context of communities organized into two groups with different ancestries (Mallory and Hartwell 1997, 12; Cooney 2000, 112). Similarly, complex arrangements of multiple courts and chambers within individual court tombs have been interpreted as reflecting communities built around multiple descent groups (Powell 2005).

There is a long history of activity on Roughan Hill. The first dated evidence of activity is the Cl 153 court tomb which appears to have been built in the early/mid 4th millennium BC (Jones 2003; Schulting et al. 2012). The construction of this monument probably coincides with an initial tree clearance episode on the Burren documented in various pollen cores (Crabtree 1982; Jeličić and O’Connell 1992; O’Connell and Molloy 2001; Watts 1984), and probably also with a tree clearance episode adjacent to Lough Inchiquin (Lamb and Thompson 2005). Other early activity in the area is evidenced by a portal tomb (and another early megalith) at Ballycasheen immediately south of Roughan Hill overlooking the Fergus and another portal tomb in the centre of the Burren at Poulnabrone 6km to the northwest. Another very ruined monument on Roughan Hill (Cl 154) may be another court tomb, while 3.5km to the west are two more court tombs at Ballyganner/ Lemaneh. To date, no habitations dating to this period have been discovered in the area but the siting of the Cl. 153 court tomb very close to what is the best spring on the hill today suggests that there is probably a close spatial relationship between the early megaliths and contemporary habitations.

Looking at wedge tombs throughout Ireland, their overall dispersed distribution can be plausibly tied to an overall dispersed pattern of settlement in many areas where they occur and probably also to a segmentary form of social organization (cf. ApSimon 1986; O’Brien 1999). On the Mizen Peninsula in the southwest, where wedge tomb siting has been studied more closely by O’Brien (1999), the dispersed distribution of wedge tombs has also been shown to correlate with optimum locations for settlement (defined by access to good soils, marine resources and copper resources). There are, however, many possible spatial relationships between megalithic tombs and habitation sites depending on whether the megalithic tombs are dispersed or agglomerated and whether the habitation sites are dispersed or agglomerated (Bradley 2007b; Renfrew 1981). Given the agglomeration of wedge tombs on Roughan Hill in proximity to habitation enclosures, it might be expected that particular wedge tombs were associated with particular habitation enclosures, but the survey of the hill provided no such definitive correlations. Instead, only the general pattern of wedge tombs being located in proximity to the habitation enclosures and typically, but not exclusively, sited above the enclosures on hillslopes so that they have a ‘directed visibility’ over the habitation enclosures can be noted.

Five other unclassified megaliths and eleven large/ medium cairns on the hill are of uncertain age, but moving into the Chalcolithic there are at least fifteen wedge tombs (Figures 8 and 9). This is the densest concentration of wedge tombs anywhere. There are also four habitation enclosures with associated field walls dating to the Chalcolithic-Early Bronze Age (Jones et al. 2011; Jones 1998) (Figure 10). It seems significant that this cluster of Chalcolithic-Early Bronze Age monuments and habitation (and other undated monuments) is focused on the same hill that appears to have been prominent in the local landscape from the start of the earliest Neolithic settlement in the area. Similarly, two other notable concentrations of wedge tombs occur around the other early megaliths on the Burren, a concentration in the Ballyganner/Lemaneh area, and a concentration around the Poulnabrone Depression. Also significant to the present discussion is the occurrence of Beaker pottery in one of the habitation enclosures (RH1) on Roughan Hill.

A further surprising aspect of the relationship between the wedge tombs and the habitation enclosures on Roughan Hill is that there are eleven wedge tombs but only four habitation enclosures within the survey area (and another four wedge tombs just beyond the bounds of the survey). This is a significant agglomeration of wedge tombs on Roughan Hill seemingly without a corresponding agglomeration of habitation sites. It may be, of course, that four habitation enclosures in close proximity is a significant agglomeration, but it will take further survey work on the Burren to determine if that is the case. It may also be the case that additional habitation enclosures are located not too far beyond the bounds of the survey area. Informal walk-overs beyond the survey bounds indicate that this is probably not the case immediately outside of the survey area to the west, south, and east, but another habitation focus may be located immediately north of the survey area. In any case, whether or not four habitation enclosures is a significant agglomeration and whether or not more habitation enclosures await disco-

The idea that the forms and distributions of various types of megalithic tombs might be related to the structure and dynamics of the societies that built them has been debated 16

C. JONES, T. MCVEIGH, AND R. Ó MAOLDÚIN: MONUMENTS, LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY IN CHALCOLITHIC IRELAND

Figure 8. Plans of Roughan Hill wedge tombs. Fourteen of the fifteen Roughan Hill wedge tombs are shown in Figures 8 and 9. The fifteenth (CL 016-164) was measured and sketched in the field, but a finalized plan is not available. Cl. 60 is shown here, but was not included in the length analysis due to its ruined condition. (adapted from de Valera, R. and Ó Nualláin, S. 1961 and Jones, C. and Walsh, P. 1996) 17

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Figure 9. Plans of Roughan Hill wedge tombs continued. (adapted from de Valera, R. and Ó Nualláin, S. 1961 and Jones, C. and Walsh, P. 1996)

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Figure 10. Roughan Hill. Sites RH1, 2, 5 & 7 are Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age habitation enclosures. They are set within contemporary fields defined by collapsed walls termed ‘mound walls’. See Jones (1998) and Jones, Carey and Hennigar (2011) for further explanation 19

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County Clare (Figure 2). This may well be the result of a nested social structure producing work-groups of two, roughly standardized, sizes.

very in the immediate surroundings, the concentration of wedge tombs on Roughan Hill remains the densest concentration of wedge tombs in the country. It is, therefore, a very significant and anomalous concentration.

Various landscapes and locations in prehistoric Europe that seem to have been endowed with mythological or social significance by the groups who lived in them or moved through them seem to have been distinguished by conspicuous natural features (Bradley 2000; 2002; Tilley 1994; Scarre 2004, 146-50). Roughan Hill is not a dramatic topographic feature but it is a distinct feature in the landscape when it is approached from the south along the River Fergus, which as discussed above, is a natural routeway leading all the way from the Shannon estuary in the south to the start of the Fergus at the base of Roughan Hill. Approaching from this direction, Roughan Hill rises steeply above the River Fergus, its craggy slope clearly distinguished from the lower-lying alluvium and driftcovered valley floor. This distinct appearance and significant location combined with the long cultural history of the hill may have been enough to elevate Roughan Hill to a location of regional significance.

The imbalance between ritual monuments and habitation sites on Roughan Hill becomes even more pronounced when the cairns on Roughan Hill are taken into account as there are seven large/medium cairns within the survey area and another four just beyond its bounds. Numerous small cairns were also located within the survey area but it is not certain that all may have had a ritual function. As with the wedge tombs, it is difficult to link specific cairns on Roughan Hill to specific habitation enclosures. The larger cairns on the ridge tops appear to be sited with the wider landscape beyond Roughan Hill, rather than their immediate surroundings, in mind and this is also, of course, quite possibly significant when assessing the regional significance of Roughan Hill. The fact that wedge tombs outnumber habitation enclosures within the survey area by a factor of nearly 3:1 is certainly striking. Even more striking, if the seven large/medium cairns within the survey area are included, as well as three of the unclassified megaliths within the survey area (this excludes one of the unclassified megaliths that may be an earlier court tomb (Cl 154) and the definitely earlier Cl 153 court tomb), then ritual/burial monuments within the survey area outnumber habitation enclosures by a factor just over of 5:1 (this calculation also excludes small cairns, some of which may also be burial monuments).

As described above, there is a pattern of wedge tombs clustering around older Neolithic monuments at Roughan Hill, Ballyganner/Leamaneh, and the Poulnabrone Depression. But there is also a thinner spread of wedge tombs away from those earlier monuments that is suggestive of expanding populations. If wedge tombs were the ritual foci of some sort of corporate groups bound together by a concept of common ancestry, one scenario might be that as the population grew and dispersed, the act of building wedge tombs on the old ancestral ground of Roughan Hill was a way of maintaining links with both the ancestral geography and with more widespread relations. A descent group of this sort, that is one not defined by a common current residence but instead bound together by a concept of common ancestry or common ancestral residence (whether real or imagined), would be something akin to what Service (1962) defined as a ‘clan’. Because clans, as defined by Service, are not based on a common current residence locale they need something else to bind them together and Service states that ceremonies seem to be particularly important in this regard. It could be added that ceremonies focused on dead ancestors, such as those that seem to have been associated with wedge tombs, would be particularly appropriate. Locating those rituals in a place of origin would also be particularly appropriate and this brings us to anthropological discussions of ‘house societies’, a concept first formulated by LéviStrauss and subsequently elaborated upon by others (Beck 2007; Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995; Joyce and Gillespie 2000).

This clustering of wedge tombs and cairns on Roughan Hill opens up the possibility that Roughan Hill was of ritual and kinship significance to a wider community than those who lived on the hill. Anthropological and historical studies worldwide have revealed the complexity of related factors according to which communities are constructed and societies are structured, but in this complexity, three factors: kinship, residence locale, and institutions of affiliation, are particularly prominent (Johnson and Earle 1987; Carsten and HughJones 1995). Close links between habitations, ritual structures, burials, and ideas of ancestry, identity and place are well recognized in European prehistory (Brück 2004, 321; Hodder 1984; 1990; Bradley 2013; Earle 2004, 156) and the very long sequence on Roughan Hill combined with the clustering of ritual monuments may be evidence that by the Chalcolithic, Roughan Hill was an ‘ancestral home’ or mythologized place of origin. Structurally cohesive groups can be ‘nested’, with increasingly smaller cohesive groups occurring inside larger ones, where ‘primary social groups’ are elements of larger social formations rather than unique entities (Johnson 1982; Moody and White 2003, 12). The pattern of clustered wedge tombs set within a wider pattern of dispersed wedge tombs suggests just such a ‘nested’ social structure with the individual wedge tombs perhaps belonging to disparate sub-groups united at a higher level of identity by their common ties to specific locales, particularly to Roughan Hill. It is also worth noting the apparent bi-modal distribution of wedge tomb size in

The concept of a ‘house society’ was first defined by LéviStrauss in relation to Medieval Europe, but societies with similar structuring principles have also been identified in the Americas, Africa, and Asia (Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995). The analytical benefit house based approaches have over more traditional anthropological analyses that use kinship based categories lies in the fact that house based 20

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close spatial relationship between the curated remains of ancestors in wedge tombs and a small cluster of habitations. The disparity between the small number of residences on the hill and the large number of wedge tombs and other ritual monuments, as well as the wider more dispersed spread of wedge tombs farther afield is not an exact fit with the West Sumba situation, but it does resonate.

analyses are rooted in performance or practice based approaches, as opposed to reflecting some static essence (Gillespie 2007, 34). In studies of European prehistory, models arguing for the importance of houses in the structuring of prehistoric societies (some using the Levi-Strauss ‘house society’ concept, others not) have not only been very important in Neolithic studies (cf. Bradley 2007a; Hodder 1990; Whittle 2012; Smyth 2010), but have also figured in analyses of later periods as well (cf. Bradley 2013). As the name suggests, fundamental to the structuring of house societies is the concept of the ‘social house’ as an enduring entity that binds people together. In these societies, in other words, houses are not just buildings. They are also mechanisms for uniting people in kinship and are key to the formation of identity. They are also mechanisms for acquiring, holding on to, and transmitting property – all important in the maintenance of identity over time.

Conclusion In house societies, kinship is based not just on lineage but also on ties to land and locality. Overall, the scale and spatial patterning of most wedge tombs suggests that they are the products of the efforts of fairly small-scale corporate groups. In most areas, the dispersed distribution of wedge tombs seems to coincide with a dispersed pattern of habitation and probably a very localized sense of identity. The biggest exceptions to this are Roughan Hill which has the densest concentration of wedge tombs in the country and the nearby areas of Ballyganner/ Lemaneh, 3.5km to the west, and the area around the Poulnabrone Depression, 6km to the north-west, which also have noteworthy concentrations of wedge tombs. So far we only have a more complete picture of the inhabited landscape at Roughan Hill, but the evidence there suggests an imbalance between the high number of wedge tombs and other ritual monuments on the hill and the relatively low number of contemporary habitation sites. This suggests that Roughan Hill, and to a lesser extent the Ballyganner/Leamaneh and Poulnabrone areas, had a ritual/identity significance to a more widely dispersed population.

The West Sumba ethnographic example introduced earlier is one such ‘house society’ which may offer some analogies relevant to the present study as the people of West Sumba also build megalithic mortuary monuments. Looking in more detail at the example of West Sumba (Adams and Kusumawati 2010), we can get a picture of how the population of this particular non-residential clanbased ‘house society’ is spatially related to ancestral villages and ancestral megalithic tombs and how this might give us insights into the spatial patterning of wedge tombs in the Irish Chalcolithic. In West Sumba, society is organized according to clans whose members live in about two hundred separate houses. These houses are not, however, all clustered together. Instead, each clan has a small number of ancestral houses (typically four), each of which is associated with approximately fifty branch houses. While all the ancestral houses are located in the main clan ancestral village, most people live in small household clusters of branch houses which can be several kilometres away from the ancestral village. Significantly, the megalithic tombs housing the dead clan members are not located adjacent to the branch houses, but are instead located in the ancestral village, which is also the setting for large clan feasts. Using this as an analogy, we might envisage a similar situation pertaining between Roughan Hill and areas farther afield with ancestral residences and important tombs clustered on Roughan Hill while most of the population lived elsewhere, perhaps adjacent to the more dispersed wedge tombs. In this scenario, a more dispersed population would be tied to the ancient focal locale of Roughan Hill through descent and tradition but might only converge on the hill periodically to witness or participate in the erection of a new wedge tomb or perhaps for some other ceremonial occasion.

When the archaeology of Roughan Hill is viewed through the lens of ethnographically known societies, it suggests the possibility that the significance of Roughan Hill may well be have been due to its having been viewed as an ancestral locale to which a more dispersed population was tied through tradition, kinship, and ritual. The scenario in which the clustered wedge tombs on Roughan Hill may have been the ritual foci of dispersed clan or ‘house’ groups has much to recommend it. The evidence is suggestive of a society where it was important to appeal to the authority of the past, both through the use of megalithic architecture and also through the focus on a location with a very long history. The Chalcolithic was not, however, the Neolithic. It was a time of increased mobility, far-reaching exchange networks, and new technology. The variation in the size of wedge tombs and the re-emergence of megalithic mortuary ritual after a long period of non-megalithic burial ritual suggests that the groups/clans that built the wedge tombs probably existed in a new context of competition where social status was not fixed. This new Chalcolithic society seems to have been one where the ability to mobilize resources and labour, and to advertise that ability was critical.

Of importance to the present study are the observations that known examples of social houses have been shown to incorporate households, clans, villages, and even regional polities, and that amongst ‘the most durable and power-laden materializations of a house’ are not only its architecture and heirlooms, but also ‘the bones and bodies of its ancestors; its origin narratives, along with those places in the landscape that figure prominently therein’ (Beck 2007, 5-6). On Roughan Hill, we can see a very

Acknowledgments Many thanks to Carleton Jones snr., Noel McCarthy, and Angela Gallagher who produced the figures. 21

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Neolithic Mitochondrial Haplogroup H Genomes and the Genetic Origins of Europeans. Nature communications 4, 1-11.

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SHEE TWOHIG, E. 2004. An Enduring Tradition: Incised Rock-Art in Ireland. In H. Roche, E. Grogan, R. Bradley, J. Coles and B. Raftery (eds) From Megaliths to Metals: Essays in Honour of George Eogan, 222-9. Oxford, Oxbow Books. SHERIDAN, A. 1985. Megaliths and Megalomania: An Account, and Interpretation, of the Development of Passage Tombs in Ireland. The Journal of Irish Archaeology 3, 17-30. SMYTH, J. 2010. The House and Group Identity in the Irish Neolithic. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 111, 1-31. SPRINGS, K. 2005. Landscape Contexts of Wedge Tombs in the Northwest of Ireland. Journal of World Anthropology, Occasional Papers 3, 43-228.

VANDER LINDEN, M. 2007a. For Equalities Are Plural: Reassessing the Social in Europe During the Third Millennium BC. World Archaeology 39, 177-93. VANDER LINDEN, M. 2007b. What Linked the Bell Beakers in Third Millenium BC Europe? Antiquity 81, 343-52. WADDELL, J. 2010. The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland. Bray, Wordwell. WADDELL, J. 2014. Archaeology and Celtic Myth: An Exploration. Dublin, Four Courts Press. WASON, P. K. 1994. The Archaeology of Rank. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

SPRINGS, K. 2009. Continuity of Identity and Landscape: Court Tombs and Wedge Tombs Ion Northwest Ireland. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Buffalo.

WATTS, W. A. 1984. The Holocene Vegetation of the Burren, Western Ireland. In E. Haworth and J. Lund (eds) Lake Sediments and Environmental History: Studies in Palaeoliminology and Paleoecology in Honor of Winfred Tutin, 359-76. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

TAINTER, J. 1977. Modeling Change in Prehistoric Social Systems. In L. R. Binford (ed.) For Theory Building in Archaeology, 327-52. New York, Academic Press.

WHITTLE, A. 2012. Being Alive and Being Dead: House and Grave in the LBK. Image, Memory and Monumentality – Archaeological Engagements with the Material World. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

TAYLOR, J. J. 1980. Bronze Age Goldwork of the British Isles. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. TILLEY, C. 1994. A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments. Oxford, Berg.

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THE CONTIGUITY OF COURT TOMBS AND WEDGE TOMBS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CONTINUITY OF MEGALITHIC IDENTITY IN NORTHWEST IRELAND Kurt D. SPRINGS Liberal Arts Department, Manchester Community College, 1066 Front St., Manchester, New Hampshire 03102, USA [email protected]

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that there is strong evidence that Irish wedge tombs were constructed and used by the same culture groups that built the court tombs. Most of the data was collected in a study area that included the Irish counties of southern Donegal, northern Leitrim, Sligo, northeastern Mayo, and the western tip of County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. Spatial analysis of the data demonstrates contiguity between the Early Neolithic court tombs and Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age wedge tombs. While much changed between wedge and court tombs, the similarities are pronounced. When coupled with a rough comparison of grave goods and burial practices from recently excavated tombs, this indicates that there is a continuous relationship between court tombs and wedge tombs in the Northwest of Ireland. Keywords: Irish prehistory, megaliths, court tombs, wedge tombs, identity, landscape, Neolithic, Bronze Age

Neolithic in Ireland, the wedge tomb was taking on the role of the court tomb.

Introduction The main focus of this work is to establish that a high degree of continuity exists between two Irish megalithic tomb traditions. The role of the Irish court tomb (Early Neolithic to Middle Neolithic) appears to have been taken over by the wedge tomb tradition (Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age). In essence, this seems to signify a change in identity that occurred from c. 3500 BC to 1800 BC. Perhaps a better way of expressing this is ‘changes in identity markers,’ which archaeologists can read.

Irish megalithic tombs were part of a wider megalithic phenomena that was prevelent in Europe’s Atlantic Zone. Scarre (2002, 1) depicts the coastline of Atlantic Europe as being primarily a craggy, stony headlands with narrow saltwater inlets punctuated by low-lying river basins and estuaries that allow access into the interior. The idea of an Atlantic identity stems from the similarities between the coastal communities such as Galicia, Brittany, Ireland, and western Britain, and it has been suggested that these areas share a common heritage as well as proximity to the sea. It is believed that the, so-called, ‘Atlantic identity’ had been forged by thousands of years of maritime contact.

It was noted that wedge tombs and court tombs are often found in close proximity to one another, whereas passage tombs and portal tombs are rarely found near wedge tombs (Springs 2003, 2007). The aim of the original study conducted between 2001 and 2003 was to uncover the symbolic relationships that wedge tombs had with the natural landscape. Because of differences in morphology, location, depositional practice, and time, archaeologists have, in the past, viewed each tomb type as representing different culture groups or as possible changes in burial practice over time (Cooney and Grogan 1994; Darvill 1979; O’Kelly 1981; Sheridan 1985-6). Yet, up to this point, there has apparently been little research done to demonstrate the plausibility of change being primarily at the local level.

Study Area This author noted four areas in Ireland with large concentrations of wedge tombs. There is a particularly dense distribution in Co. Clare, with the Burren containing a large number of sites. There are dense distributions in southwestern Ireland in the counties of Cork and Kerry, in the northwestern part of Ireland in the counties of Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim, and around Donegal Bay into western Co. Fermanagh and southern Donegal. The last area of concentration is in the north, in northern Donegal and mid-Ulster. The northwestern part of Ireland was chosen as the study area in the original research.

The origins of this research began in 1998 when this author participated in the excavation of a court tomb on Roughan Hill, a small region of the Burren located in Co. Clare (Jones 1998; Springs 2003). At that time, it was noticed that wedge tombs are often found in close proximity to court tombs. From this it can be said that wedge tombs were being built on the same types of terrain as court tombs. This author argues that in the Late

There are over seventy wedge tombs in this region ranging from well-preserved examples to tombs that have been destroyed (Figure 1). Seventy-five wedge tombs were ultimately surveyed in 2002 because they were still extant. In addition, there were eight identified wedge tombs that were to be included in the study, but were 27

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Figure 1. Wedge tombs in Ireland (ASTER GDEM data were obtained through the online Data Pool at the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Irish archaeological data was obtained through National Monuments Service Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht; Northern Irish archaeological data was obtained through the Northern Ireland Environment Agency Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record)

found to either be destroyed or were not locatable. This study area was chosen due to its diverse landscape settings, geological variation, and different varieties of wedge tombs. Moreover, there are dense distributions of other tomb types in this region, most notably court tombs in western Sligo and eastern Mayo, and passage tombs, especially in the Carrowkeel-Kesh Corann and the Carrowmore-Knocknarea areas.

Irish Megaliths Court Tombs The court tomb is a monument built in the Early and Middle Neolithic (Figure 3). Archaeologists gave it the name court tomb because the most prominent feature of the tomb is a forecourt, located in the front of the tomb. Previous research by this author has shown that the court tomb was not only the chronological predecessor of the wedge tomb, but is found on the same types of landscape. Of monuments that are found in close proximity to wedge tombs, it is the court tomb that most often appears. According to Stephen R. Clarke (2006) approximately 50 court tombs have been excavated to date. Many earlier excavations were antiquarian and not excavated to modern standards.

Fieldwork began with recording of the wedge tomb in Kilbeg located near Kilcar in Co. Donegal in mid-April 2002. It took approximately eighty days in the field to completely record each tomb that was still extant. Through this process, data was collected for a total of seventy-five wedge tombs in southern Co. Donegal, western Co. Fermanagh, northern Co. Leitrim, Co. Sligo, and northwestern Co. Mayo, with the last tomb surveyed being Aghamore in Co. Leitrim (Figure 2). During field recording, it was important to carefully measure and examine each tomb and its surrounding landscape in a manner that was as accurate and consistent as possible to provide reliable data for analysis.

Most court tombs exist north of what Flanagan (1998, 45) describes as a line between Galway and Dundalk, Co. Louth. Some examples have survived in the south. The apparent weighting of court tombs in the north could be 28

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Figure 2. Wedge tomb in the townland of Aghamore, Co. Leitrim

Figure 3. Court tombs in Ireland (ASTER GDEM data were obtained through the online Data Pool at the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Irish archaeological data was obtained through National Monuments Service Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht; Northern Irish archaeological data was obtained through the Northern Ireland Environment Agency Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record) 29

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Figure 4. Court tombs within the study area (ASTER GDEM data were obtained through the online Data Pool at the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Irish archaeological data was obtained through National Monuments Service Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht; Northern Irish archaeological data was obtained through the Northern Ireland Environment Agency Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record)

was located. The cairn was usually oriented toward the east (Malone 2001, 138; Ó Nualláin 1989, 101-5). There are several variants of court construction including dual courts, with a court on either end, and central courts where the court is flanked on either side by chambers.

due to survival bias. Intense agricultural activity in the south may have lead to a faster rate of destruction (Flanagan 1998). The ceremonies and activities that took place in court tombs tended to focus on the forecourt. Once they were constructed, the arrangement of the chambers would allow only limited access to the galleries. The fact that deposition material is concentrated in front of the chambers suggests the significance of this pattern. There is evidence of a cremation pyre, hearths, and the spread of paving material in the court at Ballymarlagh in Co. Antrim (Cooney 2000, 115; Davies 1949; Herity 1987, 129).

Dates for court tombs in Ireland range from c. 3900 to 2900 BC (Malone 2001). A total of thirteen court tombs in Ireland have produced radiocarbon dates. One should remember that, as with most dating methods, these dates reflect an event rather than the actual construction history of the structure (Clarke 2006). From twenty-seven of the total number of court tombs excavated, a minimum of eighty-one individuals have been identified. Of this total, thirty-five have been classified as adults. Of this total, ten are male and eleven are female. The pottery typically found is mostly Western Neolithic. Lithics include hollow scrapers, plano-convex knives, end scrapers, leaf or lozenge projectile points, and javelin-heads. Some ground stone axes have been found. There have also been a variety of beads (Flanagan 1998).

There are approximately 400 extant court tombs in Ireland with the highest densities occurring in the northwest. The typical court tomb consists of a trapezoidal cairn that can be between 25 and 35m long and opening into a forecourt. These monuments have burial galleries built of massive stones and entered through an open forecourt. Usually, court tombs had two burial chambers separated by pairs of jambs stones and sill stones. However, the gallery can have two, three, or four chambers, which are defined by jamb and sill stones. Several tombs in the west have chambers arranged in a cruciform configuration (similar to some passage tombs). The forecourt is set at the end of a long cairn, most often at the eastern end. The courts are usually roughly semicircular or u-shaped. Sometimes court tombs have two courts, one on each end, or even have a fully enclosed court. The court was an open area that was used for ritual purposes and where the entrance of the tomb

Radiocarbon dating places the period of court tomb use in the fourth millennium BC, which covers the Early Neolithic and Middle Neolithic. They went out of use toward the middle of the third millennium BC. Court tombs are predominantly found in the northwestern area of the country, but can occur as far south as Co. Clare, with a few examples in Tipperary and Waterford. The area covered by the original wedge tomb survey also has the densest concentration of extant court tombs in Ireland. Court tombs are generally located in areas of light soil, which would have been ideal for early agriculture. They 30

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Figure 5. Court tomb in the townland of Belderg Moore, Co. Mayo

appeared in eastern Britain (Malone 2001, 135). Tatjana Kytmannow (2008, 5) notes that ten individuals from Poulnabrone were radiocarbon dated, producing dates between 4000 BC and 2900 BC, which is roughly contemporaneous with court tombs (Figure 6). Bayesian modeling of several radiocarbon dates suggests that portal tomb use began between 3990 to 3700 BC and ended between 2800 to 2400 BC (Kytmannow 2008, 112).

are found both in lowlands and uplands and occasionally have a prominent siting (ApSimon 1985-6, 5). Generally, court tombs do not occur in ‘cemeteries.’ However, they can be found close to other court tombs, most notably in the counties of Mayo, Sligo, and southwest Donegal. The density in these areas may be explained by the dense settlement and agricultural potential in the study area during the Neolithic or competition between groups that is expressed by monument building. One should also be mindful of the potential bias in tomb survival. There are a total of 151 court tombs in the study area (Figure 4) including a court tomb in the townland of Belderg Moore, Co. Mayo (Figure 5). Over 32% of all of the court tombs in the study area are within 1.5km of a wedge tomb. Of all Neolithic and Bronze age monuments, the court tomb is one of three monument types that seems to have some close spatial relationship with wedge tombs. Portal Tombs While this research looks at the relationship between the later wedge tomb and its predecessor, the court tomb, strong links have been recognized between court tombs and portal tombs (Cooney 2000, 92; Flanagan 1977). Therefore, a brief section on portal tombs would be of value. Irish portal tombs share a close relation to portal tombs in western Britain (esp. Wales and Cornwall) (Shee Twohig 1990). Secure dating of portal tombs in these regions is lacking, but pottery and other items suggest that they appeared on the landscape during the fourth millennium BC. This is roughly contemporaneous with the simple passage tomb and court tomb in Ireland. This is also the approximate time that the barrow tradition

Figure 6. Poulnabrone in the Burren, County Clare

A typical portal tomb is constructed with a single chamber formed by two tall stones, with side stones that are set more widely at the front than the back. These structures usually support a very large capstone. It is almost certain that portal tombs were covered with a long cairn, though the cairns are usually found to be eroded or robbed out to build other structures (Malone 2001, 1356). There are examples of two chambered portal tombs, such as at Ballyrenan in Co. Tyrone (Flanagan 1998). 31

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Figure 7. Portal Tombs in Ireland (ASTER GDEM data were obtained through the online Data Pool at the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Irish archaeological data was obtained through National Monuments Service Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht; Northern Irish archaeological data was obtained through the Northern Ireland Environment Agency Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record)

on level ground and are found below 122m above sea level (Cooney 2000; Malone 2001, 136).

There have been few excavations of portal tombs, due to the fact that many have had their contents removed in the past. One site, which did produce artifacts, was Poulnabrone in Co. Clare. Between twenty-two and twenty-eight disarticulated bodies were identified. Grave goods included a polished axe, stone beads, a bone pin, pottery, flint projectile points, and scrapers. Deposits in other tombs included decorated pottery, polished axes, flint tools, and personal ornaments (Malone 2001). These finds are consistent with those from court tombs. The site at Ballyrenan, Co. Tyrone contained Western Neolithic pottery (some of it decorated), leaf-shaped projectile points, and globular and lozenge-shaped beads like those found at Bavan, Co. Donegal (Flanagan 1998, 56-7).

There are 16 portal tombs found in the study area (Figure 8), such as the Labby Rock portal tomb (Figure 9). The overall distribution of portal tombs is similar to court tombs. However, there is a significant scatter of portal tombs from Dublin going southwest to Waterford. A number of portal tombs have been found in Wales, across the Irish Sea. The siting of portal tombs is similar to that of court tombs, but some were built on the slopes of river valleys. Kytmannow (2008, 117) notes that portal tombs occur in a wide variety of natural landscapes. In the northern midlands (e.g. Co. Cavan and Co. Leitrim), portal tombs can be found besides drumlins, along river catchment areas in the southeast, and close to the sea along the northwest coast. In the study area, many portal tombs cluster around rivers, valleys, and the coast (Herity 1982; Ó Nualláin 1983). They can be found in low-lying areas of the foothills of mountain ranges and on the flanks of these uplands (Bergh 1995, 17; Cooney 2000, 140, 143; Lynch 2000, 47; Ó Nualláin 1989, Figure 82).

Finds at eight sites suggest that the favored burial rite was cremation with several individual interred within the tomb. There are 174 portal tombs, which are known to fall within a northern distribution in Ireland, with some scattered in the south (Figure 7). Irish portal tombs, like the Welsh and Cornish examples seem to be located close to the coast or in river valleys. They are typically found 32

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Figure 8. Portal tombs within the study area (ASTER GDEM data were obtained through the online Data Pool at the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Irish archaeological data was obtained through Record of Monuments and Places; Northern Irish archaeological data was obtained through the Northern Ireland Environment Agency Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record)

boulders, or split boulders. The passages are narrow and built of upright orthostats and roofed with flat lintels. Sometimes the passages are divided into two or more segments by sill stones set into the floor. The passages can be as short as 1m or as long as 40m, as it is at Knowth, in the Boyne Valley. The chambers are usually simple circles or polygons. However, more complex examples exist with additional chambers. They can have simple roofing with one or more capstones, or the roofs may be corbelled with horizontal courses of slabs. Each successive course of slabs overhangs the one below it until it is possible to close the vault (Waddell 1998, 58). Passage tombs are sometimes prominently sited on high ground, occasionally situated on a commanding hilltop position. While these tombs are the more spectacular, they are in the minority. Most (approximately 58%) are situated below 150m in altitude and are close to potential settlement areas. Passage tombs can be found in cemeteries, with a large focal tomb and a number of smaller, satellite tombs. Most passage tombs are found in the northern and eastern parts of Ireland. Isolated examples occur in the Counties of Limerick, Waterford, Cork, and Kerry. There are four major passage tomb cemeteries in Ireland, containing between 12 to about 60 tombs. The first two are in Co. Meath in the Boyne Valley and Loughcrew. The second two are found within the study area in Sligo. They are in Carrowmore and Carrowkeel (Bergh 1995, 236; Cooney 1983; Cooney 1990; Herity 1974; Ó Nualláin 1968; Waddell 1998, 578).

Figure 9. Labby Rock in County Sligo

Portal tombs are rarely found along large rivers. Kytmannow (2008) echoes what has been stated before about the potential of this distribution being the result of a survival bias. Passage Tombs There are about 230 passage tombs in Ireland, constituting approximately 15% of the total number of megaliths found on the island (Figure 10). About 75 passage tombs can be found within the study area (Figure 11). A basic passage tomb consists of at least one chamber that is approached by a passage. A circular mound covers both the chamber and the passage. They are usually constructed from large, quarried slabs,

Darvill (1979, 314) feels that radiocarbon and pottery evidence indicates that the court tombs were built 33

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Figure 10. Map of passage tombs in Ireland (ASTER GDEM data were obtained through the online Data Pool at the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Irish archaeological data was obtained through National Monuments Service Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht; Northern Irish archaeological data was obtained through the Northern Ireland Environment Agency Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record)

Figure 11. Passage tombs in the study area (ASTER GDEM data were obtained through the online Data Pool at the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Irish archaeological data was obtained through Record of Monuments and Places; Northern Irish archaeological data was obtained through the Northern Ireland Environment Agency Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record) 34

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Figure 12. Passage tomb at Magheracar, Co. Donegal one cannot see the passage tombs. Knocknashee can be seen from four. It is not clear if this was done by design, or if this would have been the case when the wedge tombs were in use, since the density of vegetation at the time is not known.

chronologically before passage tombs, though early dates from Sligo passage tombs may indicate otherwise (Burenhult 1984). The smaller passage tombs began to appear during the Early Neolithic with the larger examples appearing during the Middle Neolithic. By the Late Neolithic, construction on passage tombs, as well as court tombs and portal tombs had stopped. They continued to be used for a short time during the Late Neolithic, but that soon ceased as well (ApSimon 1985-6; Sheridan 1985-6).

Wedge Tomb Using human bones for dating, the wedge tomb ranges in time of usage from 2500 to 1800 BC. In the tombs that have been excavated, the finds have consisted of human remains that are either inhumed or cremated. In tombs that were excavated before modern techniques, the context of the finds has not always been clear. Some excavations have not turned up a great deal of material. Fragmentary pottery is the most common artifact found in wedge tombs. Half of the excavated examples produce some sort of sherds from a variety of pottery over a long period of use. The most common are Beaker and Coarse Ware, e.g. the wedge tombs at Moytirra West in Co. Sligo, Aughrim in Co. Cavan, and Kilnagarns Lower in Co. Leitrim. O’Brien (2012, 216) cites Brindley (2007, 301) who notes that Beaker ware was the primary ceramic used in Ireland during this period (c. 2450-2150 BC) though it seems to overlap the Bowl Food Vessel tradition and the first use of tinned bronze (c. 2150-2000 BC). Out of twenty-two excavated wedge tombs, eight (more than 36%) contained sherds of Beaker Ware. It is unclear if the Beaker material is contemporary with the building of the tombs, or later. Earlier artifacts include Goodland bowls, polished stone axes, and concave scrapers in Boveil, Co. Derry, and decorated pottery from Lough Gur. Coarse Ware is found in Kilhoyle, Co. Derry, Loughash, Co. Tyrone, Largantea in Co. Derry, Ballyedmonduff in Co. Dublin, Lough Gur in Co. Limerick, and Baurnadomeeny in Co. Tipperary. Artifacts and radiocarbon dating show a complicated pattern of use throughout the third and second millennia

The wedge tomb at Magheracar, Co. Donegal is the only wedge tomb where a passage tomb comes within 1.5km (Figure 12). The Magheracar passage tomb is in fact approximately 80m from the wedge tomb. Cody (2002, 184) referred to this passage tomb as an undifferentiated passage tomb. Otherwise, it seems that wedge tombs were not built within close proximity to passage tombs. It is hard to say why these two tombs at Magheracar are the exception to this rule (Holly 1973; McGreevy 1986). The wedge tomb at Murhy is also a puzzle. It is situated on a steep slope, with passage tombs approximately 800m to the north on the summit of KeshCorann, and another further north, about 1300m away, on the opposite slope. Wedge tombs do not appear to be the only tomb type that is rarely found in close proximity to passage tombs. It is also rare to find court tomb or portal tombs in close company with passage tombs. Of the 151 court tombs in the study area, only six are in close proximity to a passage tomb, roughly 8%. No portal tombs are with 1.5km of a passage tomb. Only one barrow of the 244 in the study area is within 1.5km of a passage tomb, and only three of 32 cists are within this distance. It is interesting to note, however, that of the 75 wedge tombs in the study area, 11 have a clear view of a prominent passage tomb mountain. The Queen Meave’s Cairn can be seen quite clearly from seven wedge tombs, though 35

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Ireland, by the second half of the third millennium, had become a substantial metal producing region, with copper and gold production exceeding other parts of Western Europe (O’Brien 2012, 212). The earliest metal production of both copper and gold is associated with the appearance of Beaker pottery in the third quarter of the third millennium BC, i.e. after 2500 BC. This is close to the time when wedge tombs began to appear along with the production of low-arsenic copper objects such as axeheads, daggers, and halberds (Harbison 1969a, 1969b). Copper objects were in wide circulation across Ireland between c. 2400-1900 BC, along with some exchange into western Britain as metallurgy spread across these islands. As O’Brien (2001, 561) points out, the technological inspiration and cultural roots of Irish metallurgy are poorly understood. Copper production appears in Ireland at a relatively advanced level, likely through contacts with metal using groups in continental Europe. Without an import ‘horizon’ that is clearly defined, the nature of these contacts largely remains a mystery. Ireland’s early copper working cannot be linked directly to any particular continental traditions. In addition, Ireland’s copper artifacts have not been found in useful contexts or associations. O’Brien (2001, 575) feels that the earliest contacts with continental metal may have occurred before 2500 BC. He feels that it is reasonable, on chronological and metallurgical grounds, that copper production was underway in Ireland by 2400 BC, with the copper mine at Ross Island, Co. Cork being among the first (O’Brien 2001).

and possibly latter. Bowl Tradition pottery sherds are found in tombs at Loughash and Largantea. Such sherds are also found, as possible secondary insertions, in the cairn and chamber of Kilhoyle at Lough Gur. Other secondary insertions have been found at Kilmashogue in Co. Dublin where cists have been placed into the cairns of the wedge tomb (Cooney and Grogan 1994, 84-6; Jones 1997, 89-90; Waddell 1998, 98-9). Early Bronze Age Food Vessels and Urns have been recovered from wedge tombs, and from cist or urn burials in the portico of the monument. Occasional sherds of Late Neolithic pottery have been found and are thought to predate the tombs’ construction. Lithics found in association with the wedge tomb consist of barb and tanged arrowheads, wrist-guards, scrapers, flakes, hammers stones, and polished axe fragments. Metal objects include molds, flat axes, raw copper, copper rings, bronze blade fragments, spearhead molds of stone, and fragments of crucibles that might have been used in the smelting process. There are also deposits consisting of animal burials and shellfish remains, believed by some to be votive in intent (Cooney and Grogan 1994, 84-6; Jones 1997, 89-90; Waddell 1998, 98-9). Beaker pottery taken during the first excavations, over sixty years ago, indicated an Early Bronze Age date for these monuments. Further support for the Bronze Age dating came in the form of Food Vessel and Urn series pottery and stone casting molds for making bronze tools that can be dated to the Middle Bronze Age. In recent times, the date for Beaker activity has been placed two century earlier than the accepted date of the appearance of bronze production (ApSimon 1986, 1-3; Waddell 1998, 117; Brindley 2007, 301).

At present, there are still only a few radiocarbon dates available for wedge tombs, and it is hard to say whether the dates correspond with construction, primary use, or secondary deposits after the tombs fell out of use. Brindley and Lanting (1991-2) have the available radiocarbon dates for various wedge tombs. These include twelve dates from the Altar wedge tomb excavated by O’Brien (1999). They include an unburnt tooth dating 2316-1784 BC, charcoal from a pit near the center dating 1250-832 BC, charcoal from the rear dating 998-560 BC and 766-404 BC, charcoal from a pit on the south side of the chamber dating 356 BC-AD 68, periwinkle and limpet shells inside the entrance dating 2 BC-AD 230, and the pit in the center contained various deposits, some of which dated to the second century AD (O’Brien 1999). At the Island wedge tomb in Co Cork, excavated by O’Kelly (1958), three radiocarbon samples give a date for one phase of activity: 1412-1308 BC. At Labbacallee, excavated by Leask and Price (1936), the tested samples from three skeletons dated between 2202 and 2138 BC. At the Toormore wedge tomb in Co. Cork, excavated by O’Brien (1999), five charcoal samples were tested. The dates were generally between 1800-1600 BC and might have been secondary deposits in the later part of the Earlier Bronze Age (O’Brien 1991). They tested one sample of charcoal from Kilmashogue in Co. Dublin. The date yielded was 1975±80 BP (105 BC to AD 55), which indicates Iron Age activity, perhaps related to the damaging of this site. Nine samples from Lough Gur in Co. Limerick excavated by Ó Ríordáin and Ó h-Iceadha (1955), derived from human burials deposited between

Kilbride-Jones (1954, 478-9), when discussing the results of an excavation of a wedge tomb at Kilmashogue in Co. Dublin, noted that Bronze Age finds were often found in the cists constructed in the antechamber or in the cairn, leading him to believe that many Bronze Age finds were secondary insertions. Also of interest is that when O’Kelly (1958, 1960, 112-3) excavated the wedge tombs at Island, Co. Cork, and Baurnadomeeny in Co. Limerick, neither produced a single Beaker sherd. Also, casting more doubts on the Beaker connection, while most wedge tombs are in the west, most Beakers are found in the east, especially in the Boyne Valley, where wedge tombs are much less common. Crouched Beaker burials are common in megalithic-chambered tombs in Western Europe, and it cannot be assumed that they are primary burials. O’Kelly found Western Neolithic potsherds in the portico of the Baurnadomeeny wedge tomb. A large number of cord-decorated sherds were found in the Clognagalla wedge tomb at Boveil in Co. Londonderry (Herring and May 1940). Hollow scrapers and leafshaped projectile points, classic of the Late Neolithic, were found at Corracloona in Co. Leitrim (Kilbride-Jones 1974). Herring (1938) found a rim sherd at a wedge tomb at Largantea, Co. Derry, which is similar to sherds that have been dated close to the end of the Middle Neolithic. 36

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constructed with a cairn. The wedge tomb cairns were a variety of shapes, the most common being a short oval or D-shape with large facade stones in the front. When a complete cairn is extant, such as the wedge tomb at Kilsellagh, Co. Sligo, the tomb itself is hidden from view, or the cairn can come up to the capstone such as the example at Carrow Crom, Co. Mayo. Circular cairns with a diameter of up to 15m are known (O’Kelly 1989, 117).

2202 BC and 2126 BC. The radiocarbon dates do not give support for a pre-Beaker construction of wedge tombs. The only evidence for pre-Beaker dating comes from the material culture: a Neolithic round bowl, an axe, and two hollow scrapers from Boviel, Co. Londonderry (Brindley and Lanting 1991-2; Herring and May 1940). Waddell (1998, 99) speculates that some wedge tombs may have come into use very early on, from about 3000 BC.

Landscape and Spatial Analysis When the Final Neolithic began c. 2500 BC, burial practices changed. With the exception of the wedge tomb, the megalithic tradition was diminishing, little by little with an increasing diversity in burial traditions (Cooney and Grogan 1994, 75-6). In most of Ireland, there was a separation of public ritual and formal burial. Individual interment was becoming common in many parts of Ireland, with the burial context focused on the individual. At the same time, across western Ireland, a new megalithic tomb tradition was conceived that contrived a continuation of the dual funerary and public ritual function and continued the tradition of collective burial. It should be understood that this was not a complete regional separation of two different burial traditions. Wedge tombs are found in areas that otherwise practiced single burial traditions, and the single burials do appear in areas dominated by wedge tombs. Wedge tombs also received successive deposits ranging from Neolithic to Early Bronze Age material. There was evidence of an increase in inhumation burials and fewer cremation burials, such as were found in court and passage tombs (Cooney and Grogan 1994, 81-2, 86).

While there are many megalithic monuments in the study area, this section will focus primarily on the relationship between the court tomb and wedge tomb (Figure 13). It will also deal with the relationship between court tombs and possible contemporary house sites. Irish megalithic monuments, like all sites or structures, exist in space. An important consideration in spatial analysis is ‘do these tombs exist in groups or clusters?’ To determine this, the statistical program R 2.8.1 was used to conduct nearest neighbor analysis. R was used with a script developed by Peter Rogerson (2009, personal communication) for conducting first order nearest neighbor statistics. This function was carried out on all known Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in the study area. Most megaliths examined were clustered, though this author is uncertain if those monument groups with less than ten members can be considered significant. However, due to the z-scores that range from -4 to -23 and p-values that are much less than one, the NULL hypothesis of a random distribution cannot be accepted (Rogerson 2006). Therefore, there is a tendency in all of these monuments to clustering. While there are some examples that are under 10m from each other, the majority are hundreds of meters, if not kilometers from each other.

Wedge tombs continued to be a focus for burial and other activities well into the Early Bronze Age and the Middle Bronze Age. For example, Largantea in Co. Londonderry yielded cordoned urns in secondary position (Herring 1938). In Loughash in Co. Tyrone, cordoned pottery was found as well as part of a palstave mold (Davies 1939). In Moylisha in Co. Wicklow and Lough Gur in Co. Limerick each site yielded molds for socket-looped spearheads (Ó h-Iceadha 1946; Ó Ríordáin and Ó hIceadha 1955).

Geographic information systems can also provide useful data about clustering. In this analysis GRASS GIS (Geographic Resource Analysis Support System) version 7.0 was used to generate and examine the bulk of the models used in this research. Qgis (quantum gis) version 1.8 was used where necessary for display purposes. Raster maps were generated from files provided by the ASTER’s GDEM project.

Galleries of miniature wedge tombs can be 1.5 meters in length, while large examples can be as much as 6m or more. The gallery of the tomb at Labbacallee, Co. Cork is almost 14m in length. Gallery height is difficult to determine with any degree of precision. The best estimates indicate that the height at the front of the gallery is rarely more than 1.5m and is usually less than 1.2m. Some notable exceptions would be Labbacallee, Co. Cork with a height of 1.8m in front and at Berneens, Co. Clare, whose gallery measures 2m in height at the front. The widths of the galleries are usually between 1m and 2m at the front. However, larger and smaller examples exist, with a maximum of 2.4m at Baurnadomeeny, Co. Tipporary and a minimum of 0.75m at Reananiree, Co. Cork (Cody 2002, 282-3; Walsh 1995, 115-6). In most cases, the wedge tombs’ cairns have not survived. O’Brien (1999, 199) suspects that some smaller tombs in southern Munster might not have been

One tool used to determine areas around sites is Thiessen polygons, also known as Voronoi diagrams. Hodder and Orton (1976:59-60) describe them in their book Spatial Analysis in Archaeology. They can be produced by drawing perpendiculars at the midpoints between sites. Thiessen polygons suggest the size and shape of an area controlled by a site. However, Ducke and Kroegfes (2007) note that the greatest weakness of Thiessen polygons is that they cross natural features such as water or mountain ranges with no regard for their relevance as natural barriers. In this research, natural barriers such as rivers, bays, lakes, hills, and mountains were taken into consideration when using Thiessen polygons. Judgments on the inclusion of various monuments with wedge or court tombs were also made based on natural barriers in those cases. Two pie charts were generated. The numbers 37

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Figure 13. Wedge tombs within the study area (ASTER GDEM data were obtained through the online Data Pool at the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Irish archaeological data was obtained through Record of Monuments and Places; Northern Irish archaeological data was obtained through the Northern Ireland Environment Agency Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record)

Figure 14. Statistical number of monuments associated with court tombs (left) and wedge tombs (right)

of tomb types grouped with court tombs and wedge tombs are very similar (Figure 14). This supports the original premise that wedge tombs were the successor to court tombs, and that court and wedge tombs are often found in association with each other.

with a number of pre-bog houses (Figure 15). Pre-bog houses were essentially structures, presumed to be living areas, which were abandoned, and covered over by the advance of the blanket bog. In Mayo, this process started before the end of the Neolithic, though some houses in other locations have been dated to the Bronze Age. There appears to be no excavation records for the houses east of Ballina and no descriptions, so it cannot be said for

Of interest is a region surrounding the town of Ballycastle, Co. Mayo. Here we find one of two regions 38

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Figure 15. Map of prebog houses, court tombs, and wedge tombs in Ballycastle, Co. Mayo (ASTER GDEM data were obtained through the online Data Pool at the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Irish archaeological data was obtained through Record of Monuments and Places; Northern Irish archaeological data was obtained through the Northern Ireland Environment Agency Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record)

Figure 16. Map of Thiessen Polygons around Ballycastle’s prebog house sites (ASTER GDEM data were obtained through the online Data Pool at the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Irish archaeological data was obtained through Record of Monuments and Places; Northern Irish archaeological data was obtained through the Northern Ireland Environment Agency Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record) 39

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Figure 17. Map of Thiessen Polygons around Ballycastle’s court tombs (ASTER GDEM data were obtained through the online Data Pool at the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Irish archaeological data was obtained through Record of Monuments and Places; Northern Irish archaeological data was obtained through the Northern Ireland Environment Agency Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record)

The generated map likely shows several construction events. However, no records show that any of these houses have been excavated. So, there are no dates available to suggest when each of these houses was in use.

certain that these houses were Neolithic or Bronze Age. However, a Neolithic date for most of these houses would not be out of the question. The period of the third millennium BC (3000-2000 BC), in which the Late and Final Neolithic fell, also coincides with the period where rainfall increased and the pollen record indicates an increase in blanket bogs. Blanket bogs were responsible for burying and preserving many Neolithic sites in Ireland, such as the Céide Fields field systems in Co. Mayo (O’Connell 1990; Waddell 1998, 113).

In spite of this, there are things the Thiessen polygons can reveal. In those instances where court tombs share a Thiessen polygon with houses, in most instances, they share with more than one house (Figure 17). This can mean that many houses could be ‘under the control’ of a single tomb. Another hypothesis would be that many generations of houses made use of a single tomb. Alternatively, both could be true.

Thiessen polygons around the houses show that many houses do not include a tomb within their boundary (Figure 16). This can be taken to mean that every house did not have its own tomb. On the other hand, a Thiessen polygon around court tombs, which are Early Neolithic monuments, places several houses within the polygon of individual court tombs, though all court tombs do not have a house. This is also true of wedge tombs. This should not be surprising. First, we are confronted with the question of whether we are dealing with a bias of construction (by the builders) or a bias of survival (by later people). The houses we see were covered by blanket bogs, and were only discovered recently. Other houses may have been constructed, but did not survive the succeeding millenniums to be found in the present. Second, what we are seeing is not a singular event, but several. Even if some of these houses were occupied contemporaneously, they were not built at the same time.

Thiessen polygons generated around the wedge tombs seem less telling (Figure 18). Though there are more wedge tombs throughout Ireland than there are court tombs, court tombs are found in greater density in the Northwest of Ireland. In other words, there are fewer wedge tombs than court tombs in the study area. The majority of surviving houses that occur inside the wedge tombs’ Thiessen polygons are much further way from the wedge tombs, compared to the court tombs. More information can be gained by examining the shift of centers between the court tombs and wedge tombs. That there were clusters was determined by using nearest neighborhood statistics. Seven clusters of wedge tombs 40

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Figure 18. Map of Thiessen Polygons around Ballycastle’s wedge tombs (ASTER GDEM data were obtained through the online Data Pool at the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Irish archaeological data was obtained through Record of Monuments and Places; Northern Irish archaeological data was obtained through the Northern Ireland Environment Agency Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record)

centers is approximately 110km (Figure 20). Again, are we looking at a construction or destruction bias? Comparing the map of wedge tombs (Figure 1) to the map of court tombs (Figure 3), it is clear that, today, more wedge tombs have greater southern distribution. If this distribution is a bias of construction, it suggests a southern migration of tomb building by the Late Neolithic. If this distribution is a bias of destruction, it suggests that more court tombs were preserved in the northern part of Ireland as opposed to the southern part of Ireland, compared to wedge tombs. There is also the southeastern part of the island, where there are very few tombs of either type. If one looks at the maps of portal tombs (Figure 7) and passage tombs (Figure 10), the dearth of megaliths is confined to the center of the country. It may be no coincidence that the southeast quarter has the greater portion of arable soils in Ireland.

and court tombs were located using the GIS. The clusters of interest were those groupings where wedge tomb and court tomb clusters occur together. Seven clusters of interest were identified in the GIS. Cluster members were identified by examining the features of the landscape. Those tombs that are considered members of a cluster were constrained by elevation, slope, and water bodies such as rivers, lakes, and bays. The center of each tomb type within the cluster was determined by taking the mean of the eastings and northings of each member of the cluster. The center of each tomb type for the entire study area was also taken as a comparison. In the study area, as a whole, there is a shift in the center of the court tombs to the center of wedge tombs of 8.0km. However, the shift between tomb types within each of the seven clusters is less than 2.0km (Figure 19). Whether through the choices made by the tomb builders or through the afore mentioned survival bias, the total weight of court tomb and wedge tomb activity shifted in the study area. On the other hand, the distances between the seven court tomb and seven wedge tomb clusters would not be unreasonable shifts if the same groups of people that were using court tombs had changed to wedge tombs. Further the center of house activity around Ballycastle, Co. Mayo is approximately 1.0km from both the court tomb cluster (0.99km) and wedge tomb cluster (1.04km).

Taken together, it seems likely that the answer may lie somewhere between construction and destruction biases. Tombs were removed from the land in the recent past through a variety of activities. As populations grew and shifted, it is not unlikely that by the Late Neolithic, tomb builders’ populations were increasing in the south, leading to more wedge tombs being build in the south. At the same time, northern Connacht and western Ulster might well have been more stable, without the serious shift that is seen in the whole of Ireland.

If one compares this to the geographic centers of wedge tombs and court tombs over all of Ireland, the shift in 41

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Figure 19. Proximity of court tomb and wedge tombs centers, both regional clusters and for the study area in Northwest Ireland (ASTER GDEM data were obtained through the online Data Pool at the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Irish archaeological data was obtained through Record of Monuments and Places; Northern Irish archaeological data was obtained through the Northern Ireland Environment Agency Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record)

Figure 20. Shift in geographic centers between court tombs and wedge tombs for Ireland (ASTER GDEM data were obtained through the online Data Pool at the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Irish archaeological data was obtained through Record of Monuments and Places; Northern Irish archaeological data was obtained through the Northern Ireland Environment Agency Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record) 42

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who might be genetically linked, suggests some sort of continuous relationship.

Belief, as Muir (2000, 145) puts it, ‘... has been an important factor in landscape development, but its effects may be more difficult to understand than those derived from economic or political causes.’ The monuments that religion leaves behind prove to be more ambiguous than field systems or houses. Muir suspects that religion is influenced by place. Neolithic and Bronze age monuments, especially the tombs, represent an investment of valuable labor. Sense of place is highly subjective. It cannot be taken and measured in a precise scientific manner.

During the original research, this author set out to uncover the symbolic relationships that wedge tombs had with the natural landscape, other megaliths, and the cultures that built them. One symbolic element that ties into the relationship between the living and the dead is the possible interaction between settlement areas and places of the dead. Habitation material has been found in many types of megalithic tomb, indicating that these monuments were occasionally constructed on top of a house site. Transforming a house of the living into a dwelling for the dead is a phenomenon seen not only in Ireland but also throughout megalithic Europe (Bradley 1998; Hodder 1994). In a wider context, there appears to be a link between domestic and sacred landscape, where ‘paths of movement’ between the two would have emphasized both the differences and the links between them (Cooney 1999, 57).

It seems significant that almost all wedge tombs in the study area had their entrances facing the setting sun (southwest). This is a shift from earlier monuments, especially most court tombs, which faced the rising sun (southeast). Also, ninety-five percent of wedge tombs in the study area were constructed with their entrance facing a highland area. The entrance faced a horizon that consisted of a mountain or mountains more than fifty percent of the time, and hills, drumlins or ridges the other forty-five percent of the time. Most wedge tombs were constructed in highland areas, mostly hills, foothills, and drumlins. As this author found in his masters research, this demonstrates a preference for highland areas, but only a preference. Five percent of tombs face oceans or coastal plains. Eighteen percent of the time they were located in non-highland areas (Springs 2003, 2007).

Looking at the location of wedge tombs and court tombs in the study area, one is struck by the variety of landscape settings they may occur on. They are found on hills and mountainsides. They can be located near rivers, lakes, and oceans. One common feature of both tomb types in the study area is their location on pastureland. Pollen diagrams available for the study area show that from about 3500 BC to 1500 BC, the region would have been most suited to a pastoral economy. The diagrams also indicate that the climate was getting wetter, promoting the growth of bogs. Following Renfrew’s (1976) theory that megaliths served as territorial markers, it is conceivable that tombs in general might symbolize a group’s claim to, or perhaps communion with the land.

Modern perception was not something considered in the original research of the wedge tombs of northwest Ireland, but it leaves open some important considerations about the landscape data. It is still important, but not, perhaps in the way one might think. Many of the wedge tombs (as well as other tomb types) are located in uplands and have views of monumental features. As examples, the mountain of Nephin can easily be seen from many tombs in eastern Mayo. In northeastern Sligo, the mountain of Knocknarea is visible from many tombs. In Killy Beg, Co. Fermanagh, all three wedge tombs are sited just to the right of a mountain across Lough Melvin. The temptation for many archaeologists is to assume that the view of these landforms, and landforms like them, was an important consideration for the tomb builders. Yet the landforms might have just been where the tomb builders worked and lived. There were things such as good pasture or farmland that the builders needed and the major landforms were only an added bonus. Discussion and Conclusion

It is apparent that the builders of the wedge tombs were reluctant to let go of the communal burial practices of their court tomb ancestors. Cooney (2000, 88) points out that religious belief is expressed through rituals. Death would be brought into a wider scheme of things, and people would have seen in the surrounding world ‘metaphors and symbols of life and death.’ Perhaps the fields and pastures of the land around them would be metaphors for life, with the tomb representing a metaphor for death. Depending on how the people who built the tombs saw death, this could be a reminder of the mortality inherent in all living things. It could also be seen as the dead continuing to take an active role in the lives of those they left behind (Cooney 2000, 88-9).

This comparative research demonstrates that there is strong evidence that Irish wedge tombs were constructed and used by the same culture groups that built the court tombs. As part of this research, the data from the Masters research has been subjected to a more in depth analysis (Springs 2003). In examining court tombs and wedge tombs, evidence this author has used strongly demonstrates contiguity. As observed in the study area, wedge tombs were often built on the same type of landscape as court tombs. Contiguity, coupled with similar burial practices, similar grave goods, and people

An examination of excavated megaliths also suggests continuity, not just between chamber tombs, but also with Bronze Age monuments. When artifacts are found within tombs, often what is found are various types of pottery, a selection of lithics, and human remains, mostly cremated. Cists, usually are found with inhumation burials, but those excavated in the study area are predominantly cremation burials. This suggests that throughout the Neolithic and Bronze Age, people were following the same basic ritual formula. The tombs were different, and there may have been some variations as styles changed or 43

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new materials (i.e. copper and bronze) were introduced; there was a trend to lower the tomb population to one individual; and the astronomical orientation shifted from the rising sun (southeast) to the setting sun (southwest). But the burial patterns stayed the same.

major changes in cultural identity, from the long out-ofdate ‘invasion hypothesis’ to major shifts in ideology. However, this work has shown that changes in artifacts, architecture, even cosmology (i.e. ‘identity markers’) do not require a change in population or a major change in cultural identity. The Merina of Madagascar maintained intact their ‘megalithic chamber tombs’ even with their conversion to Christianity (Bloch 1986). In Ireland, the tomb cosmology may have shifted along with changes in architecture, but the people who built the wedge tombs maintained a remarkable continuity with their ancestors who constructed court tombs.

Spatially there were several examples in the study area where groups did not significantly shift their areas of habitation. This is most obvious in the comparison of centers of court tomb and wedge tomb clusters. The centers of all court and wedge tomb clusters in the study area were less than 8km apart. However, when seven clusters based on geographic settings were examined, the centers were less than 2km apart. This suggests that from 3500 BC to 1800 BC, the groups that inhabited these regions did not shift their sphere of influence very far.

Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to my advisors, William O’Brien and Ezra Zubrow, for helping to make the research upon which this paper is based possible. I would also like to thank my proofreader for her edits and suggestions.

Taken together, this suggests that, at least in the study area, we are dealing with the same groups of people from the Neolithic, possibly earlier, to the end of the Bronze Age. With some relatively minor changes, these people followed similar burial practices. Pottery styles changed, and lithics began to give way to metal. Tomb architecture was different. There were a variety of chamber tombs that could be used in the Neolithic, and this was consolidated to one in the Late Neolithic into the Early Bronze Age. However, the same types of artifacts were found in the tombs, and the bodies were often destroyed or at least disarticulated. In multi-burial tombs, this could be seen as erasing the person’s individual identity in favor of a communal identity. It has been suggested that this helped maintain the group’s claim to the territory that they inhabited. In the single burials of the Bronze Age, obscuring the individual’s identity may no longer have been important. In addition, the ceremonial importance was shifting to monuments that were not predominantly burial sites such as stone circles and stone rows.

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O’BRIEN, W. E. 2012. The Chalcolithic in Ireland: A Chnrological and Cultural Framework. In M. J. Allen, J. Gardiner and A. Sheridan (eds.) Is There a British Chalcolithic? People, Place and Polity in the Late 3rd Millennium. 211-225. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

JONES, C. 1997. Perceived and Constructed Landscapes in Neolithic Ireland. Doctor of Philosophy unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Churchill College: Cambridge University. 45

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O’CONNELL, M. 1990. Origins of Irish lowland blanket bog. In G. J. Doyle (ed.) Ecology and Conservation of Irish Peatlands. 49-71. Dublin, Royal Irish Academy.

Europe. In C. Scarre (ed.) Monuments and Landscape in Atlantic Europe: Perception and Society During the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. 1-14. London, Routledge.

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SHERIDAN, A. 1985-6. Megaliths and megalomania: an account, and interpretation, of the development of passage tombs in Ireland. Journal of Irish archaeology, 3, 17-30.

O’KELLY, M. J. 1981. The megalithic tombs of Ireland. In: J. D. Evans, B. Cunliffe and C. Renfrew (eds.) Antiquity and Man: Essays in Honour of Glyn Daniel. 177-190. London, Thames and Hudson.

SPRINGS, K. D. 2003. The Landscape Context of Wedge Tombs in North-West Ireland. Unpublished Master of Literature thesis, National University of Ireland, Galway.

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SPRINGS, K. D. 2007. Wedge tombs and landscape contexts in northwest Ireland. In R. B. Salisbury and D. Keeler (eds.) Space — Archaeology’s Final Frontier? An Intercontinental Approach. 224-244. Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

RENFREW, C. 1976. Megaliths, territories and populations. In S. J. De Laet (ed.) Acculturation and Continuity in Atlantic Europe Mainly During the Neolithic Period and the Bronze Age. 198-220. Bruges, De Tempel.

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SCARRE, C. 2002. Introduction: situating monuments: the dialogue between built form and landform in Atlantic

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SOCIAL ALTERITY AND THE LANDSCAPES OF THE UPPER GREAT LAKES, 1200-1600 Meghan C. L. HOWEY Department of Anthropology, University of New Hampshire, 73 Main Street, Durham, New Hampshire 03824, USA [email protected]

Abstract: Late Precontact in the upper Great Lakes (ca. AD 1200-1600) was marked by the rise of specialized economies based in part on the spread of maize horticulture. Lake-effect along the coasts of the Great Lakes extended the growing season such that maize cultivation was feasible in coastal areas but not inland. As groups living on the coasts adopted horticulture economies, the upper Great Lakes saw the rise, for the first time, of heightened territoriality. A material and conceptual borderland emerged between coastal horticulturalists and inland foragers. This paper argues that in this setting of increasing socio-economic difference, Late Precontact indigenous communities faced what Taussig (1993) has called an impossible but necessary, indeed everyday affair; the need to register both sameness and difference, to be like and be Other. Creating stability from the instability of social alterity in borderlands is no small task. This paper explores the ways communities developed multiple and contrasting strategies for encountering, exploring, and negotiating difference, and ultimately, finding ways to yield into it. This case illuminates the ways borderlands create impossible but everyday affairs for the people living in them of habitually having to find ways of being both identical and alter. Keywords: Great Lakes prehistory, borderlands, social alterity, landscape, monuments, storage

Human communities constantly move within and through space. As they do, they endow space with meaning, creating cultural landscapes layered with a myriad of social geographies. The archaeological record holds a deep and accessible chronicle of the ways humans write in an enduring way their presence on their surroundings (Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga 2003, 13). Archaeologists have increasingly capitalized on this fact, and landscape archaeology continues to grow as a dynamic theoretical and methodological approach in archaeology, as evidenced by the papers in this volume.

marked by the rise of specialized economies based on intensified fishing as well as the spread of maize horticulture. Recent research has shown maize was a known food item in the upper Great Lakes as early as 200 BC – AD 300 but in this early period, maize only arrived as a trade item in dried form (Raviele 2010, Chapter 5). Maize cultivation itself increased in the upper Great Lakes after ca. AD 1000. Maize quickly came to play an increasingly dominant role in the diet of many Native American communities in the Great Lakes, and by ca. AD 1350 evidence suggests some communities even consumed fewer wild animals because they were relying more and more on maize (Katzenberg et al. 1995, 335).

In this paper, I focus on one particular type of landscape found commonly throughout human history: borderlands. Borderlands are places where different communities come to face each other and as such, they are defined by difference (Parker 2006). Borderlands can be both physical and conceptual (Thomas 2007). These settings of difference inhere uncertainty that must be negotiated for communities to persist (Taussig 1993). Borderlands hold distinct material signatures. Exploring the material manifestations of borderlands can provide us new insights into the complex trajectories communities can deploy to negotiate difference. In this paper, I offer a case study of the emergence of a borderland in the upper Great Lakes during Late Precontact, ca. AD 1200-1600. My aim is for this case study to demonstrate the continued value in pushing forward our explorations of human geography in archaeology.

The economic development of maize played out differentially based on geographic and climactic factors. Prehistoric American Indian maize agriculture was a high risk activity in the unpredictable environment of the upper Great Lakes, possible only in areas with a 120-day average frost-free period (Yarnell 1964). The Great Lakes, being big and wet, create a distinct ameliorating effect along their coasts where air near the coasts warms more slowly in the spring and cools more slowly in the fall (Burnett et al. 2003; Leighly 1941). Lake effect drops off dramatically inland. This climactic amelioration permits successful maize horticulture along the Great Lakes coasts, producing growing seasons well over 120 days in southern reaches and seasons closer to but still over 120 days northwards (Figure 1). The climactic profile of the inland, generally, precludes successful maize farming.

The Borderland of Late Precontact in the Upper Great Lakes

Communities throughout the upper Great Lakes had practiced a broad spectrum strategy of foraging in which groups could move easily between resource zones on the shorelines of the Great Lakes, inland lakes, and rivers for millennia. This changed at the start of Late Precontact

Introduction

Late Precontact in the upper Great Lakes, the period preceding European Contact, ca. AD 1200-1600, was 47

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Figure 1. Coastal Lake Effect and Inland zones of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Major water features are titled. Also demarcated on this map are all Late Precontact burial mounds found in central and northern Michigan

minimal and occurs in a pattern that largely reflects declines in interaction among relatively mobile pot producers with distance’ (O’Shea and Milner 2002, 213). The restricted production and distribution zones of coastal ceramic wares illustrates the rigid social boundaries developing along Lake Huron and Lake Michigan during Late Precontact (Krakker 1999, 233). Foraging communities living inland from the coasts found themselves cut-off, both physically and socially, from the coasts of the Great Lakes.

(ca. AD 1200). The geographic and climactic reality of the region meant the rise of maize horticulture occurring after ca. AD 1200 was spatially confined to the coasts of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron (Figure 1). The development of this more specialized farming economy coupled with the increasingly specialized focus on Great Lakes spawning fish restructured ‘patterns of settlement, territoriality, subsistence scheduling, and social alliance’ (O’Shea 2003, 6). Late Precontact saw the ascent of more defined and exclusive social boundaries, the emergence of strong territorial systems, the formalization of decision making, and the development of strong senses of group identity along the coasts of the Great Lakes (Cleland 1982, 1992; Holman and Brashler 1999; Krakker 1999; Holman and Lovis 2008; Milner 1998; O’Shea and Milner 2002).

Late Precontact in the upper Great Lakes was witnessing the rise of a ‘new world order’ so to speak, one based on, for the first time ever in the region, difference and territoriality. I suggest it is instructive to understand this ‘new world order’ of Late Precontact as the emergence of a conceptual and material borderland between coastal fisher-horticulturalists and inland foragers.

The emergence and persistence of distinct, strong, homogenous ceramic stylistic traditions with discrete spatial extents indexed this rise of more formal, cohesive social groups on the coasts. Late Precontact ceramic wares show an almost rigid uniformity in the degree to which decorative attributes occur together (McPherron 1967, 297). This ‘contrasts sharply with the stylistic profile of earlier phases during which ceramic variation is

Social Alterity After AD 1200, previously homogenous foragers suddenly became divided into coastal fisher-horticulturalists and inland foragers. Inland groups saw their access to the coasts of the Great Lakes significantly limited by the 48

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exclusive (and ceramic stylistically rigid) communities developing on these shorelines. As territory and resources became overtly claimed, opportunities for open hostility between increasingly disparate communities arose. Such local processes threatened the well-being of communities who could previously move, interact, and trade freely. Coastal but especially, inland, groups had to figure out how they were going to navigate the borderland emerging between them. How were they going to handle both the material realities of the boundaries between them and the conceptual challenges posed by living within a setting of increasing tension and exclusivity?

Houghton and Higgins Lake Waterscape Central northern Michigan hosts Michigan’s largest inland lake, Houghton Lake, which is paired with Higgins Lake (Figure 1). Houghton Lake, the larger, more southern, and shallower of the two, has an area of 20,075.1 acres (8,124 hectares), a volume of 165,072 acre-feet (53,288 Mgal), and a mean depth of 8.4 feet (2.5 m); its deepest point is 21 feet (6.4 m) (Breck 2004). Of Michigan’s 11,037 inland lakes, Houghton Lake is the largest, but its shallow waters make it a warm one. Higgins Lake, the smaller, more northern, and deeper of the two, has an area of 10,185.6 acres (4,121 hectares), a volume of 51,9751 acre-feet (169,360 Mgal), and a mean depth of 52.2 feet (15.9 m); its deepest point is 135 feet (41 m) (Breck 2004), which make its waters cool and crisp.

I suggest the indigenous communities living across the upper Great Lakes during Late Precontact were facing what Taussig (1993, 129) has called ‘an impossible but necessary, indeed everyday affair’, that ‘need to register both sameness and difference, of being like and of being Other.’ This is the task and faculty of mimesis — ‘the nature that culture uses to create second nature, the faculty to copy, imitate, make models, explore difference, yield into and become Other’ (Taussig 1993, ii). Groups had to find ways of being identical and ways of being alter. As Taussig (1993, 129) explains, ‘creating stability from this instability is no small task, yet all identity formation is engaged in this habitually bracing activity’, here, the issue is not so much staying the same but maintaining sameness through alterity.

The headwaters of three major rivers — the Manistee, Au Sable, and Muskegon — converge at these lakes as well (and the Muskegon gets its actual start from feeder springs from these lakes) (Figure 1). The convergence of the headwaters of three of Michigan’s major rivers — the Muskegon, Michigan’s fifth largest river, which flows into Lake Michigan; the Manistee, Michigan’s eighth largest river, which too flows into Lake Michigan; and the Au Sable, which flows into Lake Huron — allows both major Great Lakes of the Lower Peninsula to be accessible by water travel, a unique situation in the Great Lakes. Adding to this inland waterscape is the presence of the Dead Stream Swamp to the west of Houghton and Higgins Lake. The Dead Stream Swamp is one of the largest northern white-cedar swamps in the United States and a national natural landmark (MDNR 2009).

Alterity ‘is every inch a relationship, not a thing in itself’ (Taussig 1993, 130). During Late Precontact we are seeing the advent of a relationship of alterity. Coastal and inland communities found themselves in a new borderland, a space they had never occupied before, one riddled by difference and uncertainty. Here, they had to find new ways of encountering difference, exploring difference, of negotiating it, and ultimately, of yielding into it.

How did local inland forager communities living in this waterscape navigate the borderland of Late Precontact? They looked at every inch of the relationship of alterity as one that was best traversed on a public, monumental scale. Communities developed a multifaceted monumental landscape consisting of a) using burial mounds to protect their local economy and solidify their local social identity in the face of coastal identity formation (Figure 1) and b) crafting large circular earthwork enclosure ritual precincts that engaged coastal communities in ritual events of social and economic exchange (Figure 2).

Negotiating Alterity: Evidence from Two Inland Waterscapes The lower peninsula of Michigan forms one of the largest inland regions of the upper Great Lakes, with a large swath of land falling outside of the lake-effect of Lake Huron and Michigan here (Figure 1). As discussed above, Great Lakes coastal zones are marked by a distinct geography and climate but so too is the inland. A series of waterscapes create a heterogeneous profile for the interior of the lower peninsula. Developments in the two largest inland waterscapes here show communities established multiple and contrasting strategies to deal with the rise of the borderland and its attendant relationship of social alterity. Below, I turn to a brief look at the differing Late Precontact developments in the Houghton/Higgins Lake and Inland Waterway waterscapes respectively (Figure 1). That in this one place, the inland of the lower peninsula, we see two very different strategies used to deal with the emerging borderland of the time highlights the conflicted duality Taussig (1993) captured when he called the negotiation of alterity a both everyday and impossible affair.

At the start of Late Precontact, groups occupying the Houghton/Higgins lake landscape began marking their best resources, specifically large inland lakes, with burial mounds (Figure 1). While burial mounds may appear at first glance to be spread across this inland waterscape, they are actually highly non-randomly distributed. Burial mounds are statistically associated with inland lakes when compared to a random distribution of locations. Moreover, the larger the lake, the statistically more likely it is to have not only a mound site but also multiple mound sites. Excavations were conducted at the Cut River Mounds site located at the confluence of the Cut River and Houghton Lake (which connects Houghton with Higgins Lake). The 49

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Figure 2. The location of known paired earthwork enclosures in central northern Michigan In these enclosures, ritual allowed groups to cross social alterity, to find that sameness in the face of difference. These earthworks were material manifestations of every inch of the relationship of alterity emergent during Late Precontact; this relationship played out at a monumental scale inscribed across a regional landscape. Through these monument centers, fundamental shared ritual identity allowed coastal and inland communities that were increasingly divergent find ways to come together, and to gain the vital benefits the other had to offer them which included complementary economic resources, access to a wider kin network, and trade alliances.

results of these excavations show that just as these inland lake burial mounds were not spatially random, they were not temporally random either. That is, they were added right as the borderland between coastal and inland groups began to emerge at ca. AD 1200 (see Howey 2010 for a more extensive discussion of this site). As the borderland is emerging, as social alterity is rising, communities living across this inland waterscape, finding themselves cut off from the coasts, start marking their best local resources with their ancestors — overtly, publicly, monumentally staking their claims to these places. The second aspect of their monumental answer to the borderland of Late Precontact was the construction of a series of earthwork enclosures across the region (Figure 2). Earthworks, which are more substantial labor investments than mounds, share a common form of circular ditch and embankment enclosures with planned entryways. The enclosures found across central northern Michigan tend to be 40 to 80 meters in diameter and almost all of these enclosures seem to have originally been intentionally paired. Unlike the area’s burial mounds, these monumental features were specifically located in spaces falling between inland claimed resource zones and coastal lake-effect zones (i.e. in neutral territory; Figure 2).

These earthworks created physical spaces where people could grapple with and cross the conceptual borderland between groups; they were marked physical spaces for people to come together and deal with that impossible but necessary, indeed everyday affair; the need to register both sameness and difference, to be like and be Other. During the negotiation of the relationship of alterity, Taussig (1993, 34) notes humans must ‘invent spaces of which they are the convulsive possession.’ Humans navigate social alterity by creating spaces which they then themselves become possessed by, in a very real physical way (i.e., convulsively). This ideological and physical possession ensures they maintain these invented spaces which are essential to the negotiations of identity and yielding into difference. I suggest these earthwork enclosures can be understood as spaces designed to ensure this essential process of convulsive possession in the negotiation of social alterity during Late Precontact.

Through in-depth work on these enclosures, I have argued these enclosures were purposefully constructed to serve as ceremonial centers for intersocietal interaction between coastal fisher-horticulturalists and inland foragers (see Howey 2012). The paired enclosures formed a sacred blueprint that was followed across the region to create a suite of ritual centers that had the specific purpose of bringing together coastal and inland groups. By embedding this interaction in the sacred, ritual vouchsafed the interaction, reducing the chances of any open hostility.

The Inland Waterway Waterscape The next major waterscape in the lower peninsula is the Inland Waterway and it is located ca. 125 km north of Houghton/Higgins lake (Figure 1). The Inland Waterway is a series of lakes, rivers, and streams that creates an 50

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1310-1430 Beta Analytic 209910). Numerous cultural features and dense Fire Cracked Rock (cracked rock resulting from use in heated features, often cooking hearths) suggests it was the locus of substantial residential habitation. Four large burned posts in a tight square suggest the presence of a major central support for a large structure and smaller posts suggest an oblong shape. Several burned sumac seeds have also been recovered from this site (and no unburned or modern ones; Howey and Parker 2008). Sumac is a strong indicator of disturbed and open habitat, which is what one would expect around a long occupied dwelling where most trees had been cleared. This adds another line of evidence that this was a substantial occupation with a long use life.

inland route between Lakes Michigan and Huron, providing an alternate route between these two lakes to the oft-dangerous passage through the Mackinac Straits (Lovis 1976, 366). The use of the Inland Waterway to travel between Lake Michigan and Huron is welldocumented historically by Native Americans and European trappers (Blackbird 1887). Connected to the Inland Waterway via Burt Lake is Douglas Lake (Figure 1). Douglas Lake is situated in the single most climatically extreme area in the lower peninsula of Michigan (Albert 1995). The physiography of the Inland Waterway is the result of complex glacial history of Wisconsinan and Nippising glacial advances and retreats and consists of glaciated moraines, outwash plains, drumlins, kames, and kettle lakes (Lapin 1990). Before clearing by Europeans drastically altered land cover, drumlins supported northern hardwood forests, while more poorly drained outwash plains and moraines supported northern white cedar forested wetlands.

Finds inside the structure include a series of linearly arranged hearths with dense remains from cooking activities, a distinct ceramic production area, numerous pots broken in place, eight copper tools, and a polished axe found in situ with a pile of fishing net weights. The abundance of items left in situ suggests the structure was abandoned suddenly, and the burned posts point to fire as a possible cause. The lithic assemblage at 20CN63 is dominated by local glacial till cherts and includes numerous primary flakes and cores, indicating lithic production on-site. Evidence of ceramic production further substantiates the emphasis on localized manufacturing. Floral remains were dominated by the locally abundant wild resource of acorn and faunal remains show intensive use of fish available in Douglas Lake. Finally, through shovel test survey, we connected this site directly with a cluster of cache pits on a higher topographic ridge over the low shelf the site sits on (see Howey and Parker 2008).

How did local inland forager communities living in this waterscape navigate the borderland of Late Precontact? Unlike their inland neighbors to the south, who took a very public approach to the borderland, the extant evidence suggests they took a very private approach. An ongoing research program focused on Douglas and Burt Lake has documented a very different signature on this inland landscape than Houghton/Higgins. I refer the reader back to Figure 1; it should be immediately apparent that this Inland Waterway area has no burial mounds or earthworks which speaks to a highly dissimilar use of this landscape. Instead of public monuments, my research team has found here a landscape marked by more subtle features, shallow surface depressions from cache pits which served as subterranean food storage facilities (see Dunham 2000 for a detailed discussion of cache pits). To date, we have identified 67 clusters of cache pits around Douglas and Burt Lake through walk-over survey (Figure 3). These numbers speak to an even larger amount of cache pits in the landscape since walk-over survey has only occurred on a portion of the total lakeshore of these two lakes (confined to University of Michigan Biological Station property). The average cluster has 20-25 pits while in the largest cluster we recorded over 220 visible pits. These clusters, then, represent literally thousands of storage facilities and based on extant evidence, they all date post AD 1200. They speak to a major investment locally in this inland landscape, one that emphasized local food resources and their storage, during Late Precontact.

We see a profile emerging of the distinct answer local communities developed to the borderland of Late Precontact in this inland waterscape. Rather than build (literally) up and out like their neighbors in Houghton/Higgins Lake did, the communities occupying Douglas and Burt Lake “hunkered down” and focused on using their local space intensively. Groups manufactured stone tools overwhelmingly on local raw materials, despite being quite close to one of the premier primary chert outcrops in Michigan, Norwood. They made ceramics from local clays. They built large structures with local materials. They ate locally available wild resources. They didn’t just eat them, they intensified their use of them sufficiently to create what had to be a notable level of surplus for storage. They practiced storage on a large, even grand scale, building thousands of storage pits. Crafting these pits, they materialized their philosophy of “hunkering down”, digging down into their local earth, inscribing their signature not in public constructions but in highly private ones that could only have been encountered in an intimate exchange.

In addition to identifying the cache pits, we have surveyed for and excavated living sites along Douglas and Burt Lake and these confirm the pattern of heavy domestic investment in the local landscape. A brief discussion of our finds from one of these sites, site 20CN63, located on a low shelf on Douglas Lake called Grapevine Point, helps illustrate this point. 20CN63 produced cultural material across a 60 x 40 m area and 83 m2 have been excavated. Cultural materials and radiometric date indicate 20CN63 has a large Late Precontact component (14C date of 550±40 BP, cal AD

Concluding Thoughts Borderlands create impossible but necessary, everyday affairs for the people living in them of habitually having 51

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Figure 3. The location of identified cache pit clusters to-date on Douglas and Burt Lake in the Inland Waterway. Clusters average 20-25 cache pits although one cluster has over 220 pits. These features are shown on a Digital Elevation Model where darker areas are lower topographically (of note, clusters do not actually overlap, this is only a result of map scale)

inland waterscapes in the lower peninsula of Michigan. The signatures left on these landscapes indicates that, despite not being far apart from each other, inland foragers did not follow a singular route to cope with social alterity; they developed contrasting strategies for encountering, exploring, and negotiating difference, and ultimately, finding ways to yield into it. Groups in Houghton/Higgins Lake looked outward while groups in the Inland Waterway looked inward. In Houghton/ Higgins Lake, groups publically marked their local resources and built elaborate earthwork ritual precincts to engage their coastal neighbors in inter-community

to find ways of being both identical and alter (sensu Taussig 1993). In the upper Great Lakes during Late Precontact, we see a physical and conceptual borderland emerging between coastal fisher-horticulturalists and inland foragers. Both communities, but especially inland foragers cut off from the coasts of the Great Lakes, were forced to grapple with this borderland and the emergence of social alterity, particularly daunting tasks in a region where millennia had passed without any such alterity. In this paper, I have taken us quickly through Late Precontact archaeological landscapes from the two largest 52

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BRECK, J. 2004. Compilation of Databases on Michigan Lakes. State of Michigan DNR.

exchange and interaction. Along Douglas and Burt Lakes, while research is still ongoing, it appears local communities emphasized “isolation” rather than intersocietal exchange, to negotiate the period. They used their inland area intensively, engaging in what could be characterized as a logistically-organized collector strategy, supplying themselves with local resources through specially organized task groups, creating a surplus and intensifying storage of local foodstuffs (Binford 1980; Halperin 1989). Storage supported multiseason occupations with structures.

BURNETT, A. W., KIRBY, M. E., MULLINS, H. T. and PATTERSON, W.P. 2003. Increasing Great Lake Effect snowfall during the twentieth century: A Regional Response to Global Warming? Journal of Climate 16, 3535. CLELAND, C. E. 1982. The Inland Shore Fishery of the Northern Great Lakes: its development and importance in prehistory. American Antiquity 47, 76184.

When one considers the fact that social alterity inheres the conflicted duality of the impossible but necessary, everyday affair of habitually having to find ways of being both identical and alter (sensu Taussig 1993), it is not that surprising to find such contrasting strategies for dealing with this even in relative spatial and temporal proximity as we did here. In fact, this case shows archaeologists studying borderlands should never expect one answer to be sufficient for negotiating the conflicted terrain of alterity inherent in these landscapes. If social alterity requires the achievement of things that are completely incongruent (doing something impossible and necessary, of being the same and alter), why should we expect communities answers to be congruent? Archaeologists studying borderlands should expect to find landscapes inscribed with conflicted approaches to the complexities of alterity and studying these landscapes provides exciting insights into these intricate human geographies.

CLELAND, C. E. 1992. Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan's Native Americans. Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press. DUNHAM, S. B. 2000. Cache pits: ethnohistory, archaeology, and the continuity of tradition. In Interpretations of Native North American Life: Material Contributions to Ethnohistory, edited by M. Nassaney and E. S. Johnson, pp. 225-60. Gainesville, University of Florida Press. HALPERIN, R. H. 1994. Cultural Economies Past and Present. Austin, University of Texas Press. HOLMAN, M. B. and BRASHLER, J. G. 1999. Economics, material culture, and trade in the Late Woodland Lower Peninsula of Michigan. In Retrieving Michigan's Buried Past: The Archaeology of the Great Lakes State, edited by John R. Halsey and Matthew D. Stafford, pp. 212-20. Bloomfield Hills, MI, Cranbrook Institute of Science.

Acknowledgements

HOLMAN, M. B. and LOVIS, W. A. 2008. The social and environmental constraints on mobility in the late prehistoric Upper Great Lakes Region. In The Archaeology of Mobility: Old and New World Nomadism, edited by H. Barnard and W. Wendrich, pp. 280-306. Cotsen Advanced Seminars 4. Los Angeles, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California.

I would like to thank all of the people who have helped me with my research projects over the years, with particularly deep gratitude to Bob Vande Kopple, Kate Frederick, Kathryn Parker and John O’Shea. I also thank Kurt Springs for organizing this volume and for his patience. The work on the Inland Waterway was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number (0851096); any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

HOWEY, M. C. L. 2010. Confounding kinship: regional ritual organization in Northern Michigan, AD 12001600. In Ancient Complexities: New Perspectives in Precolumbian North America, edited by S. Alt, pp. 104-18. Foundations of Archaeological Inquiry. Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press.

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LOW, S. M. and LAWRENCE-ZÚÑIGA, D. 2003. Locating culture. In The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture, edited by S. M. Low and D. Lawrence-Zúñiga, pp. 1-48. Malden, Blackwell.

TAUSSIG, M. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. London, Routledge.

MCPHERRON, A. 1967. The Juntunen Site and the Late Woodland Prehistory of the Upper Great Lakes Area. University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology Anthropological Papers no. 30. Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology.

THOMAS, J. 2007. Mesolithic-Neolithic transitions in Britain: from essence to inhabitation. In Going Over: The Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition in North-West Europe, edited by A. Whittle and V. Cummings, no. 144, pp. 423-39. London, Proceedings of the British Academy.

MDNR. 2009. Michigan Department of Natural Resources http://www.michigan.gov/dnr. Accessed Fall 2009.

YARNELL, R. A. 1964. Aboriginal Relationships Between Culture and Plant Life in the Upper Great Lakes Region. University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, Anthropological Papers no. 23. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology.

MILNER, C. M. 1998. Ceramic Style, Social Differentiation, and Resource Uncertainty in the Late Prehistoric Upper Great Lakes. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.

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MONUMENTAL CIVIC ARCHITECTURE SIGNALS GROUP IDENTITY, AFFILIATION, AND EFFECTIVE COLLECTIVE ACTION: PROSPECTS FOR INVESTIGATION IN THE GREEK CITIES OF LATE HELLENISTIC AND EARLY ROMAN ASIA MINOR AS EXPLORED FOR ROMAN APHRODISIAS LuAnn WANDSNIDER and Lauren NELSON Dept. Anthropology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Lincoln, NE 68588-0368, USA [email protected]

Abstract: Texts from the Late Hellenistic and Early Roman Imperial periods of Western Anatolia emphasize the patriotic regard citizens held for their cities. Even though by this time the autonomous Greek city-state had been elided by the Greek city that participated in a large and dynamic geopolitical arena, citizens still proudly extolled the virtues of their city. Through the institution of civic benefaction, citizens and city institutions erected a visible and distinctive signal in the form of public architecture. Deploying costly signaling theory, based in evolutionary principles governing cooperation and collective action, we argue that this public architecture furthered three municipal objectives. First, city institutions used monumental civic architecture to construct a unique identity, making material the distinction between “us” and “them,” critical in a competitive environment. Second, it communicated to other regional entities that the city was an actively engaged in the cosmopolitan Mediterranean and the superior entity de jour, for example, the Roman Emperor. And, third, it materially demonstrated that the city was viable and dynamic, able to mount effective collective action attractive to potential benefactors and citizens and deflective of potential foes. We offer a proposal for investigating this argument through analysis of excavated materials from several Greek cities in western Anatolia and Asia Minor, offering an analytic sketch for the city of Aphrodisias. Keywords: costly signaling, multi-level selection, identity, peer polity, monumental architecture, Aphrodisias

These studies variously emphasize the importance of context, status, and gender and, over the last decade, scholarly emphasis has shifted from text and performance (often accessible by only the elite) to everyday practice and embodiment, dimly visible even in artifacts and architecture (Hodos 2010).

Introduction This chapter argues that city institutions in Hellenistic Anatolia and Provincial Asia Minor deliberately constructed monumental civic architecture that simultaneously communicated three things. First, it materially presented a unique city identity, one that referenced conflated real and mythic histories, to a region rife, in the Late Hellenistic period, with demic conflict. Second, it signaled engagement of the city with its contemporary dynamic world, employing conventional motifs shared within a larger pan-Mediterranean community and referencing Roman superiority in that world. Finally, the size, form, and ornateness of the civic buildings indexed the ability of the city to mount significant collective action, that is, to organize and sublimate the contributions of citizen and non-citizen agents. This chapter postulates that monumental civic architecture served as an important element in this “group signal” and specifies implications for this postulate in a meta-analysis of materials recovered through excavation programs in Greek cities in western Anatolia. We briefly evaluate these ideas for the well-documented site of Aphrodisias, located in modern Turkey.

This study draws on some of the elements seen in this scholarship, repackaging it in evolutionary terms. The utility in this repackaging lies in the analytic purchase it buys to pose and address follow-on questions, with which we conclude. Monumental Civic Architecture as Group Signal The communicative power of monumental architecture has been recognized for several decades and scholars have variously emphasized the source and nature of the information conveyed through such architecture (e.g., Abrams 1989; Moore 1996; Smith 2011; Trigger 1990). Other recent literature builds on work by Charles Sanders Peirce (e.g., the Peirce Edition Project 1998) and Sebeok (2001) in semiotics and considers monumental architecture and other material culture as signs (Meskell 2006; Preucel 2010), which convey particular kinds of information to particular receivers. This latter domain overlaps with our approach here, although it is beyond the scope of this chapter to develop these areas of similarities and differences. Suffice it to say that, here, we follow Boone (1998, 2000), Glatz and Plourde (2011), Neiman (1997), and Roscoe (2009) in viewing

Recent studies of identity, especially ethnic identity, in Mediterranean Antiquity abound (e.g., Dougherty and Kurke 2000; Hall 1997; Whitmarsh 2010), with increasing emphasis on the role played by material culture in constructing, reflecting, and refracting identity (Alcock and Osborne 2012; Hales and Hodos 2011). 55

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their interests to the group. That is, even though the individual pays a personal price to support the group, if his or her kinsmen thrive, then, in evolutionary terms, the individual or, rather, the individual’s genes, also survive and thrive.

monumental architecture as a “signal,” and, in so doing, invoke recent thinking on signaling theory (see also Wandsnider 2015). Signaling theory refers to a subset of Darwinian evolutionary thinking that considers the functionality of seemingly unfunctional characteristics of individuals and group. The signal, a behavioral or material display that is indelibly linked to an otherwise invisible characteristic, is emitted by a sender. With this information about individual or group attributes, receivers can make decisions in their own best self-interest. People can decide to marry their daughter to the over-achiever or shun the shirker son. Similarly, groups may decide to stay clear of a formidable group or, if nearby and potentially threatening, may decide to ally itself. The important point is that hidden or difficult to see qualities, critical for successful social living, become known and then acted upon, by non-lethal means.

When groups become large enough to incorporate several kin groups, however, then other theory becomes necessary. Signaling theory or social signaling, especially Roscoe’s (2009) multi-level version (see also Wandsnider 2015), has recently emerged as a strong candidate for helping understand the individual-group dynamic in groups composed of multiple kin groups.1 Paul Roscoe (2011, 2012) is mining the rich ethnographic record for contact-era New Guinea, when horticultural groups engaged in endemic warfare over territory. In this situation, the group that is able to field organized, committed warriors and to replenish the ranks with new warriors through reproduction or recruitment, will persist and possibly expand. But other non- or less lethal strategies are used as well to forestall conflict and recruit allies. Roscoe (2009) identifies conspicuous distributions, conspicuous performances, and, for south coastal New Guinea, magnificent clan houses, as group signals that accurately communicate the size and quality of the group to would-be allies or combatants. That is, the degree to which individuals contribute their own products, time, and labor to support distributions of food and wealth, performances, and buildings as well as the effectiveness with which those individual efforts are organized all index, argues Roscoe, the ability of the group to mount significant collective action, such as warfare.

Costly signaling has received special attention in recent anthropological and archaeological scholarship (see especially Bleige Bird and Smith 2005; Boone 1998; Glatz and Plourde 2011; Neiman 1997) which reference earlier works in animal behavior (Grafen 1990; Zahavi 1975; Zahavi and Zahavi 1997 on the handicap strategy). In his analysis of the “rise and collapse” of the Classic Maya, Fraser Neiman (1997) offers a succinct description of costly signaling in terms of signals exchanged between individual senders and receivers. Senders send a signal in the form of material displays—underwriting a festival, constructing a monument, wearing fancy artifacts—that advertise and index critical hidden capabilities such as their personal characteristics (charisma, health, endurance, organization skills) or their access to resources, kin groups, or knowledge. Receivers, receiving signals from multiple senders, assess the quality of the signal and infer the qualities of the senders, especially with regard to particular hidden capabilities. In the original formulation, Zahavi (1975) argued that costly signals were costly because they constituted a real cost or handicap to the sender to send them; resources that could have supported more or better offspring instead are directed to these displays. These costly signals, by dint of their cost, are also honest signals because they truthfully exposed the otherwise-difficult-to-assess abilities of the sender relative to other senders. More recent animal behavior scholarship (Higham 2014; Számadó 2011) has challenged this tenet but distinguishes indexical signaling, wherein the signal is intrinsically linked to a scalar quality of the signaler, as a trivial case of costly signaling. This is the version of costly signaling upon which we rely here.

By referring to monumental civic architecture as a group signal, then, we specifically mean that this architecture “sends” accurate information about various critical qualities of the group, in this case, the city. Other individuals, especially those who speak another language or who are unrelated to city inhabitants, then, can readily assay something about the unique identity of the city, about what the city values, about the ability of the city to mount effective collective action, and that the city is composed of prosocial individuals who tolerate and maybe even welcome all of the above. These “receiving” individuals may be representatives of other cities, agents of Rome or other external powers, potential predators like pirates and brigands, or potential new citizens. Thus, the focus here is on cities as agents themselves in the contested landscape that was Hellenistic Anatolia and, after incorporation into the emerging Roman Empire, Asia Minor. More specifically, we consider these cities as “groups” composed of “individuals” (citizens and other residents) and with institutions—the city assembly, the council, a legal apparatus—that deliberately and consciously decided to initiate and sustain particular actions, such as fabricating monumental architecture. In considering Anatolian and Asia Minor cities as groups,

“Group signal” is a concept that requires some unpacking. Here and in the evolutionary literature, “group” is contrasted with “individual.” Groups are composed of individuals and successful groups are composed of prosocial individuals with a strong group identity and mechanisms to reward prosocial behavior and deter selfish behavior (Bleige Bird and Smith 2005). In small, kin-based groups, kin selection (Trivers 1971) is usually invoked to explain why individuals sublimate

1 It is important to note that we are here relying on a modern, i.e., postWynn-Edwards version of group selection. Individuals do not engage in altruistic acts purely for the “good of the group.” Rather, a viable group is critical to self-preservation.

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problem, demonstrated both by ethnographic observation and mathematical modeling (Henrich 2006). The first is that individuals contributing to the public good are also able to punish the free-riders (Boyd and Richerson 1992). The second, based in signaling theory, depends on the fact that some prosocial behaviors (e.g., contributing towards group defense) are also costly behaviors, i.e., exact a cost on the signaler and also honestly convey the hidden prosocial talents of the signaler; the successful signaler is typically rewarded with various social benefits (e.g., access to other resources, higher quality mates, Gintis et al. 2001). Finally, persons who defect from contributing to the welfare of the group may be shunned or isolated; their reputations become such that they or their children may not find mates and their reproductive fitness is impaired (Boehm 1997).

we deploy recent thinking on groups, cooperation, and collective action harmonized by signaling theory. Group Signaling Channels Monumental architecture broadcasts as a group signal on three related channels: identity, affiliation and acknowledgement, and collective action. Identity Identity refers to the collective aspect of a set of characteristics—behavioral, material, biological—by which someone or some group is known or distinguishable (Barth 1970; Hall 1997; Hodos 2010, 3; Mac Sweeney 2011). More specifically, both community and ethnic identity refer to social phenomena in which the coresident or ethnic group manipulates linguistic, religious or cultural features to subjectively construct ascriptive boundaries (Barth 1970; Hall 1997, 17-33; Hodos 2010). Hall (1997, 17-33) summarizes recent anthropological and sociological literature on ethnic identity. Ethnic groups are formed, he notes, when resources have been appropriated by one section of a population, at the expense of another, owing to long-term conquest or migration, or as groups resist this appropriation. Ethnic groups and their boundaries are not static or monolithic but dynamic and fluid. Importantly, individuals need not always act on their membership of an ethnic group. When an ethnic group is threatened, however, ‘[ethnicity]’s internalization as the social identity of each of its members entails a convergence of group behavior and norms and the temporary suppression of individual variability in the pursuit of a positive social identity’ (Hall 1997, 33). That is, individuals “turn on” their ethnic identity situationally, in those times when ethnic identity has saliency. Moreover, we see this behavioral convergence and ethnic salience more commonly among dominated and excluded groups. Finally, ethnic identity is only constituted by opposition to other ethnic identities. Thus, when one ethnic group becomes visible, we should simultaneously see multiple ethnic groups.

All of the above is moot, however, unless an individual can recognize “the group,” and this is where social boundaries become important (Barth 1970; Turchin 2003, 29-30). Groups actively create and recognize symbolic and social boundaries that distinguish between “us” and “them.” These boundaries are advertised at multiple levels as in linguistic and phenotypic indicators (Turchin 2003, 30), ethnic and behavioral markers such as diet and clothing (Landa 2008; Mac Sweeney 2011), and religious practices (Durkheim 1915). And, these boundaries are created and recreated as individuals choose to act on their identities, passively or actively deploying language, behavior, and material culture markers repetitively and in social and even charged public contexts (Hodos 2010; Mac Sweeney 2011). Of course, social boundaries can be recognized for social groups of various degrees of inclusiveness, from family to ethnic group to state. Following Raja (2003), we suggest that city institutions of the Hellenistic cities of western Anatolia—the council and assembly—deliberately fabricated elements of the cityscape to help broadcast city identity. Moreover, this identity was likely keyed to the mythic origins of the city and extant city oracles (e.g., Busine 2013). By virtue of their materiality, city monuments and structures continuously reinforce city identity to both residents and visitors and, importantly, they speak also to those not fluent in the local language, as argued by Abrams (1989) and Trigger (1990).

More pertinent to our discussion here is the circumstances under which communities composed of coresiding individuals with kin relationships of various degrees construct a community identity. In general, the mechanisms and processes offered for ethnic group identity formation are also offered to describe the circumstances under which a community identity is formed (Mac Sweeney 2011).

If the council and assembly of cities were attempting to assert a unique identity via architecture, then several expectations follow: The earliest communal structure should be tied to the city’s unique identity. This structure should show frequent renewal and refurbishing. It should be located in the most visible or most central place. It should show evidence for early “monumentalization,” that is, increased size, construction based on architectural plans and with exotic materials and elaborately crafted elements (Hansen and Fischer-Hansen 1994).

Evolutionary thinking on the nature of groups and cooperation deepens our understanding of ethnic and community identity and the conditions under which identity has saliency. Groups devolve to individuals if even some few individuals are able to free-ride on the efforts of others to promote and maintain the group, as observed by commentators on the human condition as diverse as Ibn Khaldun (1958; written in 1377) and Charles Darwin (1922; first published in 1859). Three kinds of mechanisms seem to solve this free-rider

Affinity and Acknowledgement In addition to conveying information on identity, material culture in general and monumental architecture in 57

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mutually intelligible version of ancient Greek and worshipped similar gods. Architects worked from shared texts to build important structures and the sharing of construction technique and motif is evident in the structures themselves, even without reference to the historical documents (Winter 2006). It almost goes without saying that we expect similarities in construction style, materials, and city planning, if indeed cities and city institutions are self-aware of their place in a larger community of cities. Indeed, the Hellenistic and GrecoRoman affiliation of cities is often, with little explicit reflection, recognized in this fashion. But, different architectural elements will be differentially received by individuals that variously share the same cultural background. By “receive”, we mean the convolution of the neuro-physical perception of an element or a piece of architecture, i.e., in the “eye of the beholder;” the conscious and unconscious attempts by the erector to manipulate how a particular element is perceived (for example, by its placement or use of aesthetically manipulative designs; see Roscoe 2009, 96-99); and, the culturally-mediated appreciation of form, scale, texture, materials, all facilitated by different levels of proximity. All of this is to say that through an element by element parsing of architecture in terms of motif, material, location, form, composition, viewshed, one could conceivably construct “affiliation” indices, something that is beyond this exercise (but see Smith’s 2011 recent review of architectural and urban planning studies directly linking the physical urban-built environment to the actions of people within cities.)

particular, also has the potential to convey affinity with other groups as well as acknowledgement of the larger worlds in which the group operates. In the case of the cities of western Anatolia, we see both of these at work. Renfrew and Cherry (1986), when introducing their concept of peer polity interaction, recognize monumental architecture as one element used by group elites to communicate with the elites of other groups that they are indeed peers. Where Renfrew and Cherry highlight the role of group elites in constructing this signal, John Ma (2003, 14) and Rubina Raja (2003, 2012) point to city institutions (likely populated by group elites) operating in the Hellenized cities of Anatolia. Ma cites the various ways in which Hellenistic cities interacted with each other to make the case that, contra Hansen (2000), these cities were indeed peer polities, i.e., more or less homologous entities. These cities entertained requests for and granted asylia (inviolability) via negotiation (Rigsby 1996); dispatched envoys to announce festivals to other cities, where they were grandly received; and, issued and responded to requests for foreign arbitrators. Significantly, Ma and Billows (2003) highlight the common architectural idiom, both in institutional function and form, shared by the Greek cities: an agora with nearby prytaneion (house of the chief magistrate, where visiting dignitaries were also housed), bouleuterion (where the council met) and stoas that provided offices for magistrates; temples and sanctuaries (some now dedicated to cults originating from Alexander’s East); gymnasium or gymnasia; a theatre; a stadium; sometimes an auditorium or library; a commercial agora with rooms for shops; and, city walls (Billows 2003).

Effective Collective Action Finally, monumental architecture—its presence, form and status (e.g., maintained or not)—indexes (sensu Blanton 1994 and Roscoe 2009) the ability of the group, in this case, the city, to mount effective collective action.

With both the ascendency of Imperial Rome and a larger Roman presence in the area following the Battle at Actium, then Blanton’s (1994) notion of monumental architecture as a canonical communication device becomes important. Thus, the Greco-Roman cityscapes of Asia Minor expanded to include expansive civic hydraulic amenities (e.g., bath-houses, aqueducts, nymphaea). Construction of these latter often required Roman engineering and also the quiet brought by the Pax Romana, which allowed aqueducts, for example, to transit the territories of previously autonomous and competitive city-states. In addition, large decorative monuments, such as arches, statues, monumental inscriptions, and heroes’ tombs, were added to the cityscape, reflecting and amplifying the prestige of the wealthy and powerful, including the Roman emperor (Mitchell 1993, 80, 216-217; Rizakis 2007).

Here we follow Roscoe (2009) who recognized communal architecture as one of three kinds of conspicuous, competitive displays—also including food presentations and distributions as well as spectacular performances—seen in contact-era New Guinea. Food presentations and distributions involved live pigs, and wealth feasting, in which the village hosted adjoining communities and hundreds of pigs were consumed in week-long feasts. Individual kin groups contributed their production to the headman and larger community, in order to, literally, “fight with pigs.” Villages also put on conspicuous performances, with dancers outfitted in elaborate costumes that masked individual identity and following extravagantly choreographed routines, all witnessed by guests from other communities. Finally, in lowland New Guinea, cult houses, some of them more than 15 m in height, were competitively constructed by clan groups to house the ancestors. Each of these conspicuous displays communicated to potential allies and enemies the ability of the group to recruit resources from multiple, potentially defecting, but, in this case, cooperating kin groups. In this sense, each display indexed the ability of the group to field an organized,

In their choice of architecture and architecture elements, then, the councils and assemblies of the Greek cities communicated that they were members of a larger social group, that of the cosmopolitan Mediterranean, and, later during Imperial times, they also acknowledged the emperor, inviting the emperor’s coin to build monuments to himself. We know that citizens in Hellenistic era Greek and early Imperial Roman era Greco-Roman cities spoke a 58

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Little studied are the consequences of structure maintenance by the city over time. Blanton (1989, 413) argues for architecture as an economical communication device, with a high initial investment in something that is then very enduring and very visible. But, we must also consider the possibility that a decaying cityscape may also have communicated as powerfully as a newly erected cityscape. Cities struck by earthquakes and unable to repair that damage may have, in this inability, become vulnerable to the withdrawal of support by the emperor, for example.

competent force that could successfully defend and expand its territory. Ma’s (2000, 2003) portrait of the Hellenistic cities of western Anatolia, situated so as to control territory and consumed by endemic warfare, is almost identical with the portrait provided by Roscoe for contact-era New Guinea. Exchange the pigs and sweet potatoes of New Guinea for grain and sheep of Anatolia and the narrative of inter-community strife is identical, and expectably so for middle range societies of this sort.

In the case of the Greek cities of western Anatolia, then, we expect to see large, ornate, civic structures situated so as to maximize their visibility from afar. They should also be placed at prominent crossroads or serve as the forum for intra-community contests. Following major earthquakes, civic monumental architecture should see early repairs, as the city attempts to demonstrate that it is still viable and worthy of reinvestment.

While the peace imposed by Imperial Rome eliminated or reduced this endemic warfare (seen also for pacified New Guinea [Roscoe 2009, 99]), we see this inter-city rivalries shifting to other arenas, with cities and provinces vying with each other for the title of “first.” The contemporary commentator Aelius Aristides (Oration 23.59, 62-64) referred to this intra-city strife and the continual parade of Greek civic ambassadors requesting support from the emperor as ‘fighting over a shadow,’ suggesting that these represented substance less competition (Burrell 2004; Millar 1993). But, real resources flowed to those cities chosen to be the site of an imperial cult or the governor’s assize (Gleason 2006; Price 1986). We suggest that these provincial cities were engaged in competitive monumental cityscape construction— “fighting with monuments!”—to win the favor and support of the emperor. The cityscape as well as the persuasiveness of the envoys sent to solicit support from the Emperor were critical. Writes the contemporary Greek orator and writer Dio Chrysostom: ‘One could hold one's head up higher visiting another city if one's native city were known for its fine public buildings; it was painful to blush for ramshackle shops and dilapidated bathhouses when the governor came to town’ (Dio Chrysostom 40.9; translation from Gleason 2006, 231).

The Case of Aphrodisias in Roman Caria Above, we identified consequences for the architecture, its form, placement, and ornateness, if indeed civic institutions were employing architecture to broadcast a multi-dimensional group signal. We offer a provisional examination of these expectations, focusing on the wellexcavated city of Roman Aphrodisias (Figure 1), for which high quality textual, numismatic, and architectural evidence has been amassed over the last century. Aphrodisias Aphrodisias (in late Antiquity, Stauroúpolis) is located in an interior upland Maeander valley on the SW portion of the Anatolian Plateau. Mounds suggest an early (5-6000 BC; Gauthier accessed March 2014) occupation with village organization documented beginning about the 6th century BC and extending into Byzantine times, as recently synthesized by Raja (2012); see also Erim (1986); Ratté (2001, 2002); Ratté and Smith (2004, 2008); Reynolds (1980); Rouche et al. (1989); and Smith and Ratté (1995, 1996, 1997). Aphrodisias is best known for its well-preserved and well-excavated Roman era structures. For the most current information on Aphrodisias, see the project website maintained by New York University at http://www.nyu.edu/projects/aphrodisias/.

Civic monuments, their location and form, were decided by the council and assembly (Raja 2003, 2012). The city itself likely funded some of this construction (Schwartz 2001; Zuiderhoek 2005, 2009) but the civic benefactions of citizens, especially those attempting to advance and maintain their status, were also important (Price 1986; Wandsnider n.d.). Indeed, councils and assemblies often recruited or pressured elite citizens to donate as per their station (Gleason 2006; Price 1986). Inscriptions reporting civic benefactions compiled by Zuiderhoek (2009) for all of Anatolia, especially western Anatolia, show donations for buildings or portions of buildings are highest in the early days of the empire, when it would be most critical for a city to convey its pro-Roman affiliation and its competitiveness. From the time of Septimius Severus (AD 193-211) to the mid-3rd century, intra-city agonistic competition (i.e., competitions in sports, music, and theatre embedded within the framework of religious festivals) expanded while monumental construction declined (Mitchell 1993, 198-199). We suggest that the monumental architecture channel had become “saturated” and that monumental architecture no longer was effective for communicating individual or group status.

Beneath the Temple of Aphrodite, structures dating to the 6th century BC have been found, which are interpreted as evidence for an early sanctuary (Raja 2012). Prominent figures in the late Republican era, Sulla and Julius Caesar, offered dedications here, suggesting that even at this time, the sanctuary was well known. Chaniotis (1996) argues that into the Imperial period, citizens deliberately capitalized on this and on the asylum rights attached to the sanctuary, purposefully enhancing civic self-representation along these lines. By the 1st century BC, some coins and documents refer to the ‘demos of the Plarasa and Aphrodisias,’ continuing 59

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Figure 1. Aphrodisias in Asia Minor (and modern Turkey). This figure was assembled by Wandsnider with assistance from Corbin Bogle using three data sources. The base map comes from data compiled by the European Environment Agency and is derived from the GTOPO30 dataset (http://edcdaac.usgs.gov/gtopo30/gtopo30.html) created by the U.S. Geological Survey, EROS Data Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. GTOPO30 is a global digital elevation model (DEM) with a horizontal grid spacing of 30 arc seconds (approximately 1 kilometer). The inset reference map comes from the ESRI ArcMap on-line gallery. City locations come from a variety of historical sources In terms of building history, geophysical prospection has revealed a grid system to which major structures were keyed, but this system is not well dated. (The Aphrodisias project website at http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ aphrodisias/home.ti.htm, provides plans of the city.) Early sanctuary-like structures are not aligned with this grid and neither is the succeeding first Temple to Aphrodite nor the Sebasteion, although religious proscriptions and the availability of land may have influenced the orientation of these latter structures (Raja 2012: 26-30). The North Agora, constructed contemporaneously with these other structures, however, is so aligned. These latter monuments were all constructed during the late Republican or early Imperial period. Gauis Julius Zoilos, a freed slave of Caesar and later Octavian, sponsored the construction of Temple to Aphrodite, North Agora, and stage of the Theater.

until the Augustan period (McDonald 1992). Some coins struck at this time bear the bust of Aphrodite on one side (indicating the composition of an identity tied to Aphrodite), with an eagle, representing Zeus, on the reverse. Coins struck after AD 4 refer only to the demos of Aphrodisias. During the Mithridates resistance to Rome from 88 to 63 BC, the cities of Asia Minor variously took sides, with Aphrodisias electing to support Rome. For this loyalty, Aphrodisias was rewarded and it reminded subsequent Emperors of its support of the Republic on a recurring basis. As the Roman civil war spilled into Asia Minor, Aphrodisias was one of several cities that was invaded and looted by Q. Labienus. The civic apparatus was operating well enough at this time that it was able to successfully recover looted property, with which Octavian (later Augustus) assisted (summary in Raja 2012:11-18). 60

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Distance (m) from Temple of Aphrodite

Late Republican/Early Imperial (25 BC to mid1st Century AD)

0-200

North Agora

200-400

Sebasteion Theater

Mid-1st to mid2nd Century AD

Mid-2nd to mid3rd Century AD Tetrapylon Sanctuary forecourt Bouleuterion

South Agora Hadrianic Baths Basilica Theater Baths Stadium

>400

Figure 2. Summary of Aphrodisias construction history (Raja 2012, Figures 5, 6, and 7; 26-49)

of Roman and modern construction, it is impossible to say how well that identity was expressed using architecture. These data suggest the construction of a sanctuary dedicated to an unknown Anatolian goddess even as early as the Archaic period with votive activity continuing through the Classic period. By late Hellenistic times, this goddess had assumed the form of the Greek goddess Aphrodite of war, and the city featured an apparently thriving cult site with a wide reputation. So well known was this sanctuary that Sulla and later Julius Caesar commissioned dedications here. The foundation for a Hellenistic-era sanctuary is found beneath the later monumental temple to Aphrodite, which was constructed on a different orientation during the early Imperial period. The monumental temple and later adjoining temple complex is positioned at the city center and seemingly at the major city crossroads. That Aphrodite was acknowledged by the Roman Imperial principles for aiding their efforts may have been the impetus for the city elites to align their city image with Aphrodite, emphasizing Aphrodite’s assistance to Sulla and Aphrodisias’ support of Rome during the Mithridatic Wars.

Another period of urban development occurred between about AD 50 to AD 150 with the monumental construction of the basilica and bath building in the South Agora and the stadium to the north of the town center (see Figure 2), During the Flavian Epoch, the city was outfitted with statuary and other monuments. In the mid2nd to mid-3rd century AD, the Bouleuterion (or council house) and forecourt of the Sanctuary of Aphrodite were constructed, as was the Tetrapylon, a monumental arch. A thick circuit wall enclosing the city was constructed in the 4th century AD. Ratté (2001) describes the construction history for late Antiquity Aphrodisias/Stauroúpolis. Identity The presence and form of community identity at Aphrodisias in Bronze and Iron Ages is the focus of Mac Sweeney’s (2011) recent analysis. She considers ceramics manifesting local and exotic motifs and forms, personal ornamentation, and small exposures of architecture from extremely limited excavations (three trenches, 260 sq meters in area on the acropolis mound) initially reported by Joukowsky (1986). With these admittedly limited data, Mac Sweeney argues for Aphrodisias community identity waxing and waning in response to distant and nearby external threats. She also recognizes, however, the possibly idiosyncratic aspect of community identity expression, with the post-Dark Age (i.e., after 900 BC) community at Aphrodisias showing tendencies to privilege family identity over community identity, perhaps owing to involvement of nearby Lydian elites. Mac Sweeney’s work is important because it reminds us that individuals and individual communities are free to pursue strategies that may or may not be successful over the long term. She is unable to speak to the role of architecture in community identity formation prior to Roman times, owing simply to the nature of the currently available evidentiary record.

A 2nd or 3rd century AD copy of a decree, likely originally dating to 30 to 20 BC, refers to the sanctuary of Aphrodite being located in the city of the Plarasans and Aphrodisians, with two distinct population centers but a conjoined political identity. As mentioned above, such references continue until around AD 4, when a coin refers only to the People of Aphrodisias (McDonald 1992), that is, during the early Imperial period. Coinage early in Imperial period may feature the Temple of Aphrodite along with the visages of Roman emperors; other references are made to the civic institutions, i.e., the council and the assembly (Yildirim 2004). In other words, the Temple of Aphrodite early on becomes part of the image of the city projected to the world. We emphasize this point further by considering which civic architecture was sponsored when. Known Roman era-benefactions compiled by Pont (2008) are summarized in Figure 3. Pont amasses information on a total of 62 benefactions many of which can be found in the digital archive of the Inscriptions of Aphrodisias (Reynolds et al. 2007). In some cases, one inscription

On the other hand, archaeological, architectural, epigraphic, numismatic, and textual evidence, woven together by Brody (2001, 2007) to discuss the emergence of the cult of Aphrodite at Aphrodisias, support a narrative of the self-conscious construction of city identity closely tied to the goddess Aphrodite during the late Hellenistic period. Again, owing to the heavy impact 61

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Figure 3. Frequency diagram of annualized benefactions for Roman Aphrodisias inscriptions compiled by Pont (2008). Benefactions were summed by epoch and this sum was divided by the total length of the epoch (which was 95 years, for the Julio-Claudian Epoch, for example). Monumental structures includes gates, porticos, and statuary. Approximately half of the benefactions listed for temple in the Julio-Claudian epoch were to help construct the Temple to Aphrodite, the remaining half supported the construction of the Sebasteion

may report multiple benefactions. If an inscription referred to a still unknown building, we did not consider it nor did we consider undated inscriptions, leaving us with 51 benefactions (Appendix). (The date of an inscription is assigned based on events or personages appearing in the inscription or on letter form.) While the pattern in Figure 3 may be biased by where excavations have occurred at Aphrodisias, it seems to show that temple sponsorship predominates early in the Imperial period, followed in time by sponsorship of various monumental structures (gateways, statues) and then baths. The primary nature of temple construction supports our contention that the city of Aphrodisias elected to use architecture to develop a unique material identity closely linked with Aphrodite.

Affinity and Acknowledgement A full treatment of the architectural forms known for Aphrodisias and how these do or do not express the affinity and acknowledgements of the Aphrodisians of the socio-geopolitical panoply of the Roman Mediterranean is beyond the scope of our expertise. We rely on recent and emerging scholarship that addresses this question. Focusing solely on the Sebasteion, a temple dedicated to Aphrodite, the Roman Emperors and the people of Aphrodisias, Smith (1987, 1988, 1990) describes and interprets the reliefs mounted here in terms of the interweaving of Roman and Greek visual language. This structure lies along a major north-south street that connected the theater and, later, the Tetrapylon. Construction began during the reign of Tiberius and was interrupted by destructive earthquakes in the 1st century AD. Construction continued under Claudius and was completed during the reign of Nero. The North Portico featured images from universalizing allegories, common in Hellenistic world, on the upper (3rd) story and representations of the conquered peoples of the empire on the 2nd story. The South Portico featured the emperor and gods on the upper story and particular Greek myths on the second.

Given the demic strife that consumed Anatolia during the Hellenistic era, we are not surprised that Aphrodisias (and Plarasa) possessed an identity and a functioning city apparatus at this time (Raja 2012, 18). It is not until Roman times, however, that this identity becomes substantially materialized in monumental constructions, seen elsewhere throughout the provinces in Anatolia (Mitchell 1993; Zuiderhoek 2009). Of course, it may be that the Roman era building program significantly destroyed a materialized identity from the earlier Hellenistic era. 62

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major civic architecture—the North Agora, the first marble temple to Aphrodite, portions of the theater—was installed in the center of the city, much of it sponsored by G. Julius Zoilos.

Building upon Smith (1987, 1988, 1990), Rubin (2008) and Thommen (2012) offer a close inspection of the architectural elements and sculptural reliefs reported for the Sebasteion. Thommen (2012, 84-85) emphasizes the use of Roman building forms in the construction of the Sebasteion and infers that this argues for the boule (council) and assembly of Aphrodisias consciously attempting to emulate Roman structures and sculpture. She (Thommen 2012, 84-85) cites: ‘[t]he axialsymmetrical plan appears to be modeled on imperial fora, most notably those created in Rome for Caesar and Augustus; both contain temples axially placed at the end of symmetrically flanking porticoes. Each portico contains superimposed columns, a different order signifying each story…’ She goes on to note that ‘the height of the porticoes, and their placement flanking a long processional or sanctuary way represents a distinct Aphrodisian architectural design …; this unique format of elements was not replicated in any other cities in the Greek East’ (p. 85). Rubin (2008) argues this form to be similar to the monuments constructed by the Persian king Darius the Great commonly found in this part of Anatolia.

Other monumental architecture followed with massive structures like the Sebasteion erected early in the Imperial period. And, all but the stadium is confined to an area 500 x 500 m in the city center (Figure 2). Clearly, the city is making a statement about itself in constructing massive civic structures in likely contested space in “downtown” Aphrodisias. That multiple individuals and also city institutions are involved in constructing this image is evident when the epigraphic record is considered. Figure 4 parses the inscription data from Pont (2008) further. We present here a summary of the frequency of inscriptions noted for particular structures and particular times. A large frequency indicates that multiple individuals or families were acknowledged for their benefactions. In the case of the Temple to Aphrodite, for example, multiple individuals each donated a column. Figure 4 supports the assertion that the Temple to Aphrodite and the Sebasteion, both constructed early in the Aphrodisias building program, had relatively extensive community support, as evidenced by sponsorship by several, likely elite, individuals and families. Similarly, construction and adornment of the Hadrianic bath was supported by multiple individuals over a span of several generations.

Thommen (2012) focuses on three sculptural relief panels found on the third story of the portico depicting Augustus, Claudius, and Nero. Her analysis considers the iconography, emperor personifications, and motifs in the narrative scenes of the reliefs, finding evidence for the co-mingling of Roman, Hellenistic and “eastern” elements, with unique Aphrodisian treatments of some of these. These were assembled, she argues, to be consistent with Roman propaganda and Aphrodisian acceptance of that propaganda, about Roman military superiority, the conquest of barbaric nations, peace, and unity. That the Sebasteion is constructed early in the Imperial period and sponsored by several presumably prominent Aphrodisian families, supports the notion that signaling affinity and acknowledgement was recognized as important.

Pont (2008) also compiles instances where “the city” sponsored particular building elements, such as the water system and the Temple of Aphrodite. In other words, this is a city that appears to have functioned well in the Imperial period. We could find no reference to Roman troops being garrisoned here to deal with problems nor correctors being brought in because the city was engaging in overly elaborate construction.

The rich materials from Aphrodisias would bear other close scrutiny. Other analysis could consider the how such reliefs might have been viewed by particular audiences as reviewed by Rapaport (2005) and Smith (2011).

Finally, the inscriptions sometimes refer to a structure or statue being refurbished after suffering damage during an earthquake. The Sebasteion at Aphrodisias suffered significant earthquake damage shortly after construction began and this was repaired within a generation of damage during the reigns of Claudius (AD 41-54) and Nero (AD 54-68) (Smith 1987, 1988). Information about earthquake damage and repair is undoubtedly incomplete and biased, but here we have a clear instance where the city and its prominent families could have elected to not continue the construction of the Sebasteion, but instead chose to. (Of course, had the Roman presence faltered under Claudius and Nero, other decisions might have been made!)

Effective Collective Action In the case of the Greek cities of Western Anatolia, if cities indeed were signaling their vitality and ability to mount significant collection action, then we expect to see civic structures situated so as to maximize their visibility from afar, at prominent crossroads, or featured prominently in intra-community contests. Following major earthquakes or other major assaults, civic monumental architecture should see early repairs, as the city attempts to demonstrate that it is still viable and worthy of reinvestment.

Conclusion In late Hellenistic and early provincial times, the Greek cities of Anatolia were outfitted with spectacular monumental civic architecture. Other scholars (e.g., Rizakis 2007; Veyne 1976; Zuiderhoek 2009) emphasize that at least some of this architecture is owed to the bene-

At Aphrodisias, Hellenistic-era constructions are still not well known given the heavy Roman overprint. It is clear that in the late Republican and early Imperial period, 63

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Figure 4. Frequency diagram of benefactions for Roman Aphrodisias compiled by Pont (2008) and broken out by inscription date (Roman Epoch) and building referenced. The Gymnasium with the asterisk may also be the Hadrianic baths, according to Pont (2008)

Sagalossos, to see if this pattern is supported. A difficulty with this line of inquiry is identifying the cities that failed; we have fewer excavations for such cities!

factions of individuals and focus on the actions of those individuals as representing the prosocial virtues so highly regarded in Greek urban society. Elsewhere, Wandsnider (2015) outlines an argument that this civic architecture represents a conjoined individual-group signal: individuals signaled their prosocial capabilities and dexterity; cities recruited individuals and material signals to present, on a recurring basis, a high quality group signal.

Mac Sweeney’s (2011) work on the idiosyncratic nature of community identity expressed at Aphrodisias prior to Antiquity highlights, however, that all urban centers may not have responded in the same fashion to similar prompts. Composed as they are of a range of individuals and families, with different prosocial tendencies and resources, the Greek cities of western Anatolia, with their rich historical, numismatic, epigraphic, and archaeological records, offer the perfect laboratory to research the differential successes of urban structures as early urbanites explored different modes of governance and reacted to geopolitical situations with different valences. Some individual-group arrangements failed and the unique contribution of archaeological inquiry is learning about past failures.

In this chapter, we have explored several potential goals of group signaling, arguing that monumental civic architecture allowed the city to materialize its unique identity (that is, its brand); to materially exhibit its commitment to the Roman world order and the community of Mediterranean cities; and, to materially demonstrate its ability to mount significant collective action. We offered expectations for the timing and location of monumental constructions, if indeed our ideas are supported. At least on the surface, such expectations seem to be met in the case of the medium-sized provincial city of Aphrodisias. Certainly, we know that the city of Aphrodisias survived and thrived, becoming an important city in the see of Roman Caria under the name of Stauropolis.

Acknowledgements Thank you to Kurt Springs for organizing a stimulating session at the 2012 Theoretical Archaeology Group meetings in at SUNY-Buffalo. Lauren Nelson was supported by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln UCARE program. Corbin Bogle helped with Figure 1,

Future research will consider some of the other wellexcavated cities of Anatolia, such as Priene and 64

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BURRELL, B. 2004. Neokoroi: Greek Cities and Roman Emperors. Vol. 9. Leiden, Brill Academic Publishing.

also with support from the University of NebraskaLincoln UCARE program.

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Appendix Inscriptions compiled by Pont (2008) for Roman Aphrodisias. Not all inscriptions were considered, as discussed in the text. Iaph 2007 refers to the digital archive of inscriptions from Aphrodisias (Reynolds et al. 2007). Pont Number

Building

Inscription Date

Emperor Reign

IAph 2007 or Other Reference

1

Temple of Aphrodite

End of the Republic Augustus

12.903

2

Temple of Aphrodite

End of the Republic Augustus

1.2

3

Theater

28 BC

Augustus

4

North Agora

end of 1st C. BC

Augustus

5

Temple of Aphrodite

after 2 BC

8

Portico of Tiberius

AD 14-29

Tiberius

4.4

Comment

8.1.i and 5 3.2 1.102

9

Gymnasium of Diogenes

AD 14-37?

Tiberius

12.1111

10

Temple of Aphrodite

AD 14-37?

Tiberius

1.7-8

11

Sebasteion

AD 14-37?

Tiberius

9.112

12a

Sebasteion

AD 14-37?

Tiberius

9.25

12b

Sebasteion

AD 41-54

Claudius

9.25

13

Sebasteion

AD 14-37?

Tiberius

Reynolds 1981, 318-319

14

Bath of Eusebes

AD 14-37?

Tiberius

5.6

15a

Sebasteion

AD 14-37?

Tiberius

9.1

15b

Sebasteion

AD 41-54

Claudius

9.1

16

Temple of Aphrodite

Julio-Claudian Epoch

JulioClaudian

1.4-6

17

Theater

AD 40-60

Claudius

8.82, 108, and 111-113

18

Theater

AD 40-60

Claudius

8.108

19

Bath

Flavian Epoch

Flavian

5.6

20

Water system

AD 81-96

Domitian

12.314

21

Public monuments

1st C AD

23

Statue to Cyclops

AD 102-116

Trajan

4.308

restoration

24

Statues

Trajan's reign

Trajan

13.116

restoration

53

Statue to Cyclops

under Trajan

Trajan

4.308

repaired after earthquake

25

Hadrianic Baths

AD 117-138

Hadrian

5.9, 12.1111

26

Hadrianic Baths

AD 117-138

Hadrian

5.207-208

56

Gymnasium of the Neoi

AD 117-138

Hadrian

1.174

27

Hadrianic Baths

AD 131-138

Hadrian

5.5

55

Hadrianic Baths

AD 131-138

Hadrian

5.5

54

water system

Before AD 125

restoration after earthquake

restoration after earthquake

12.205

11.412 Antoninus Pius

28

Theater

AD 138-161

8.85.1

29

Varous public monuments

Before AD 150

30

Santuary of Aphrodite

AD 125-160

31

Public monuments

AD 125-160

Flavian

12.1111

32

Theater

AD 125-160

Flavian

12.1111

33

Avenue

AD 125-160

Flavian

12.1111

34

Gymnasium (possibly also the Bath of Hadrian)

AD 125-160

Flavian

12.1111

35

Hadrianic Baths

2nd C. AD

14.18 Flavian

12.1111

5.2

68

LA. WANDSNIDER AND L. NELSON: MONUMENTAL CIVIC ARCHITECTURE SIGNALS GROUP IDENTITY, AFFILIATION...

Pont Number

Building

Inscription Date

35'

Hadrianic Baths

2nd C. AD

5.3

36

Hadrianic Baths

2nd C. AD

5.205

37

Hadrianic Baths

2nd C. AD

5.201

38

Hadrianic Baths

2nd C. AD

5.206

39

Hadrianic Baths

2nd C. AD

5.108-109

40

Sanctuary of Aphrodite

2nd C. AD

12.26

58

Sanctuary of Aphrodite

2nd C. AD

12.914

40'

Sebasteion

2nd C. AD

12.318

41

Archeion

2nd C. AD

12.1006 and 1014

42

North Agora Gate

2nd C. AD

De Chaisemartin and Lemaire 1996, 158

Emperor Reign

IAph 2007 or Other Reference

48

Theater

AD 211-217

Macrinus

8.115

49

Portico of Tiberius

Severan Epoch

Severan

4.1

69

Comment

restoration after earthquake

THE TRANSFORMATION OF SACRED LANDSCAPES: APPROACHING THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE EASTERN ALPINE-ADRIATIC REGION DURING THE FIRST MILLENNIUM AD K. Patrick FAZIOLI Interdisciplinary Studies, Medaille College, 18 Agassiz Circle, Buffalo, NY 14214, USA [email protected]

Abstract: This chapter investigates the transformation of sacred landscapes from the Late Roman Empire to the Early Middle Ages in the eastern Alpine-Adriatic region (c. AD 300-1000). While the shifting religious topography of this period has traditionally been seen through the totalizing lens of ‘Christianization’, recent scholarship has highlighted a range of methodological and conceptual limitations with this concept. Most critically, the mechanism that allowed Christianity to rapidly disseminate among the broader population remains under-theorized. This chapter identifies the syncretic blending of Christian and non-Christian beliefs and practices as an underappreciated factor in facilitating the spread of Christianity across Europe and the Mediterranean world in the first millennium AD. Support for this hypothesis is drawn from a range of historical and archaeological data that reveals the complex manner in which Christians appropriated Late Roman and Early Medieval sacred places, landscapes, and objects (spolia). Finally, evidence for the persistence of authentic pagan beliefs and rituals after the rise of Christianity in the late ancient, medieval, and modern eastern Alpine region is critically considered. Keywords: Late Roman Empire, Late Antiquity, Early Middle Ages, landscape, religion, Christianity, Alps

methodological and theoretical problems with the concept of ‘Christianization’. It then outlines an alternative model for the spread of Christianity building on historical scholarship that highlights the diverse ways in which Christianity re-appropriated various elements of ‘pagan’1 beliefs and practices. The second half of the paper presents an array of archaeological and textual evidence for the syncretic blending of Christian and non-Christian objects, places, and landscapes in the eastern AlpineAdriatic region. Finally, I consider the possibility of the persistence of pagan practices in the eastern Alps into the medieval, modern, and even contemporary world.

Introduction The contributions to this volume investigate the myriad ways in which identity, memory, and power are written in the landscape. This chapter explores these processes within the context of sacred landscapes — those parts of the built and natural environment that ‘connect the individual with the cosmic frame that gives life and meaning’ (Crumley 1999, 270). Specifically, I consider the spread of Christianity across the eastern AlpineAdriatic region (today encompassing Slovenia, southern Austria, northeast Italy, and northwest Croatia) in the first millennium AD (Figure 1). This region experienced two distinct waves of ‘Christianization’, first during the Late Roman Empire (late 4th and 5th centuries AD) and again in the Early Middle Ages (8th through 10th centuries AD). Despite initial pockets of resistance and local fidelity to pre-Christian cosmologies, this new faith ultimately won the ‘heart and minds’ of the broader population during each of these periods. While historians of Christianity have offered a myriad of possible reasons for this remarkable success, this chapter builds specifically upon recent historical and archaeological work that focuses on Christianity’s ability to absorb and co-opt various aspects of non-Christian religious ideas, practices, artifacts, places, and landscapes into its own ideological framework. I seek to show how the appropriation and transformation of sacred landscapes provides a fruitful avenue for building a more theoretically robust approach to one of the most significant long-term processes in European history.

The Traditional Historical Framework Late Roman and Late Antique Period The 4th century was a critical turning point in the history of Christianity. In less than one hundred years, this small, often marginalized sect would become the official, and only legal, religion of the Roman Empire. This transformation began when the emperor Constantine I chose to embrace the Christian movement after crediting their God with his victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge in AD 312. The following year Constantine and eastern emperor Licinius issued the ‘Edict of Milan’, which officially ended the persecution of Christianity by granting toleration to all the empire’s religions. Even more significantly, Constantine’s conversion to Christianity would establish a precedent followed by all subsequent Roman emperors, with the exception of Julian ‘the Apostate’, who ruled only briefly from AD 361-63.

The chapter begins with a brief sketch of the history of the eastern Alpine-Adriatic region during the first millennium AD, before turning to some of the limitations of this ‘traditional’ narrative, as well as the broader

1 While I acknowledge the derogatory origins of the word ‘pagan’ (Dowden 2000, 3), it is employed here as a useful umbrella term for the various European and Mediterranean traditional polytheistic religions that Christianity encountered during the first millennium AD.

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Figure 1. Map of the eastern Alpine-Adriatic region with selected sites mentioned in text (generated at Google Maps) disintegrated into a patchwork of ‘barbarian’ kingdoms, due to a fatal combination of prolonged civil strife and external politico-military pressures. The following centuries were marked by prolonged periods of political, social, and economic instability across much of the European and Mediterranean worlds (Halsall 2007). In the eastern Alpine-Adriatic region, the once prosperous and densely populated lowlands were widely abandoned in the fifth century. In the subsequent period, often termed Late Antiquity (c. AD 450-600), the remaining local communities fled to more easily defensible locations in the uplands or along the coast, where they struggled to maintain a ‘Roman’ and Christian way of life (Ciglenečki 1999a).

By the late 4th century, Christian emperors such as Theodosius I had begun to adopt increasingly exclusivist religious policies designed to eradicate traditional Roman polytheism. Traditional ‘pagan’ rituals and institutions were incrementally outlawed, public temples allowed to fall into disrepair, and even the Altar of Victory was removed from the Senate, an act that dramatically symbolized a new religious orientation for the empire (Fletcher 1997, 38). Over the next half century the religious geography of the entire Roman Empire would be radically transformed (Caseau 1999). In the eastern Alpine-Adriatic region — at that time divided among imperial provinces of Noricum, Italia, and Pannonia — changes in the sacred landscape are evident in the widespread abandonment of pagan temples and appearance of Christian material culture and architecture (Bratož 1989; Ladstätter 2000).

The Early Middle Ages Greater stability returned to the region in the late 6th century, when Slavic-speaking groups, under the auspices of the Avar Empire, immigrated into this region from the east, eventually settling in the river valleys (Guštin 2002). While the nature of the relationship between these new

Yet, as Christianity rose to social and political prominence, the Roman Empire was beginning to crumble. Less than a century after Christianity became the state religion, the western half of the empire 72

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sources, the profound asymmetry in the written record has subtly encouraged generations of historians to adopt the ‘polemics of the victor’ (MacMullen 1997, 2). This makes it difficult not only to reconstruct European paganism in any detail, but also to understand how these communities perceived this new ideology and what factors contributed to their eventual conversion.

settlers and the ‘indigenous’ Romanized population is shrouded in mystery (Milavec 2009), most upland fortified settlements were abandoned (or, in some cases, destroyed) during the 7th century. Over the next century, this region of Slavic-speaking, non-Christian communities — described in historical sources as ‘Carantania’ — enjoyed some degree of political autonomy, despite being precariously perched between expanding Germanic influence in the west and the powerful Avar and Byzantine empires to the east (Bratož and Kahl 2000). In the mid-8th century, the local Slavic aristocracy was forced to trade this independence for protection from a renewed Avar threat, which eventually brought this region under the political control of Bavarian dukes (Kuhar 1959). Political submission was accompanied by missionary activity from the Archbishopric of Salzburg (Wolfram 1979). Early efforts at Christianization were met with fierce resistance from the local population, who probably identified them as agents of imperial control. However, after the initial opposition was crushed by Duke Tassilo in AD 772, subsequent efforts at Christianization in the 9th and 10th centuries proved much more effective. While the burning of St Maximilian’s church in Bischofshofen (Austria) suggests a continued resistance into this period (Posch 1991), the general population eventually followed the Slavic nobility in embracing the Christian faith (Kuhar 1959; Karpf 2003).

In recent decades, archaeological research has proven an important complement to the textual sources for our understanding of the spread of Christianity in the first millennium AD, arguably providing a more balanced picture of the topography of religious belief during this enigmatic period (Carver 2003; Petts 2007). However, as archaeologists are often the first to admit, the material record — particularly as it relates to questions of religion and belief — comes with its own set of ambiguities and limitations (Hawkes 1954). Take, for example, the identification of burials as ‘Christian’ or ‘pagan’. While a variety of elements have traditionally been used to identify religious affiliation (inhumation vs. cremation, presence and type of grave goods, burial orientation, etc.), it is increasingly clear that these characteristics are just as often the product of sociopolitical variables other than religious identity (Young 1999). Moreover, in many instances religious belief and ritual practice leave no discernible material traces. The question of whether any early medieval non-Christian cultic structures have been identified in east-central Europe remains a contentious issue (Macháček and Pleterski 2000; cf. Curta 2008, 162).

Challenges to Investigating Religious Change While this ‘standard’ historical narrative for the rise of Christianity during the first millennium AD is surely accurate in broad scope, there is a growing sense among scholars that it remains incomplete. This is due not only to the inherent limitations of the textual and material evidence, but also more fundamental conceptual problems with using ‘Christianization’ as the sole lens through which to consider religious change in the Late Antique and Early Medieval worlds.

Conceptual Challenges The fragmentary nature of the textual and material evidence is not the only reason for our limited understanding of the transformation of sacred landscapes during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. A number of theoretical problems with the concept of ‘Christianization’ must also be recognized. For example, not enough intellectual attention has been given to the mechanism by which Christianity spread in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, since rarely does the textual or material record provide insight into the intensely personal process of conversion. Many traditional church historians have credited the inherent appeal of the Christian message, or the zeal of early proselytizers, to the success of early Christianity. More recently, ‘secular’ scholars have primarily understood its rapid spread as a byproduct of the realpolitik decisions of sociopolitical elite. In other words, once the emperor, king, or nobility decided to adopt Christianity (for politically expedient reasons, of course!), the subsequent conversion of the ‘masses’ is generally regarded as a fait accompli. The assumption of a ‘trickle-down’ effect (Petts 2007, 23) in the spread of Christianity is not only vague and poorly theorized, but it is guilty of reducing religious belief to other factors (e.g. social, political, military). In other words, as William Kilbride has observed:

Methodological Challenges Although written documents represent an indispensable source for understanding processes of religious change in the Late Antique and Early Medieval worlds, we must recognize that they disproportionately provide only one side of a complicated story. This is because the vast majority texts defending or promoting traditional polytheism during the Later Roman Empire were deliberately and systematically destroyed by zealous Christians. Reliable textual evidence of early medieval ‘paganism’ is even more limited, since our primary source for non-Christian beliefs and rituals comes from church documents with little interest in offering impartial descriptions of these practices (Dowden 2000). In the eastern Alps, almost all of our historical knowledge for early medieval religious activity comes from the Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum (‘Conversion of the Bavarians and Carantanians’), a document written in the 780s at the Archbishopric of Salzburg. Although scholars are certainly aware of the inherent bias in these

If Christianity was only ever a veneer, then the lack of mechanisms for its replication and dissemination present us with little real problem. If, however 73

LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY: ARCHAEOLOGY AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

traditions, and familiar ideas (Halbwachs 1992, 86, emphasis added).

unfashionably, we think that at some point at least someone in Europe might have been Christian, or that someone might have made that claim, then we are supposed to believe that the mechanisms that performed this stunt existed entirely outwith the religious frame (Kilbride 2000, 12).

This passage explains how social change must always be framed within a group’s perceptions of the past — what Halbwachs famously referred to as the ‘collective memory’. These insights suggest that the rise of Christianity in the first millennium AD must be understood within the wider context of the non-Christian cultures and religions in which it was introduced. We must therefore consider how Christianity was able to take hold within pagan societies, becoming firmly rooted in day-to-day habits and experiences, by acknowledging the ‘totality of remembrances, traditions, and familiar ideas’ among the broader population.

Although we can reasonably posit that some conversions were spurred by genuine spiritual epiphanies, while others were simply pragmatic decisions to facilitate social advancement or avoid persecution, this rather obvious fact does not get us very far. Rather, a complementary ‘bottom-up’ approach to Christianization is needed — one that focuses less on which particular kings decided to convert, and more on reasons why this new religious orientation was able to so rapidly diffuse throughout the Roman, Germanic, Celtic, and Slavic worlds. In order to do this, we need to reject the notion that Christianization was a wholesale change from one distinct, homogeneous, and unchanging cosmology to another, and reconceptualize it as a syncretic blending of old and new beliefs (Kilbride 2000, 8). While church leadership often perceived a struggle between two incompatible worldviews, in practice, the divisions between ‘Christianity’ and ‘paganism’ were far more blurred, particularly outside of the educated elite (Delumeau 1971; Schmitt 1983). We should also remember, as Pluskowski and Patrick (2003) have pointed out, there was never one authentic or ‘pure’ Christianity, but always multiple, fluid, and heterogeneous Christianities. How these Christianities emerged within the socio-religious framework of the Late Antique and Early Medieval world is the focus of the remainder of this chapter.

In recent decades, a growing number of historians have taken up this line of inquiry by exploring the myriad ways in which Christianity absorbed, borrowed, and transformed elements of traditional Roman culture and religion into its own metaphysical framework. Roman historian Ramsay MacMullen (1997, 154) has argued that this strategy of appropriation allowed Christianity to evolve into a ‘full service religion’ that could effectively attend to the basic psychological and emotional needs of its adherents. The writings of early bishops reveal that many newly-converted Christians in the Late Roman Empire were skeptical that an all-powerful God would be concerned with the minutiae of their everyday lives. So while pagans could call upon a range of supernatural intercessors to help with daily challenges, Christians had not yet developed their own ‘special language of gestures and symbols in which to express their feelings or their wishes to, or regarding, the divine’ (ibid, 150). Simply put, who could Christians call upon if a family member fell ill, or to ask for a bountiful harvest, or to petition during personal crises? Similar concerns would be expressed as Christianity encountered the indigenous polytheistic religions of the Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic worlds (Russell 1994; Walter 2006).

Christianization, Syncretism, and becoming a ‘Full Service Religion’ How might we explain the rapid dissemination of Christianity among the broader populations of the Late Roman and Early Medieval world beyond the ‘intrinsic appeal’ of its message, or simply as a ‘trickle down’ from elite conversions? One potentially fruitful alternative was articulated nearly a century ago by the eminent French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs:

This psychological desire for divine intermediaries would be met by the Christian cult that developed around the saints and angels (Brown 1981), where, in many cases, the shift from pagan to Christian patrons entailed little more than a change in name. For example, in the early medieval southeastern Alps, the qualities and characteristics of the three most important Slavic gods (Veles, Mokoš, and Perun) were simply transferred onto St Stephen, the Virgin Mary, and St George, respectively (Štular and Hrovatin 2002, 47). Philippe Walter (2006, 183) has argued that in the Celtic world, ‘medieval hagiography was the machine used for Christianizing the old European myths…hagiographic legends or the passions of the martyrs are often nothing but potpourris of features borrowed from folk tradition’ (cf. Kravanja 2006, 54). Alongside the cult of the dead, Christianity also appropriated the pagan calendar, placing liturgical holidays (e.g. Christmas, Carnival, and Easter) on the dates of pagan festivals (Walter 2006). In ritual contexts, the use of altars, bell-ringing, offerings of incense and candlelight, as well as the apotropaic power of placing

Above all when a society transforms its religion, it advances somewhat into unknown territory…Society is aware that the new religion is not an absolute beginning. The society wishes to adopt these larger and deeper beliefs without entirely rupturing the framework of notions in which it has matured up until this point. That is why at the same time that the society projects into its past conceptions were recently elaborated, it is also intent on incorporating into the new religion elements of old cults that are assimilable into a new framework. Society must persuade its members that they already carry these beliefs within themselves at least partially, or even that they will recover beliefs which had been rejected some time ago…Even at the moment that it is evolving, society returns to its past. It enframes the new elements that it pushes to the forefront in a totality of remembrances, 74

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hearts and be more ready to come to the places they are familiar with, but now recognizing and worshipping the one true God (quoted in Howe 1997, 67).

crosses in doorways and the singing of psalms were all borrowed from extant pagan traditions (MacMullen 1997, 103-49). Valerie Flints (1991) makes a similar point in her seminal study of magic in early medieval Europe, revealing how the practice of astrology, belief in the agency of angels and demons, and the mystical ‘power of the cross’ must be understood as an extension of magical thinking already prevalent in the non-Christian worldview of the population.

Although the direct transformation of pagan temples into Christian churches was relatively rare, for both practical and ideological reasons (Ward-Perkins 2003; Bayliss 2004), more common was the Christian ‘re-branding’ of pagan sacred places, particularly those associated with nature (Grinsell 1986; Davies and Robb 2002). For example, in his In Gloria Confessorum, Gregory of Tours (AD 538-94) provides an account of a sacred lake on Mount Helarius (France) that the local population would frequently visit to give offerings or animal sacrifices. After preaching against such practices proved ineffective, the local bishop decided to build a chapel to St Hilarius next to the lake, encouraging the local people to use the saint, rather than water god, as their protector and intercessor (Flint 1991, 255). A similar story is found in the village of Divača (Slovenia), where local women having difficulty conceiving would pray for help to the god Triglav at a nearby rock shelter. In response, the church built nearby a chapel to St Francis of Paula, a saint who also assisted with such troubles (Čok 2012, 174). Moreover, the fact that over one-third of all active Christian pilgrimage sites in contemporary Europe are associated with natural places (trees, grottos, streams, and stones) indicates the widespread nature of this practice (Nolan 1986).

Documents from early church councils reveal that the ecclesiastical leadership was generally aware of, and often concerned with, the Christian borrowing of pagan beliefs, practices, and mythology (Grinsell 1986; Flint 1991). Yet local bishops were forced to walk a tight line between the enforcement of Christian orthodoxy and making their religion comprehensible and appealing to the populace. This made compromises often a matter of necessity. As Walter (2006, 184) has observed: ‘Christianity would have had no chance of imposing itself in the West if, on certain points of dogma and rites, it had not responded to the religious needs of the converted pagans.’ James Russell (1994, 211) has likewise argued that the spread of Christianity into the Germanic world required a deliberate obscuring of the inherent ideological disparities between Christian and Germanic worldviews in order to expedite the spread of the faith. While church authorities often justified this accommodation by assuming that more rigorous ethical and dogmatic training would follow the initial wave of conversion, this rarely occurred.

There is also growing archaeological evidence for the Christian appropriation of pagan sacred spaces. At the site of Gradina Zecovi near Prijedor in northern Bosnia, an early Christian church was built in the fifth century only a few meters away from where excavations uncovered evidence of a taurobolium ritual, a widespread cultic practice in the ancient Mediterranean that involved the bloody sacrifice of a bull to the ‘Great Mother Goddess’ (Ciglenečki 1999b, 25; cf. Duthoy 1969). Similarly, recent excavations at the hilltop settlement of Tonovcov grad in western Slovenia have uncovered traces of a Late Iron Age cult site situated directly beneath a large Late Antique ecclesiastical complex. The presence of fibula fragments, bronze rings, glass beads, military artifacts, and an offering plate — taken with the absence of ceramics — is typical for ritual sites in this region (Božič 2011, 267-69; Milavec 2012, 478). While no structural remains of a sanctuary have yet been uncovered, they may have been destroyed in the construction of the Late Antique churches, or may simply have left a very faint archaeological footprint (Figure 2).

Christian Appropriation of Sacred Landscapes: Historical and Archaeological Evidence Appropriating Sacred Pagan Places One key strategy for inserting Christianity within the established cosmological framework of European paganism was the appropriation of sacred spaces. The religious topography of pre-Christian Europe was filled with such numinous places; mountains, caves, streams, lakes, trees, and stones were often seen as potential conduits for contact with the preternatural world (Dowden 2000). This sacred geography was deeply embedded in people’s cognitive maps and daily routines — an indispensable component of their spiritual habitus. While such traditions and customs would not be easily forgotten or abandoned, they could be subtly redirected (Grinsell 1986, 27). Although some Christians favored the complete abandonment of pagan spaces, which they viewed as demonic or ritually polluted, many bishops adopted a more pragmatic approach. One of the most famous examples of this attitude comes from a letter sent from Pope Gregory I to the Abbot Milletus of London in AD 601, in which the pope encourages the conversion of pagan temples into Christian sanctuaries with the hope ‘that they should be changed from the worship of devils to the service of the true God.’

A third example for the Christian appropriation of sacred places is evident at the site of the Hemmaberg in southern Austria, which was the largest and most important Christian ecclesiastical complex in the Late Antique and Early Medieval eastern Alpine region. The discovery of a dedicatory inscription (Weihinschrift) in one of the churches, combined by local toponymic evidence, strongly suggests that a sanctuary to the Celtic god Iovenat was previously located at this hilltop site (Glaser 1982, 12). A local grotto with natural springs below the

When this people (sic) see that their shrines are not destroyed they will be able to banish error from their 75

LANDSCAPE AND IDENTITY: ARCHAEOLOGY AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Figure 2. Iron Age artifacts from structure 1 at Tonovcov grad, drawn by D. Knific Lunder. 1 – bronze; 2 – glass; 3-5 iron; 6 – gilded bronze (after Milavec 2012, 479) who argues that the Early Medieval landscape was organized around the pre-Christian ideology of tročan, which connects the three basic forces of nature with symbolic points in the landscape: (1) fire, oriented towards the ‘high place’ of the thunder god Perun, (2) earth, represented by Veles, god of the underworld, and (3) water, embodied by the goddess Mokoš (see also Čok 2012). Pleterski contends that important sacred places in the landscape (graveyards, shrines, churches, placenames, etc.) associated with these forces are each aligned along a 23° angle, which reflects the angle of the sun from due east and west at the solstices (at midwinter solstice, it is 23° south of east/west, and at midsummer solstice it is 23° north of east/west) (Figure 5). While the names of these places were often switched from pagan gods to saints after Christianization, the basic pattern and structure of the landscape remained largely intact (cf. Kravanja 2006, 54).

site, today dedicated to St Rosalia, provides another example of the transformation of an old pagan sacred place into a Christian shrine, like those described above (Ladstätter 2001). Appropriating Sacred Pagan Landscapes The Christian appropriation of pagan sacred geography in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages occurred not only at individual sites, but often across entire landscapes. Archaeologists have explored the impact of Christianity on landscapes in early medieval Scandinavia (Fabech 1999; Andrén 2013), England (Turner 2006; Foster 2008), and Spain (Oubiña et al. 1998), but the most dramatic example comes from the Alpine region of Churraetia, today in eastern Switzerland. Drawing on an array of archaeological research, Randon Jerris (2002) has argued that not only were Christian churches placed on top of pagan ritual sites, but they were also built on astronomically significant places in the landscape. By examining the location of Early Medieval churches on Alpine ‘sun-terraces’ across the region, Jerris was able to demonstrate their alignment with important solar events — such as N55°E and S56°E — marking the precise location of the sunrise on the summer and winter solstices, respectively (Jerris 2002, 94). Jerris further hypothesizes that these churches were all built on top of prehistoric astronomical markers, such as menhirs or megaliths, which organized the pre-Christian agricultural and ritual calendar.

Some scholars have been wary of this line of research, and particularly skeptical about the validity of folkloric and philological data for reconstructing Early Medieval religious landscapes (e.g. Curta 2008). While the synthesis of historical, archaeological, and ethnographic datasets has the potential to provide a powerful interdisciplinary model for investigation past landscapes, one cannot afford to ignore the different nature of these categories of evidence. As Pluskowski and Patrick (2003, 43) have warned, projecting folklore back onto the distant past ‘is dangerous because it may reflect potential reinventions within the framework of the Christian paradigm.’

Farther east in the Alps, a similar line of interdisciplinary research has been undertaken by Andrej Pleterski (1996), 76

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Appropriating Sacred Pagan Objects A final means by which the early church capitalized on the extant ‘power’ of pre-Christian religions was through the incorporation of pagan objects into their physical structures. While the reuse of old materials (spolia) in new architectural constructions was a common practice during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Esch 2011), most known examples were used for political purposes. For example, the emperors Constantine, Theodoric, and Charlemagne all sought out spolia for their monumental construction projects, probably as a way to legitimize their political authority by emphasizing continuity with the past (Brenk 1987). Although less well studied, religious spolia — such as stone blocks featuring inscriptions or images of pagan gods — have been found in Late Antique and Early Medieval churches across Europe. Examples from the eastern Alps include the aforementioned Hemmaberg, where the name of the pagan god Iovenat is preserved on an altar discovered in the Late Antique church (Šašel Kos 1999, 41). Similarly, at the Late Antique site of Rifnik in eastern Slovenia, two stone pillars with inscriptions to the local water divinity Aquo were reused in the construction of an early fifth century church (Bolta 1981; Šašel Kos 2008; Figure 3). A third example in this region comes from the Late Antique ecclesiastical complex at Kučar in southeastern Slovenia, where excavations have uncovered a smashed altar dedicated to Jupiter, which had been reused for one of the smaller podiums in the lower church (Dular et al., 1995, 137; Figure 4). This latter case has striking parallels with an example from Fontaine-Valmont in Hainault (Belgium), where a ‘Jupiter-Giant’ column was found supporting a chapel dedicated to St Wido (Dierkins 1998, 42; Faider-Feytmans 1978). It should be noted that the reuse of spolia in churches does not necessarily indicate that they were built directly over pagan sanctuaries. The Aquo pillars at Rifnik, for example, probably originally stood at a shrine alongside a nearby stream (Šašel Kos 2008, 282).

Figure 3. Column dedicated to Aquo from Rifnik (after Šašel Kos 2008, 283)

While the propagandistic value of using spolia in political monuments is obvious, why would Christians have deliberately incorporated pagan imagery and inscriptions into their houses of worship? Although it is possible that spolia were simply sought out as high quality building materials, some scholars have argued this practice had more ideologically significant purposes. Incorporating such pagan objects into newly constructed churches may have been an attempt to assign them a new meaning, thereby neutralizing their magical powers (Esch 2011, 26; Camille 1989, 74). Perhaps it represented a ‘symbolic conquest’ over paganism and a ‘conscious statement of the victory of the new religion’ (Schnapp 1997, 88; Dierkins 1998, 42). There is also some evidence that such objects were thought to have the ability to ward off evil spirits (Camille 1992). Whatever the reasons, this practice continued throughout the Middle Ages, and was even brought to the New World by Spanish missionaries, who incorporated the broken remains of pre-Hispanic god idols into Catholic churches across Mesoamerica, under the explicit instructions of Holy Roman Emperor Carlos V (Hamann 2008, 813).

Figure 4. Smashed Jupiter altar from Kučar (after Dular 1995, 137) 77

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Figure 5. Orientation of early medieval sites in Bled region, Slovenia (after Pleterski 1996, 172)

cannot assume that this meant the complete disappearance of pagan practices across the empire (Caseau 2004, 137). Indeed, as adherents to traditional Roman polytheism became increasingly socially marginalized in the urban centers, paganism enjoyed a short-lived revival in the countryside. Worship at nature shrines particularly experienced a temporary renewal, as they constituted the last refuge for pagan piety (Lavan 2011). There is some tantalizing archaeological evidence in the eastern Alpine-Adriatic region for the continued practice of paganism after the Edict of Thessalonica (AD 380) made Nicene Christianity the only legal religion of the empire. The temple to Mars-Latobius at the site of St Margarethen in Laventtal in Carinthia (Austria) continued to be actively used at least until the end of the fourth century, as evidenced by a coin issued during the reign of Arcadius (AD 395-408) (Ladstätter 2000, 222-3). The temple of Isis-Noreia on the nearby Ulrichsberg was not destroyed until the end of the fifth century (Alföldy 1974, 211). Yet, the most interesting case for the persistence of pagan practices comes from the small hilltop settlement of Tinje in Loka pri Žusmu in eastern Slovenia, which

Persistence of Pagan Practices? Looming over the discussion of the Christian appropriation of pagan sacred landscapes is the question concerning the persistence of actual pagan beliefs and practices. It is important to recognize the distinction between the incorporation of pagan rituals and motifs within an explicitly Christian framework extensively explored above, and the continued practice of consciously non-Christian systems of belief. For example, while there are numerous cases of festivals and traditions in the Alpine region that almost certainly have their historical roots in pre-Christian rituals (Kuret 1984; Ciglenečki 1999b; Jerris 2002, 97), this does not mean that the participants in these festivities actively subscribe to a pagan cosmology. I would like to briefly conclude this chapter by considering whether pagan belief systems endured in secret after the advent of Christianity, and, if so, for how long. While institutional paganism had all but collapsed in the Roman Empire by the end of the fourth century, we 78

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was occupied from the late fourth through end of the sixth century. What appear to be the remains of a small stone structure were uncovered at the edge of this site. The associated burned animal bones and coin minted during the reign of Valentinius I (AD 367-75) suggest that this may have been used as a pagan sacrificial altar (Ciglenečki 2000, 43). Even more interesting is that this altar is located in close proximity to a contemporaneous children’s graveyard with Christian iconography on the sarcophagi. While we cannot prove the contemporaneity of these two religious traditions, it provides an intriguing possibility for peaceful coexistence or syncretism.

ALMOND, P. 2000. Druids, Patriarchs, and the Primordial Religion. Journal of Contemporary Religion 15, 379393. ANDRÉN, A. 2013. The significance of places: the Christianization of Scandinavia from a spatial point of view. World Archaeology 45, 27-45. BAYLISS, R. 2004. Provincial Cilicia and the archaeology of temple conversion. Oxford, England, BAR Publishing. BOLTA, L. 1981. Rifnik pri Šentjurju. Poznoantična naselbina in grobišče. Ljubljana, Narodni muzej v Ljubljani. BOŽIČ, D. 2011. Prazgodovinske najdbe s Tonovcovega gradu in železnodobna kultna mesta v Posočju (Prehistoric finds from Tonovcov grad and iron age cult places in the Posočje area). In Z. Modrijan and T. Milavec (eds.), Poznoantična utrjena naselbina Tonovcov grad pri Kobaridu : najdbe, 239-78. Ljubljana, Inštitut za arheologijo ZRC SAZU: Založba ZRC. BRATOŽ, R. 1989. The Development of the Early Christian Research in Slovenia and Istria between 1976 and 1986. In N. Duval, F. Baritel and P. Pergola (eds.), Actes du XIe Congrès international d'archéologie chrétienne, 2345-88. Lyon, Vienne, Grenoble, Genève et Aoste, Ecole française de Rome.

While direct material evidence for pagan practices disappears as we move into the Middle Ages, written sources occasionally allow us to infer the continuation of such beliefs. For example, Early Medieval church councils at Arles (AD 443-52), Tours (AD 567), and Toledo (AD 681) explicitly condemned the worship of springs, wells, stones, or other natural phenomena (Šašel Kos 1999, 23). These prohibitions would only have been necessary if such practices continued among the peasant population. Even as late as the fourteenth century, the bishop at Cividale (Italy) organized a crusade against the inhabitants of the town of Kobarid because they allegedly continued to worship a holy tree and natural spring (Milavec 2012, 484). Of course, it is important to carefully weigh the credibility of accusations of pagan belief, which could be merely false pretenses to malign political enemies or an excuse to suppress a peasant uprising. Nevertheless, it is entirely plausible that small pockets of non-Christian belief could have existed outside the reach of church authorities, particularly in the remote villages of the Alps, which are well-known for maintaining traditional religious beliefs (Guillet et al., 1983). A recent ethnography by Boris Čok (2012) has claimed that non-Christian rituals continued to be covertly practiced in southwest Slovenia well into the nineteenth century! Even more controversially, he has argued that these so-called ‘Old Faith’ traditions were in fact authentic descendants of Early Medieval Slavic paganism, and not simply neo-pagan re-imaginings, such as Neo-Druidism or Wicca, which gained popularity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Almond 2000). While further research is necessary to confirm these provocative conclusions, there is no doubt that pre-Christian religions left a powerful, long-lasting imprint on the European landscape that is still discernible today.

BRATOŽ, R. and KAHL, H.-D. (ed.) 2000. Slovenija in sosednje dezele med antiko in karolinsko dobo: zacetki slovenske etnogeneze = Slowenien und die Nachbarländer zwischen Antike und karolingischer Epoche: Anfänge der slowenischen Ethnogeneseslovenske etnogeneze. Ljubljana, Slovenia, Narodni muzej Slovenije. BRENK, B. 1987. Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne: aesthetics versus ideology. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41, 103-9. BROWN, P. 1981. The cult of the saints: its rise and function in Latin Christianity. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. CAMILLE, M. 1989. The Gothic idol: ideology and imagemaking in medieval art. Cambridge, MA, Cambridge University Press. CAMILLE, M. 1992. Image on the edge: the margins of medieval art. Cambridge, Harvard University Press. CARVER, M. O. H. (ed.) 2003. The cross goes north: processes of conversion in northern Europe, AD 3001300. Rochester, NY, Boydell & Brewer. CASEAU, B. 1999. Sacred Landscapes. In G. W. Bowersock, P. Brown and O. Grabar (eds.), Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, 21-59. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. CASEAU, B. 2004. The fate of rural temples in Late Antiquity and the Christianisation of the countryside. In W. Bowden, L. Lavan and C. Machado (eds.), Recent Research on the Late Antique Countryside, 105-44. Leiden, Brill. CIGLENEČKI, S. 1999a. Results and Problems in the Archaeology of the Late Antiquity in Slovenia. Arheološki vestnik 50, 287-309.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to Benjamin Štular and Tina Milavec for providing very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank Rachel Fazioli for her careful editing eye and Kurt Springs for the opportunity to contribute to this volume. All errors and omissions remain the sole responsibility of the author. Bibliography ALFÖLDY, G. 1974. Noricum. London, Routledge. 79

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GREENWASHED: IDENTITY AND LANDSCAPE AT THE CALIFORNIA MISSIONS Elizabeth KRYDER-REID Indiana University, Indianapolis (IUPUI), 410 Cavanaugh Hall, 425 University Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 56202, USA [email protected]

Abstract: This paper explores the relationship of place and identity in the historical and contemporary contexts of the California mission landscapes, conceiving of identity as a category of both analysis and practice (Brubaker and Cooper 2000). The missions include twenty-one sites founded along the California coast and central valley in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The missions are all currently open to the public and regularly visited as heritage sites, while many also serve as active Catholic parish churches. This paper offers a reading of the mission landscapes over time and traces the materiality of identity narratives inscribed in them, particularly in ‘mission gardens’ planted during the late 19th and first half of the 20th century. These contested places are both celebrated as sites of California's origins and decried as spaces of oppression and even genocide for its indigenous peoples. Theorized as relational settings where identity is constituted through narrative and memory (Sommers 1994; Halbwachs 1992) and experienced as staged, performed heritage, the mission landscapes bind these contested identities into a coherent postcolonial experience of a shared past by creating a conceptual metaphor of ‘mission as garden’ that encompasses their disparities of emotional resonance and ideological meaning. Keywords: California mission, garden, postcolonial, narrative, conceptual metaphor, sacred, secular, heritage, identity, cultural memory

1823 along the California coast and inland valley from San Diego to Sonoma, the twenty-one missions were the primary vehicle of Spanish colonization of the western coast of North America. The mission system was overseen by the Franciscan Order with support from military presidios stationed strategically along the coast, and its purpose was the salvation through baptism of California’s indigenous peoples while also claiming the territory for Spain. In colonial times 127 Franciscans served in Alta California, nearly all of whom were born and educated in Spain. A relatively small number of missionaries were posted at each mission and served as members of their religious order under a President of the California missions. Indian officials, called alcaldes and mayordomos, who helped oversee the social control and labor at the missions, were selected by the padres and elected by the neophytes (Hackel 1997). The economic premise of the vast missions was to create self-sufficient agricultural and ranching enterprises that, in theory, would eventually be returned to the native peoples. Mexican independence (1821) followed instead, and California subsequently became an American territory with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) and a state in 1850. The missions were ultimately restored to the Catholic Church in 1865 (Hackel 2005; Monroy 1990). Today all the missions are open to the public, and some, such as San Juan Capistrano, are among the most popular tourist sites in California. At present, all but two of the missions are owned by the Catholic Church; most are local parishes, one a seminary, and one the University chapel on the campus of Santa Clara University. Two of the missions, San Francisco Solano (in Sonoma, CA) and La Purísima, are California State Parks. Some are relatively well preserved, others wholly reconstructed or reimagined, and many a blend of the two. For example, Mission Santa

Introduction Archaeologists tackling questions about the relationship of landscape and identity are challenged not only by the problematic nature of identity itself, but also by the complex web of human and institutional relationships inscribed in and embodied by place. These challenges are exacerbated in prehistoric settings with their paucity of contextual sources, but in contemporary heritage sites the task of seeking to understand constructed and negotiated identities is conversely almost overwhelmed by the vast amount of text, images, material culture, and ethnographic evidence, as well as the broader political discourses associated with the sites. Archaeology offers valuable insight into understanding identity at contemporary heritage sites, however, in the investigation of the materiality of place. Not only do archaeologists pay attention to the material patterning of sites, but also the discursive practices through which heritage sites are produced and consumed (Shackel 2001; Shackel and Gadsby 2011; Smith and Waterton 2009). They theorize this material patterning in ways that probe the deeper conceptual metaphors and narratives of sites, as well as the ideologies they reify (Meskell 2002a). This reading of the California mission landscapes investigates identity mediated through heritage sites by taking a semiotic approach to their narrative, staging, and performance. I argue that the mission landscapes bind contested identities into a coherent postcolonial experience of a shared past, despite the disparities of meaning and emotional resonance implicated in the missions’ colonial history. Historical Background The California missions are well-known sites and symbols of the state’s history. Constructed from 176983

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Clara has seen five different church buildings in three locations. The current mission, constructed in 1929 after the 1835 structure was destroyed by fire, is a loose interpretation of the earlier building (Kimbro and Costello 2009, 198-201). In contrast, San Juan Bautista and Santa Barbara have much of their original architecture intact. In addition to the clergy leadership and parish administrators, the missions have varying organizational structures for staffing and managing tourist experiences at the sites. Some, such as San Juan Capistrano and San José, are run by private not-forprofits, while other missions are operated by the parish with volunteer docents. The two California State Park properties have professional staff as well as affiliated friends groups.

Theorizing Identity and Heritage Bringing the question of identity into this reading of the landscape raises several interesting theoretical issues and offers an opportunity to explore a central question of this volume, namely how can landscape help us understand the processes and narratives of identity formation? Heritage as it is framed at the missions, however, is not simply about identity labels or even a sense of affiliation, connectedness, or cohesion. Instead identity is, as Brubaker and Cooper (2000) remind us, a category of practice…used by “lay” actors in…everyday settings to make sense of themselves, of their activities, of what they share with, and how they differ from, others. It is also used by political entrepreneurs to persuade people to understand themselves, their interests, and their predicaments in a certain way, to persuade certain people that they are (for certain purposes) “identical” with one another and at the same time different from others, and to organize and justify collective action along certain lines (Brubaker and Cooper 2000, 4-5).

Scholars such as Kevin Starr (1973; 1985), Phoebe Kropp (2006), David Hurst Thomas (1991), Edna Kimbro and Julia Costello (2009) have argued that the missions, like many heritage sites, are multivalent. They are ‘symbols of the heritage of California’s Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American peoples, [that] resist any simple, single interpretation. (Kimbro and Costello 2009, 4).’ In contrast to the complexity of this two and a half century history, the contemporary mission landscapes convey a relatively simple rendition of that history in the form of the mission garden. Where the colonial landscape was distinctly utilitarian, the romanticized colonial revival gardens created in the late nineteenth and twentieth century were patterned after the centuries-old European tradition of patio gardens, versions of which are found in monasteries, palaces, and residences around the Mediterranean (Brown 1988; Kryder-Reid 2010). These mission gardens are antithetical to the colonial landscape in many regards. Where the largely arid colonial mission landscape was brown and dusty unless irrigated, today’s gardens have luxuriant green lawns, intersecting paths, and the vibrant colors of cascading vines and edged flowerbeds. Similarly, while today’s gardens appear largely empty save for the visiting tourists, the colonial missions were busy, teeming places. They were occupied by the neophytes (baptized Native Americans) who lived and worked there, the Franciscans who oversaw them, the soldiers who enforced Spanish rule, as well as traders, travelers (including non-mission Indians), and visiting locals from nearby pueblos. In sum, the contemporary landscapes create a setting for the missions that reads beautiful, peaceful, timeless, vacant, and natural, and they mask their colonial legacy as sites of labor, violence, and oppression. The gardens also avoid altogether colonialism’s contemporary consequences of injustice, dispossession, and cultural genocide. This study explores how the dominant narrative of the mission landscapes confirms the key tropes of the romanticized ‘Spanish fantasy heritage’ (Deverell 2001; Kropp 2006; McWilliams 1946; Thomas 1991) and affirms the values celebrated in church, state, and national discourses. It also investigates how the performance of the space by visitors leaves open the possibility of resistance to that narrative and the imposition of alternate readings.

Furthermore, because this constitution of identity is a social process, not just an intellectual practice, its analysis offers the opportunity ‘to explain the processes and mechanisms through which what has been called the “political fiction” of the “nation” — or of the “ethnic group,” “race,” or other putative “identity” can crystallize, at certain moments, as a powerful, compelling reality (Brubaker and Cooper 2000, 5).’ The mission landscapes are ideal spaces in which to examine this constitution of identity, particularly in the highly controlled and interpreted spaces of the mission garden. Margaret Sommers’ (1994) theorizing of identity and narrative is useful for deconstructing these designed landscapes because it ‘builds from the premise that narrativity and relationality are conditions of social being, social consciousness, social action, institutions, structures, even society itself; the self and the purposes of self are constructed and reconstructed in the context of internal and external relations of time and place and power that are constantly in flux (Sommers 1994, 621).’ She identifies particular patterns of relationships that she terms relational settings, and she argues that ‘Identityformation takes shape within these relational settings of contested but patterned relations among narratives, people, and institutions…[that] have a history… over time and space (Sommers 1994, 626).’Similarly, in his writings about the social practices of collective memory, Maurice Halbwachs has noted that for a belief of the past ‘to be settled in the memory of a group, it needs to be presented in the concrete form of an event, a personality, or a locality (Halbwachs 1992, 200).’ The California missions, some of the most popular historic sites in the state and visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, are such a locality and such a relational setting. As Lynn Meskell has argued, archaeological materials are potent tools in the political discourses of modern life as objects that can be ‘mobilized and deployed in identity 84

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Figure 1. Vintage postcard of Mission Santa Barbara, c. 1911 that to ‘lay out a garden for which there is neither historical nor archaeological evidence would be doing violence to La Purísima’s story (Ewing 1936).’

struggles….and the reproduction of social inequalities (Meskell 2001, 189).’ In this light, the mission gardens are both the products of a particular and highly politicized rendition of the colonial California past, and they are producers of that narrative deployed through the discursive heritage practices ranging from fourth grade model making to vintage postcard collecting (Figure 1).

This performance of identity narratives at heritage sites is critical because the power of cultural productions like mission tours lies in the fact that participation ‘can carry the individual to the frontiers of his being where his emotions may enter into communion with the emotions of others (MacCannell 1976, 26).’ The personal enactment of communal heritage rituals reifies the broader narratives in fundamental ways that capture imagination and emotion, as well as intellect. For example, John McGroarty, author of such paeans to California as The Mission Play (1911), California: Its History and Romance (1911), and Mission Memories (1929), observed that ‘there is no place in all California which clings to the past with an affection so notable as that which characterizes the Place of the Sacred Garden (McGroarty 1909, 247).’ Similarly, William Henry Hudson, who published a series of sketches of the missions, eulogized the affective experience of visiting the missions: ‘A tender sentiment clings about them — in their enclosures we breathe a drowsy old-world atmosphere of peace…. These things have a subtle and peculiar power — a magic not to be resisted by anyone who turns from the highways of the modern world to dream among the scenes where the old padres toiled and died (Hudson 1901).’As in Victor Turner’s (1969, 1977) conception of ritual where the individual moves through stages of separation, liminality, and reintegration to reach a renewed sense of ‘communitas,’ a visit to the missions may result in a sense of connection to others perceived to share the same heritage. This pattern of separation, liminality, and reintegration into communitas in Turner’s understandings of rites of passage (1969) and his subsequent extension of the concept ‘liminoid’ situations and non-religious

An important aspect of the discursive heritage practices that have shaped the mission gardens’ place in cultural memory is their consumption as tourist destinations and the embodied experience of place. As Dean MacCannell argues, tourism, like other phenomena of cultural productions, has two basic parts: the ‘representation of an aspect of life’ or ‘an embodied ideal’ and ‘the changed, created, intensified belief or feeling that is based on the model (MacCannell 1976, 23-4).’ More specifically, heritage sites, memorials, and monuments are made meaningful not because of their architecture or iconography, but by those who consume them. Whether that consumption is through the gaze, procession, performance, the exchange of word or gesture, the meaning of the sites is constituted through their reception. For more than a century the missions have been visited and consumed as a place to experience the California story. For example, a 1929 newspaper report describing the guides at Mission San Juan Capistrano who ‘tell the story in soft voices with a lingering Spanish accent...and…in their picturesque costumes of SpanishCalifornia days, obligingly pose by the lily pool, gazing at the old sundial, smiling under the old Mission arches, silhouetted against the roses and the hollyhocks, or standing by the ruins of the ancient church (Anonymous 1929, 8).’ Even those involved in the mission restorations articulated this sense of narrative. When discussions of an appropriate design for La Purísima Mission grounds became heated, a member of the planning group asserted 85

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performative experience. This deconstruction of the spaces also identifies the conceptual metaphors, narratives, and underlying ideologies that structure visitor experiences at the missions.

experiences (1977) is useful for understanding tourism as secular pilgrimage. MacCannell argues that connecting through the rituals of cultural productions to a shared, communal understanding can reinforce existing symbols or connotations, thereby adding ‘ballast’ to a society by ‘sanctifying an original as being a model worthy of copy or an important milestone in our development (MacCannell 1977, 26).’ Alternatively, it can also have the opposite effect and ‘establish a new direction, break new ground, or otherwise contribute to the progress of modernity by presenting new combinations of cultural elements and working out the logic of their relationship (MacCannell 1976, 26).’ The missions’ legacy both as the symbolic birthplace of California and as sites of conquest leaves them wide open for disparate and even contentious responses. Yet, the general impression recorded by travel writers of the 1930s and bloggers today is of charming, peaceful retreats.

Narrated heritage The serial presentation of the mission story unfolds through discrete architectural spaces along a structured route that leads visitors to key purveyors of the narrative — the didactic museum, the hallowed nave, the Spartan padres’ quarters, the somber cemetery, and the beautiful courtyard gardens (Figure 2). The exhibit narratives in these museums outline the history of the missions and celebrate particular achievements of illustrious persons associated with the missions. As might be expected, these narratives are told largely from the perspective of the missions’ current proprietor, which is the Catholic Church in all but two instances. These museum displays are executed with varying degrees of professionalism, but all have similar artifacts associated with the Native American ‘prehistory,’ the colonial mission history, and more recent restoration and parish growth. The raw ingredients of the Native American story (stone tools, plants, and baskets) stand in contrast to the development of new technology (olive presses and firearms), new skills (books and musical manuscripts), and new belief systems (religious artifacts). The key themes are the courage and sanctity of the founding padres, the success and productivity of the missions at their height, and the valiant efforts of the church over the years to maintain and restore the sites. Pedelty’s analysis of the exhibit at Mission San José summarizes the typical celebratory interpretation and their presentation of Spanish-Indian relations as a teacher-student or ‘benevolent mentor’ paradigm in which the Indians ‘sanctioned their own subordination as willing catechists and hungry students (Pedelty 1992, 83).’

The critical juncture of identity and landscape at the missions, therefore, is that the gardens ‘greenwash’ the past, recasting the colonial sites as beautiful, peaceful places to be revered as the beginnings of California civilization. The term’s implied connotations of whitewashing and brainwashing are indicative of both the political appropriation of the past imbricated in the mission gardens and the power of the landscape to naturalize ideology in ways that resist critique. Much as William Deverell has argued that the appropriation of a Mexican past by an increasingly Anglo-dominated Los Angeles society deployed a ‘cultural whitewashing’ (Deverell 2004: 251), the mission gardens reference a European, White tradition distinctive from both the indigenous use of the landscape and from the original functions of the mission landscapes (Kryder-Reid, 2007). This appropriated landscape design tradition has complex associations, however. Visiting the missions may inculcate a sense of belonging and inclusion, whether expressed as a connection with a distinctly California identity, a Catholic identity, or simply as a participant in the practices of cultural tourism. An experience at the missions may conversely yield a sense of outrage at the unacknowledged legacy of tragedy and loss, historical guilt, and exclusion for those who do not see themselves represented in the spaces or are troubled by the lack of critical history in the mission interpretive programming. As at other sites of contested histories (Hodgkin and Redstone 2003), visitors to the missions sometimes express the ambivalence of recognizing both legacies simultaneously. For example, a blogger in 2008 wrote of her own conflicted feelings: ‘First, one cannot help but be in awe of the beauty and what the missionaries obviously believed. Then I consider how horrific the consequences to our Native Americans and their culture and I am saddened (Suzanne 2008).’ It is this tension — the legacy of a triumphalist colonialism grappling with the consequences of dispossession and oppression — that the mission landscape attempts to resolve. To understand how the missions work in material and ideological ways as tourist destinations and cultural productions, this analysis looks at the staging of visitor experience, specifically movement, narrative, and multisensory

The main messages conveyed in the exhibits’ rendition of mission history are of two cultures becoming one. Different mission museum exhibits vary in how they account for that eventuality. As Dartt-Newton cogently analyzes, these narratives often obliterate native history, whether framing it as extinction (describing them as ʽdying off’) or assimilation (a conspicuous absence from the historical timeline following secularization) (DarttNewton 2009, 2011). Yet while their fate is ambiguous, the overall plot line is consistent. Civilization, with its associated qualities of progress, reason, culture, and technology, is victorious over the indigenous which is associated with the static, emotional, wild, natural, and ‘frozen in time (Hill 2000).’ The distinctions between the two cultures are exaggerated and commodified in the exhibits’ presentation of artifacts ostensibly signifying their contrasting technologies, languages, and lifeways. Those differences become blurred over time until the images and objects become the familiar, recognizable California mission story personified in the buildings’ ruin, restoration, and rebirth. The history of the missions through time is presented as the inevitable course of progress, the growth of faith communities, and restora86

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Figure 2. Mission San Juan Capistrano plan with suggested tourist path indicated by arrows (Chapman 1982: 67)

tion of buildings. It is the story of civilization, and it is good.

an atmosphere unlike the museum spaces. Textures of cool tile and rough stucco, scents of incense, the flicker of votive candles, and a rich religious iconography ranging from ornate western altarpieces to simple neophyte-painted wall decoration all evoke the sanctity and mystery of thousands of services and centuries of worship. The church furniture — pews, pulpit, lectern— is a permanent footprint of the liturgical dramas played out in these spaces. The impression of privileged access to a sacred space is accentuated by signs asking visitors to keep their voices low and men to remove their hats and further reinforced by the generally subdued comportment of other visitors exhibiting the appropriate contemplative

After going through the introductory exhibits, the visitor exits at most missions into an inner courtyard of the site where generally three choices are presented: visiting the church, walking the corridors and visiting whatever dwelling and work rooms are open for viewing, or exploring the ornamental gardens in the center of the courtyard (or exterior forecourts, depending on the mission layout). Regardless of the exact sequence, the drama of a visit culminates as one enters the reconstructed mission nave. There, the visitor encounters 87

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experiences by amplifying or muffling sound, directing the gaze, encouraging or repelling touch, and even inviting taste. Presaging more recent work on heritage and performance, Rhys Isaac (1982) and Dell Upton (1986) productively applied this concept of landscape as an interactive stage to illuminate the ways in which the social world is constituted. Isaac’s Pulitzer Prize winning book The Transformation of Virginia, followed half a century of political and social revolution in colonial society by viewing social life ‘as a complex set of performances, [n]ot only words but also settings, costumes, and gestures’ enacted in the arrangement and rearrangement of social space (Isaac 1982, 6). Upton similarly investigated eighteenth-century Virginia society by focusing on the architecture of parish churches, but his study also ranged across cultural practices as diverse as courtroom behavior, landscape gardening, and dancing to reveal the patterns and significance of cultural change. In his analysis, these ritual, judicial, and domestic sites were all ‘part of a network of dynamic spaces, each of which used similar means to create differing, but complementary symbolic environments (Upton 1986, 199).’

postures of the mission tourist. The atmosphere of these inner sanctums is charged with a converging reverence for the historic and the religious. This interpretation differs somewhat from Thomas Bremer’s (2001) analysis comparing Mission San Juan Capistrano and the Mormon Temple Square in which he polarizes religious vs. secular historical readings of the sites. While he notes that the mission may operate as a ‘hybrid space’ combining religious practices and the ‘desacralized practices of tourism,’ he also argues that the educational mission and ‘unchallenged authority of …site managers ‘overwhelms’ the devotional practices and suggests that the profane essentially trumps the sacred at these sites. I argue instead that visitors are critical consumers and are able to create their own meaning, whether it be pilgrimage, research, or pleasure. After the subdued lighting and atmosphere of the churches, visitors exiting the cool naves are met with the brightness and vivid colors of the courtyard gardens. The gardens convey a cultivated, domesticated beauty ideally suited to a monastic sanctuary of contemplative prayer, obedient service, and dutiful learning. They appear to be the living legacy of the noble Franciscan founders, and they leave little room to imagine the days of working, gaming, dancing, and eating that once filled the mission courtyards. Visitors are free to move about the gardens and pay attention to whatever catches their eye, but the essential premise of the ornamental design continues the ideological narrative of the exhibits. The mission story articulated through the gardens is quintessentially one of civilization. That which was wild is now cultivated, orderly, and wholly domesticated. That which was emotional and irrational is now allied with study of plants, scripture, and history. That which was ‘other’ is now distinctly western with direct referent to centuries old European gardening traditions. The landscape of coercion, labor, and violence is rendered a peaceful, beautiful, ornamental garden. The power of the landscape is that it enacts in material form the conceptual metaphor of the missions. As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have argued, ‘metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action…. The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details (Lakoff and Johnson 1980:3).’ The narrative and imagery that have reframed the history of California colonialism as the birthplace of civilization incarnated in a garden is not merely a metaphor, but a form of practice realized through restaging spaces of colonialism as gardens and through the embodied experience of those spaces.

The California missions have similarly been crafted as social stages. The mission architecture was originally designed with both neophytes and visitors in mind. For the native peoples working and living in them, the missions’ architecture of surveillance, the spaces that shaped communal gatherings, processions, and formations, and the highly regularized schedules were disciplining practices that helped maintain order and productivity (Silliman 2001; Voss 2000). The colonial 18th and early 19th century mission churches were also self-consciously public buildings, and their architecture invested heavily in façades, bell towers, campanarios, and other highly visible architectural features that proclaimed their presence for miles (Kryder-Reid 2007). The landscape similarly had a public face. While the infrastructure was largely utilitarian, dedicated to agriculture, husbandry, and the related processing of crops and animals, the placement of the few ornamental elements in the landscape suggest that the Franciscans desired to create a favorable impression on those viewing the missions from the outside, as well as to maintain order among those residing and working there. For example, fountains or lavanderías were positioned in front of Mission Santa Barbara and San Luis Rey. Mission administrators have been designing the landscape with visitors in mind since their restoration to the Catholic Church in 1865. From the first mission garden created at Mission Santa Barbara in 1872 to twentieth century gardens modeled after it at Mission San Juan Capistrano (1915), San Fernando (1921), La Purísima (1935), and other missions, the garden designers have attempted to shape public perceptions of the sites (Kryder-Reid 2010). Furthermore, these post-colonial landscapes were not just about presenting an attractive façade to the world; their designs embedded the missions in a larger field of referents signaling a European landscaping tradition that allied the missions with the gardening practices of white, wealthy estate owners as

Staged heritage Understanding the missions as immersive environments performed and animated by people requires deconstructing both their narratives and the ways in which heritage is staged at the sites. The visual and structural logic of the landscape has the power to guide movement, structure sequence, and spur the emotional arcs of narrative. Landscapes can create multisensory 88

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has been fairly well restored, and it would be hard to say just why the exterior is not more pleasing, but certainly robbed of that something wherein lies the charm of these lovely old missions at their best. For one thing, her makeup is unquestionably on the vivid side for one her age (Gunthorp 1940, 34).’

well as with the romanticized narratives. As Phoebe Kropp (2006) has argued, this ‘Spanish Fantasy Past’ purveyed a nostalgic version of California’s origins with potent political and ideological undertones. Fashioned in the cultural landscape of roads, houses, and marketplaces, the resulting racialized understanding of regional identity was promoted through both a spatial and a temporal segregation where Mexican and Indian Californians resided in the past and are represented in an AngloAmerican present only by artifacts.

Most prominent in this staging of heritage as a surviving artifact has been numerous examples of preserved ‘ruins,’ such as the ‘nineteenth arch’ at Santa Ines (Figure 3). These intentionally crafted, artfully sited features signal both the processes of aging and the enduring presence of original, authentic features. The trope mirrors the deployment of ruins in the English landscape park design (Hunt 1994) and the rural landscapes of southern Maryland (King 2012). The incorporation of ruins is simultaneously a tribute to the continuity of heritage and homage to the poignant passage of time. If mission heritage presumes the recollection of peaceful, beautiful, simple times of selfless priests seeking to bring a better life to indigenous cultures, then, logically, the space is expected to look simple, beautiful, and old. In this metaphor of mission as garden, the colonial legacy is both frozen in a distant past far removed from contemporary consequences and transformed into a beautiful, timeless, and natural setting. As David Lowenthal has noted, ‘Heritage everywhere thrives on persisting error (Lowenthal 1998, 9).’ In contrast to

Critical to the staged interplay of space and narrative is the role of simulacra and authenticity in framing the mission tourist experience. A simulacrum, as Jean Baudrillard (1988a) and others have argued, is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right. The import of the mission gardens replicated at each site is not simply that they perpetuate a romanticized reproduction of the past but that they have become a referent in their own right. They have become their own hyper reality (Eco 1986). The original mission garden was constructed at Mission Santa Barbara in 1872-3, and was looked to as a model when restorers and preservationists at other missions sought an ‘appropriate’ landscape to go with their renovated buildings (Kryder-Reid 2010). Mission administrators have continued to build mission gardens, even in the most limited settings. Mission San José, for example, is a two-thirds scale reproduction of the original mission building and includes a fountain and lawn in its tiny lot. The impulse is not confined to early twentieth century colonial revivalist impulses either. In the 1990s Mission San Rafael was raising money to create a new mission garden. Such simulacrum becomes its own ‘social finality,’ that ‘gets lost in seriality’ and eventually ‘simulacra surpasses history (Baudrillard 1988b, 138).’ The tension of the simulacrum and authenticity at the missions is not simply that the romanticized reinvention of the missions as gardens is the antithesis of their colonial era predecessors, but that they are visited as heritage sites, purported to be preserved and protected survivors of an earlier time. Tourists understand that many architectural features have been repaired and renovated or even, such as with Santa Clara and San José, wholly reconstructed, but the landscapes’ association with an authentic past is more complicated and merits further investigation. One aspect of the complexities of this staged, fabricated heritage (Lowenthal 1998) has been the need to protect the missions against the deteriorating effects of erosion, earthquakes, and other threats while still maintaining a picturesque charm and ancient patina. For example, a travel writer recounting a visit to Mission San Diego in 1930 noted, ‘Would it not be a fine thing were there some way to preserve these ruins just as they are, so much more romantic and suggestive of past greatness are they than any effort at restoration can ever make them? But adobe bricks disintegrate rapidly when exposed to the weather, and unless the buildings are restored, what little remains of many of the Missions will soon have vanished (Moore 1930, 6).’ Another visitor to San Luis Rey commented even more pointedly, ‘The church building

Figure 3. The ‘nineteenth arch’ at Mission Santa Ines 89

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Figure 4. Restrooms with artificially distressed stucco in the forecourt of Mission San Miguel

struggling cacti, an artfully placed wooden cart, and dusty meandering paths. The anachronistic garden appears no less appropriate than the antiqued restrooms because both confirm the narrative of the sites as beautiful, sacred relics of another era. The explicit narrative at the site emphasizes the importance of the original and the authentic. The capital campaign case statement for San Miguel’s ongoing restoration, for example, argues the value of the site as ‘an educational beacon’ noting that the mission

history that ‘seeks to convince by truth, and succumbs to falsehood,’ heritage ‘exaggerates and omits, candidly invents and frankly forgets, and thrives on ignorance and error (Lowenthal 1998, 7).’ The selectivity of the mission landscapes privileges a narrative honoring the achievements and sacrifice of the padres, and it stages that past in a vaguely historic monastic garden. Contemporary visitors often use the metaphor of being ‘transported back in time’ to describe their experience of the mission grounds, and this sense of stepping back is part of the reifying power of these greenwashed spaces. The impact is not simply a didactic text or a docent reciting facts; the landscape itself presents an immersive, pervasive experience that looks, smells, and feels authentic.

serves as a gateway to our nations [sic] history and ancestors. Many remark that visiting Mission San Miguel is like taking a trip back in time. This observation is unique to Mission San Miguel not only because of the original frescoes and authentic artifacts on site, but also because the town of San Miguel itself is a quite, [sic] rural community and remains deeplyrooted in its history (Mission San Miguel).

An even more telling example of the simulacra of staged heritage is attempts to create an effect of aging by applying a failing stucco veneer over adobe. The technique is common in modern decorating, and one can see examples in ‘Spanish style’ fast food restaurants or find tips on the internet for creating distressed stucco walls in the home. In the setting of the missions, however, the effect is more revealing. At sites such as Mission San Miguel where the public restrooms in the forecourt have a distressed stucco finish (Figure 4), the technique is presumably intended to help the newer construction blend in with its surroundings. Presenting modern restrooms as aging structures might call into question the authenticity of all of the architecture, and yet San Miguel’s late twentieth century bathroom, as implausible as it is, draws little attention. In fact, in the mission courtyard the restrooms stand on one side of a forecourt while at the other end is the mission church, newly restored following the 2003 earthquake with retrofitted seismic reinforcements such as mesh and tie rods. In the forecourt between the two structures is a fountain with the failing adobe treatment, beds of

Mission San Miguel raises the question, why don’t more visitors challenge the contemporary veneers, whether architectural or landscape? Is the distressed stucco convincing camouflage or are visitors not particularly interested in the historical authenticity of the architecture or accuracy of the interpretations as long as they meet their expectations of what mission heritage looks like? The illusion of age takes on ever deeper significance with the use of historic objects and industrial remains in the landscape in ways that reposition notions of indigeneity, labor, and time. While much of the infrastructure required to support extensive agricultural and industrial operations at the colonial mission sites was destroyed by encroaching development of the extensive original landholdings, some features, particularly those associated with the padres near the main church, were preserved or reconstructed. Other remains, such as those more closely 90

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Figure 5. A reconstructed carreta laden with barrels is a focal point in a flower bed at Mission San Juan Capistrano

by either the garden interpreters or visitors. The interpretive sign at the lavanderia at Santa Barbara, for example, includes the following text: ‘Please treat this historic structure with respect as the achievement of the Chumash people who lived and worked here in Mission time. Landscaping around this lavanderia features native and colonial period plant varieties…historic rose varieties are found interspersed with mission period cacti and perrenials [sic].’An olive press at San Buenaventura is bedecked with pots of hanging ferns. Even the bells that signaled the discipline of time in their call to work, meals, and rest during the missions’ early days are, in today’s gardens, used as ornamental lighting, edging along paths, and hung as if they were oversized wind chimes (Figure 6). In these symbols time and labor are collapsed as artifacts, both fake and real, and are repurposed as garden ornaments. The garden is historicized by its association with the relics, while the evidence of the labor on which the missions were predicated is rendered ornamental and the laborers are effaced altogether.

associated with neophyte life and housing, were demolished or their crumbling adobe ruins plowed under or paved over. As Mark Pedelty (1992) has pointed out, this selective reconstruction has resulted from the choices of mission restorers and administrators to preserve those aspects of the mission system that related to their own interests, while marginalizing or even destroying elements not considered to be part of their own heritage such as Indian burial grounds and living quarters, as well as features not compatible with their view of mission history such as the soldiers’ barracks or whipping posts. Similarly, Deana Dartt-Newton’s study of mission museum exhibitions found the same pattern of paternalistic interpretation and a consistent relegation of Indians to a distant time devoid of agency (Dartt-Newton 2009, 2011). This dichotomy of selective preservation has resulted in some interesting treatments of industrial features that are integral to the history of native labor and the industrial production at the missions. In some cases, such as the tanning vats as San Gabriel, the features were incorporated into the general garden plan, and at some, such as at San Luis Rey and La Purísima, the lavandarías became the focal points for new gardens.

The erasure of the labor it took to sustain the colonial missions is perpetuated in the contemporary landscape. Evidence of the infrastructure to maintain the gardens such as tools, work sheds, irrigation systems, and hoses, are hidden from public view. Furthermore, whereas the monk in the garden was a dominant motif of mission visual culture historically, today’s laborers are as invisible as their native predecessors. Several of the more prosperous missions, such as Santa Barbara and San Diego, have hired commercial landscape crews to maintain their grounds. The workers trim, weed, edge, and water, and then move on to their next job. Little evidence of the labor required to create lush, verdant gardens, especially in the arid parts of the state, is left behind. Geographer Don Mitchell has argued that the

This incorporation of utilitarian features into the mission garden persists in contemporary designs as well. For example, at San Buenaventura the barred windows decorated with colorful window boxes. Portable artifacts such as mill grinding stones at San Diego and manos and matates at San Luis Rey are placed as artistic accents in the gardens. At San Juan Capistrano, a reconstructed carreta laden with barrels is a focal point in a flowerbed and a wheelbarrow is used as a planter (Figure 5). The translation of these industrial features and tools of the colonial era into decorative garden elements is a ubiquitous practice, and yet it generally escapes comment 91

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Figure 6. Bells hanging in the corredo of Mission San Antonio de Pala

including San Juan Capistrano, La Purísima, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara, have built reconstructed native dwellings or kiichas on the mission grounds. Here too the simulacra of the demonstration huts objectifies and distances native history. The bent pole and reedcovered structures have minimal interpretive signage and little associated domestic material culture. They are isolated examples rather than the clusters that housed extended families. As has been argued regarding the interpretation of Native history in the mission museums, the dwellings only nominally register native peoples in the landscape, and then only in a ‘pre-contact’ past. They reinforce ‘essentialized homogenous notions of Indianess which inadvertently contribute to the invisibility of coastal Native peoples (Dartt-Newton, 2009, v).’ At San Juan Capistrano signage next to the kiicha focuses on the construction and materials of the structure, describes accommodations for inclement weather, and explains that the stones positioned in front of the dwelling were used to grind acorns for food preparation. The sign also acknowledges that the replica was built ‘by the local tribe under the leadership of Tribal Chairman, Anthony Rivera, as a recent project celebrating those with ancestral ties to the Mission (Interpretive sign, Mission San Juan Capistrano, April, 2008).’ The landscaping around the kiicha, however, creates an entirely different impression. Ornamental edging frames the dwelling and it is surrounded by beds of roses and other vibrant flowers that position the kiicha as yet another ornamental focal point in the garden (Figure 7). At San Francisco, the dwelling stands in the densely planted cemetery, near the statue of Junípero Serra. At Santa Barbara, the short-lived reconstructed dwelling stood in the corner of a parking lot behind the chain link fence. The presentation of these kiicha focuses on the domestic sphere and ‘daily life’ rather than the institutional scale of the missions agricultural and herding operations. The almost empty

beauty of the California landscape with its Edenic imagery has been possible only because of generations of migrant laborers (Mitchell 1996). This gulf between the material production of the landscape and its appropriated imagery is paralleled in the mission gardens. The original Native American laborers were succeeded by an assortment of others, volunteer and paid, who helped shape the landscape. Many of these peoples’ names are lost to history as is so often the case with workers of the land. At San Juan Capistrano, for example, the grounds were being tended as early as the late 1880s, but documents reflect only the architectural restoration efforts. At the missions that became parish churches, care for the grounds fell to the volunteers and the minimal staff, such as the ‘gardening angels’ at Mission San Juan Capistrano and the rose garden guild of Mission San Antonio de Padua. Even missions run by the State Parks rely on volunteers to help interpret and maintain the gardens. La Purísima, for example, is supported by a nonprofit organization called ‘Prelado de los Tesoros de La Purísima’ that helps raise funds, recruit volunteers, train docents, and advocate for the park. For tourists visiting the missions, however, this labor remains largely hidden. Upon close inspection, an observant visitor can see the spigots and nozzles for irrigation systems and on certain days crews can be seen trimming vines or cleaning fountains, but for the most part the gardens seem to exist effortlessly in the rich soil and bountiful sunshine. The fertile productiveness and beauty of these miniature Edens are predicated, like the broader agricultural landscape of California, on the invisibility of the labor that is indispensible to its very existence. The symbolic annihilation of labor in the mission landscape comes into sharpest relief with one of the strategies deployed to interpret Native Americans in the mission landscapes. At least four of the missions, 92

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Figure 7. A reconstructed kiicha in the forecourt of San Juan Capistrano

specimens as relics or survivors of an earlier time. These specimens, such as the historic grape vines at San Gabriel, the pepper tree at San Luis Rey, and the olive at San Antonio de Padua, are interpreted with signage identifying the species, the estimated age, and some of them also add a note such as ‘planted by the padres’ or ‘the first pepper tree in California,’ or, as at San Gabriel, naming it the ‘Ramona Grape Vine, 1774.’ By highlighting and interpreting these specimens as ancient relics, the plants become artifacts in themselves and, like the industrial features, are valued for their age and symbolic origins of California’s agricultural industry, rather than as indicators of the labors and lives of the native people who tended and harvested them. Similarly, while the impetus to plant ‘native plant gardens’ such as the one in the front border at Santa Barbara (no longer under cultivation) and in the central courtyard of San Francisco Solano in Sonoma seems to have been a desire to register the native peoples in the landscape by interpreting native plants and their pre-Columbian uses, the impressions they create for visitors are more complicated. While limited signage identifies the plant names and explains some of their traditional uses for cooking, utilitarian, or medicinal purposes, the arrangement of the plants in beds with edging, intersecting paths, and labels mirrors the same domestication of the wild Indian metaphor that pervades the dominant mission narrative (Kryder-Reid 2007).

structures accompanied by only a few stumps or a stone fire circle gesture to the activities that took place in these spaces while giving no insight into the circumstances and conditions for the neophytes. They also avoid altogether the violence, sexual and otherwise, or the other coercive exercises that structured their residents’ existence. These reconstructed dwellings sitting in the middle of gardens not only objectify and distort the scale of native peoples in the colonial missions, but they parallel the visual practices of Orientalism. As Said has written of the imaginative geography of Orientalism, it tries ‘at one and the same time to characterize the Orient as alien and to incorporate it schematically on a theatrical stage whose audience, manager and actors are for Europe, and only for Europe. Hence the vacillation between the familiar and the alien. ...the figures of speech associated with the Orient. ...are all declarative and self-evident; the tense they employ is the timeless eternal; they convey an impression of repetition and strength; they are always symmetrical to, and yet diametrically inferior to, a European equivalent’ (Said 1979, 71-2). The familiar domestic residence is indicated, and yet the rough, round tule covered huts stand in stark contrast to the finished and furnished architecture of the mission. In a parallel to the placement of native dwellings, some missions have also attempted to register the presence of indigeneity through planting ‘native plant’ gardens and preserving ancient plants. These horticultural efforts relate to broader interests in heirloom varieties, local food, slow food, and other expressions of an intentionality about food and nutrition that looks nostalgically to home canning and gardens as an antidote to agricultural factory production, genetically modified crops, and a general sense of isolation and dispossession from food production. The symbolism in the context of the mission landscapes, however, is more complex. One aspect is the preservation and interpretation of historic

Performed heritage The architecture, landscape, artifacts, plants, and festivals that together frame the mission experience for visitors is therefore both a product of distinct ideological perspectives on the history and significance of the missions and also a social stage for the performance of that narrative. It is important to note that outside of the formal museum exhibits there is little interpretative text 93

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Just as it once operated in the colonizing landscape of the mission Indians, these techniques of controlling movement, registering time, framing vision, and stimulating senses are part of the disciplining force of the landscape that shapes the tourist experience.

so that for the most part, touring a mission is a freechoice learning, visitor-driven experience. As Julia King has noted, the ‘creation of bounded spaces believed to signify past times and past worlds is a modern practice increasingly prevalent in our times. In these new spaces, history becomes conflated with material objects and practices, which in turn become privileged for the unmediated access they presumably give to the past (King 2012, 4).’ The seeming lack of didactic interpretation at the missions increases the power of the narrative because visitors are rarely conscious of the subtle use of stagecraft to create atmosphere, fix symbols, and guide them through the spaces. Like an interactive stage set, visitors (who become the actors) move along routes that establish a sequence, rhythm, and flow of the experience of space in time. Paths, doorways, gates, and corridors guide and constrain movement while the placement of objects and features invite bodies to pause and assume the classic gestures and poses of a dutiful observer (Figure 8). The stage directs the gaze, hiding some elements and accentuating others, framing distant views and encouraging close inspection. The senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell are stimulated to accentuate the experience of another time, a space apart.

Another aspect of performed heritage at the missions is propagating, planting, and tending ‘heritage plants.’ The idea of engaging with the mission history by planting historic plants is a longstanding one. When the king and queen of Belgium visited Mission Santa Barbara in 1919, the New York Times (October 13, 1919) reported, ‘After mass, the party filed into the mission church yard, where the king planted a cypress and an orange tree to memorialize his visit there.’ Similarly, when Mission San Juan Capistrano offered seeds from their gardens for sale in the shops, they sold well and staff members commented that ‘people liked the idea of planting something that had come from the mission in their own gardens (Sorenson 2008).’ A leader in this effort more recently has been the ‘Huerta Project’ at Mission Santa Barbara. In a partnership between the mission and Santa Barbara City College’s Career Horticultural Program, volunteers have been identifying surviving ‘refugee’ plants from mission days and propagating them in a huerta on the mission grounds. Since December 1998 volunteers have collected cuttings and stone fruits from surviving species such as olive, mission era grape varieties, apricot and plum, and lilac. By rooting cuttings of plants such as pomegranate, rose, and grape, and grafting the stone fruit species onto mature modern cultivars trees, the huerta now boasts more than 400 historic era plants (Figure 9). Like the native plants’ gardens, however, the historical significance of the horticultural experiments continues to privilege the Spanish colonizers. In his summary of the heritage plants program, Jerry Sortomme, who co-founded the project with Mission curator Tina Foss, conveys the evocative prospect of heritage species when he asks readers to ‘Imagine re-growing plants genetically identical to those raised by the mission padres (Sortomme 2008).’ Coverage in a local newspaper, the Santa Barbara Independent, similarly notes, ‘A project is underway …to recreate the huerta, or garden, where the friars cultivated the food and utilitarian crops they relied on’ (Hayes 2007). While the article elsewhere acknowledges the labor of Native Americans in constructing the missions, the notion of the padres tending their gardens continues to be a powerful image. In the huerta, as in the other landscapes of the mission, interpreting the lives of the Native Americans at the missions is minimized in deference to the colonizers’ experiences. The work of these volunteers to preserve and propagate historic species is commendable, they do not conceive of their work as engagement with the political production of heritage at the missions. The planting plan and interpretation of the huerta garden at Santa Barbara is predicated on prevailing winds, sun, and places to create micro climates against the hillside. The fact that it is located in the area of the former neophyte adobe residences or that the specimens such as the orange tree planted in the mission’s courtyard, from which they are

Figure 8. Visitors stop to look at a statue of Junípero Serra at Mission Dolores, San Francisco. Sculpted by Arthur Putnam and placed at the mission in 1918, the statue is one of a series of allegorical figures originally commissioned to depict the history of California for the San Diego estate of E. W. Scripps 94

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moved through and perceived the landscape in very different ways than the colonizing explorers, soldiers, and priests, so too do the contemporary audiences have different perceptions and practices. Furthermore, recognizing the interests of these contemporary constituents is vital to understanding the evolution of the contemporary mission landscapes. In addition to the tourist audiences described thus far, the missions also serve as the spiritual home for the faith communities associated with the parishes and institutions that own and administer the mission sites. Also, within the various Catholic-owned sites there are a variety of traditions that have similarly shaped the production and consumption of the mission landscapes. The California Park Service missions are in a very different position than the Catholic-owned missions, but are nonetheless fraught with the tensions of interpreting sacred and secular history. When the team was planning the landscape design at La Purísima in the early 1930s, the governmental agencies involved were very careful to keep a respectful distance from any connotations of promoting Catholic iconography, theology, or interests at the site in either their educational programs or their landscape reconstructions. While excavations revealed a small masonry circular feature that Hageman interpreted as the possible location of a cross noting that it ‘was made exactly as though someone had planted a post, and filled around it with pieces of tile, rock and mortar to make it secure’ (Hageman and Ewing 1991, 8), the feature was not immediately reconstructed. When a local Catholic parish proposed holding a midnight Christmas Mass in the newly restored church in 1936, the Advisory group and Park Service authorities scrambled for a response that would maintain cordial relations with the local church but preserve their separation of the state park from sectarian interests. Their last-minute diplomatic response denying permission to the priest cited the fact that the State Park Commission that would need to rule on such policy matters was not meeting until January and that ‘the Mission is not far enough completed for such as event (Penfield 1936).’ The Advisory Committee recommended that educational plans for the miss ion downplay the religious history of the sites, stating that the ‘institutional side of Mission life is fully as interesting to the visitor as the religious, and should be more fully stressed.’ Even as various plans for a dedication ceremony for the restored mission were being debated, all agreed that, whatever the specific program, it must be ‘kept entirely non-religious (Fleming 1936).’

Figure 9. Santa Barbara Huerta Project containing more than 400 historic era plants

taking grafts, is part of a 140 year old landscape design history in its own right is not germane to the organizers’ conception of their work. Just as the kiicha dwellings and the manos and metates are divorced from their historical context and repositioned in the ornamental settings of the gardens, so too are these historic plant specimens objectified as botanical material valued for their age, but not their associations with colonialism’s imposition of agrarian subsistence and labor practices. Counter narratives The dichotomy of wild versus civilized that operates as a deep conceptual metaphor in the gardens does not entirely account for their complex presentation of California’s colonial legacy or how visitors negotiate this mediated landscape. The power of the mission landscapes lies in their mutability enacted by those who live on, work in, and move through them. Their significance is constructed, not inherent, created in the performance of the space by social agents. As Dydia DeLyser (2005) has argued, tourists have long been important participants in the constitution of a romanticized appropriation of Southern California’s Spanish history. It is important to recognize, therefore, that the consumption of the mission landscapes has always had distinct audiences. Just as in colonial times the neophytes

Such tensions of sacred and secular narratives persist. Writer Richard Rodriguez’s memoir includes an account of his visit to San Juan Capistrano. Rodriguez writes of how, after he entered the Serra Chapel, he knelt ‘to say a prayer for Nancy — a prayer that should plead like a scalpel.’ His meditation was soon interrupted by ‘camera flashes at the rear of the church…. A group of tourists has entered the sanctuary to examine the crucifix; one of them laughs. I cross myself ostentatiously, I genuflect, I leave the chapel (Rodriguez 1992, 123).’ Rodriguez also 95

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criticizes the ‘Protestant’ restorations of La Purísima, and its marginalization of Catholic history where preservationists ‘have so diligently divorced place or artifact from intention that they become handmaidens of amnesia. A secular altar guild that will not distinguish between a flatiron and a chalice, between a log cabin and a mission church, preserves only strangeness (Rodriguez 1992, 125).’ This collision of behavior and attitudinal expectations exemplifies the tensions of the missions’ operations as historical and religious shrines for the visiting public and as places of work and worship for the local community. Part of the complexity of the mission landscapes is that they have had two distinct audiences since their return to the Catholic Church in 1865. While visitors, tourists and other ‘outsiders’ came, stayed a short time and left, the missions have also had local constituencies who resided and worshipped there. This dual audience still exists as the missions serve as a temporal and spiritual home for those who live, worship, and are educated there and as a destination for school children on field trips, people on retreat, and tourists on vacation. Within a single landscape, these different audiences, each heterogeneous in their own right, negotiate meaning and memory. The dual audiences are registered in the landscape itself in explicit designations of public and private space and in more subtle inclusive and exclusive operations of the landscape design. Spatially and ideologically the mission landscapes are intersecting public and private stages predicated on the roles of the social agents. Just as captives traversed the landscape gardens of Monticello and Gunston Hall differently than the planter gentry and their guests, so too at the missions do the resident religious, mission staff, laborers, and parishioners move in a different landscape than the tourists (Upton 1988; Epperson 2000). Signs and barrier chains explicitly restrict access to private areas while other divisions are more subtly managed (Figure 10). For example, the modern Stations of the Cross at Santa Barbara and Santa Ines are off to the side of the missions and out of the direct path of most visitors but available for the personal piety practices of the parishioners. The dual audiences negotiate the landscape through temporal control as well as spatial segregation. For example, churches are closed to tourists during services, and at San Juan Capistrano, religious processions take place in the garden after public hours (Nieblas 2008). At San Gabriel, a lighted cross, used in processions, is stored in a corner of the garden until needed (Figure 11). Not only are devotional spaces restricted, but other aspects of the daily life of the sites are hidden from view as well. The tools and equipment of the laborers who maintain the gardens are packed onto trucks or tucked into tool sheds hidden away from public view. The benches, tables, and grills used for parish festivals are stacked away so that open spaces can be available for school groups. Even more subtle are the landscapes that are in the open and yet not visible if one does not know how to read them. The shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe at San Gabriel may appear to be a display of colorful tile or collection of Catholic kitsch to some

Figure 10. A sign indicating a restricted area at Mission San Luis Rey

Figure 11. A lighted cross is stored in a corner of the garden at Mission San Gabriel 96

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Figure 13. Italian statuary placed in the Mission San Antonio de Pala imported from Italy by the Vernona Fathers who serve the parish

Figure 12. The shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe at Mission San Gabriel

but a sanctified place of prayer and solace to others (Figure 12). Murals, such as those painted on the convento walls at San Gabriel, are loaded with religious imagery and references to local people and landmarks that are inscrutable to the outsider. There are also variations on the inclusion of religious iconography distinct to the traditions of the particular order at each mission. The Vernona Fathers (also known as The Camboni Fathers) at Mission San Antonio de Pala continued to bring back Italian statuary and ornaments to bring a flavor of ‘the old country’ to their southern California mission garden (Jackson 2008) (Figure 13). In imagery and in practice, these embellishments created not just a pleasing aesthetic, but a distinctive reminder of home.

virtual landscape extends beyond parish websites. For example, the Franciscan Pilgrimage Program supports a wiki page for former pilgrims where they can share their ongoing reflections and spiritual journeys following a mission pilgrimage, as well as continue the fellowship formed during the tour. Perhaps nowhere is this multivalence of mission materiality more evident than in the consumption of the Serra statues at the missions. The convention of the lone priest in the garden that figures so prominently in the mission visual culture has been perpetuated in the contemporary mission gardens with an initiative to place a statue of Junípero Serra at every mission. Serra statues were erected in several of the early twentieth century mission garden designs, such as San Juan Capistrano and San Fernando, but more recently a campaign to place statues of Serra at every mission and at other sites significant to Serra’s life was undertaken by William H. Hannon, a southern California real estate developer. Hannon died in 1999. A foundation in his name continues to sponsor essay contests about Serra and to carry on Hannon's philanthropic support of Catholic schools, hospitals, and other organizations. Hannon’s intent in the placing the statues was to ‘promote the spirit and contributions of Father Serra (The Hannon Foundation

This distinction between the public/tourist and private/local landscape is recognized locally and mapped virtually. Most missions structure their websites into distinct parish-related or historic-mission related information either as separate pages tabbed on the main page or completely distinct websites. For example, the San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo Mission site front page welcomes visitors to ‘a place of worship, education, history, and art’ and invites people to ‘choose a destination below to start your journey’ by clicking a tab for either ‘Parish,’ ‘School,’ ‘Museum,’ or ‘Store.’ This 97

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website).’ The bronze sculptures stand in various positions in the mission landscapes. At Mission Santa Ines, San Gabriel, San Rafael, San Antonio de Padua, and at Santa Barbara, the statue is positioned near the main entrance. At other missions the statue is in a garden, as at Santa Cruz, San Buenaventura, Carmel, San Diego, and Mission Dolores. The statues are typically blessed and dedicated when they are placed at a mission. Hannon was a proponent of Serra's canonization, and he held his Catholic allegiances openly. But he identified with other aspects of Serra's life as well. Hannon, for example, saw a connection between his own profession and Serra’s noting, ‘The man was the first real estate developer in Los Angeles if you think about it. Serra helped to settle what is now the Valley. It’s important to remember where we came from (Rimbert 1998).’ The sculptures’ contexts suggest a certain ambiguity. In the front of missions they stand as welcoming doorman and sentry and also lay proud claim to the valorized founder, regardless of the controversy surrounding his legacy and canonization process. In the gardens the figures become both ornament and owner, referencing the same visual tradition as the frocked friars in the postcards. They stand as silent, static costumed interpreters performing the presence of the sites’ principle historical actors. They also participate in the construction of the exotic other for touristic consumption of the sites in their role as the frocked figure from another time or religion. It is not uncommon to see tourists posing for photographs as they stand next to Serra. The meaning of the reception of these statues is difficult to assess. In some respects they are consistent with other devotional art in that people engage with them directly. At Mission Santa Barbara, an offering of flowers was laid at Serra’s feet (Figure 14). Other examples are more idiosyncratic. The Hannon Foundation web site recounts that when the statues were placed in schools, ‘At dedication ceremonies, where a school’s student body often was assembled, William would encourage the children to rub Father Serra’s toe for good luck. He would tell the children, “After all, he walked all across California, so those toes are lucky; maybe rubbing his toe will help on your next big test (Hannon Foundation web site).”’

Figure 14. Serra statue at Mission Santa Barbara with an offering of flowers laid at its feet in 2013

San Fernando received complaints about a man ‘who persists in washing his dogs in the fountain,’ an unseemly and entirely unacceptable use of the fountain dedicated, as inscribed on its plaque, to preserve ‘the colorful and picturesque atmosphere of the early California missions (Kalix 1923).’ At almost every mission there is evidence of graffiti scratched into the soft, yielding surface of the adobe. In covered areas, such as the passageway into the inner courtyard at San Antonio de Padua, the graffiti dates back more than 100 years. At San Luis Rey’s secluded lavanderia graffiti is commonly added (Figure 15). Less physical, but no less significant, is the ideological critique in written accounts of the missions. In his account of his family's tour of the missions, writer Geoff Boucher prefaces his relatively celebratory travel article with the comment, ‘And what a history it is — framed by both the holy and the horrible, marked by moments of individual altruism and mass greed.’ He embarked on the trip acknowledging the subjectivity of the mission story in which ‘fourth-grade teachers filter out many of the harshest details and, at the missions themselves, [and] the Roman Catholic Church emphasizes the good works and California achievements (Boucher 2008).’ And yet, in the end of his article Boucher affirms the pleasure and value of visiting the missions, ambiguity and all.

If the missions gardens are relational settings for the performance of communal memory and identity, it must be recognized that the process of identity formation is every bit as complex as Brubaker and Cooper maintain. As longstanding and pervasive as the practices of consuming the missions are, there is evidence of the subversive use of the landscape, albeit in subtle traces of skepticism about the dominant narrative, recasting of symbolism, and resistance to touristic practices. If visiting the missions is performing heritage, then the most powerful form of resistance is to boycott them. An interpreter at the one of the missions told me of a good friend of native descent who refuses to set foot on the mission grounds because she finds them so abhorrent and painful. Other resistance is found in the subversion of the proscribed uses of the spaces. Almost as soon as it was completed, the supervisor of the Memory Garden at 98

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Figure 15. Graffiti inscribed into the adobe wall of Mission San Luis Rey’s lavandería

instruments of critical exploration of the past. A critical approach to the mission gardens offers an opportunity for engaging new audiences, provoking conversations about colonialism’s ongoing consequences, and tackling the hard questions of mission heritage. This notion of the social responsibility of museums and heritage sites is the essence of their enduring social value (Chapell 1989; Meskell 2002b; Shackel 2001; Silverman and Ruggles 2007). The potential of the missions to be places of critical inquiry and civic discourse lies in inviting visitors to explore the frictions of celebration and injustice, beauty and brutality, that are inscribed so subtly in the landscape. The opportunity is to invite people to explore how the gardens came to be and how the greenwashing of the past influences their experience at the missions.

Conclusion The mission gardens’ role in the constitution of identity is significant for a number of reasons. First, they demonstrate the pervasive and enduring emotional attachment to heritage sites. Whether with romanticized sentimentality or sadness, pride or condemnation, people care deeply about the missions. This affective import of heritage landscapes is critical to both their pervasive influence across disparate populations and their longevity across generations. Second, these are spaces that engage the senses and the imagination; they are distinctly pleasurable, sensual, and evocative spaces (Turkle 2007). Third, the mission landscapes are and have always been informed by complex political and social agendas and must be recognized as an effective instrument of a particular heritage narrative. Fourth, the inscription of this particular rendering of the past in the medium of plants, ruins, and an immersive garden setting creates a powerful form of engagement with post colonial identity narratives that is, at the same time, remarkably difficult to recognize and pierce. Finally, this intersection of the realms of materiality and imagination that have been integral to the construction of the meaning of the mission landscapes is neither inalienable nor inevitable. Conceding that the material world establishes the structure of our existence and that landscapes are one of the media through which we negotiate our positions in the world, the power of landscape in the context of identity still lies in the active, personal human encounters with space where the relationship of past and present is constructed and contested.

Acknowledgements This chapter is part of an ongoing study of the California mission landscapes that has benefited greatly from the support of numerous institutions and individuals over the years. The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art; IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI; the AAUW; and the Huntington Library have supported this research in material ways. My thinking about the heritage sites in general and the mission landscapes in particular has been challenged and honed by the insightful comments and conversations of many colleagues, particularly Paul Mullins, Norm Neuerberg, Therese O’Malley, D. Fairchild Ruggles, and Larry Zimmerman. This research has benefitted greatly from the scholars, archaeologists, curators, archivists, and mission staff who work tirelessly to preserve and interpret the missions and their records. I wish to thank in particular Deana Dartt-Newton, Tina Foss, Steven Hackel, Michael Hardwick, Susan Hector, Lisa Rubens, Jerry Sortomme, and Msgr. Weber. I am grateful for the hospitality of Charlotte Hughes and Chris Combs during

The ongoing relevance of the missions will be determined, therefore, in how stewards of the sites deploy these potent, multivalent spaces to engage visitors in the deeper structures of the narratives. The potential of the missions is to be not merely beloved shrines but 99

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National Park Service, Branch of Planning and State Cooperation,. La Purísima Mission State Park Archives, Advisory Committee file.

many research trips, and for the enduring encouragement and forbearance of my family. All photographs are by the author except for Figures 1 and 2.

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MULTIVOCALITY IN A CONTROLLED LANDSCAPE: MEMORY AND HERITAGE AT THE GETTYSBURG NATIONAL MILITARY PARK J. Loyal STEWART Anthropology Department, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, Massachusetts 02125, USA [email protected]

Abstract: The construction and citation of social memory at the Gettysburg National Military Park has always been very much tied to the physical landscape of the place. Since the early framing of the place as ‘hallowed ground,’ the landscape of the park has been continually inscribed with memory. This process has created a physical presence on the landscape through monumentation. The constant shaping of the natural environment by the Park Service has created a controlled space with a clear and coherent message for visitors. This control over space has led to conflict over issues of temporality; the park’s policy of ‘viewshed restoration’ calls for the destruction of non-period buildings on the battlefield, and is a publicly contested policy. The landscape of the park is the localization of social memories which have been cited by various actors and groups over the years, ranging from United States presidents to hate groups. This paper charts the process of memorialization and monumentation at the GNMP since its inception, taking as a focus the multivocalic citations of the social memories that have been inscribed into the landscape of the park. Of particular interest is the interplay between top-down control over, and bottom-up appropriation of, these memories. Keywords: Social memory, landscape, heritage, multivocality, monumentation, memorialization

own pasts, and to access how (and why) these spaces are controlled, presented and negotiated in the present.

Introduction The Gettysburg National Military Park is a landscape of multivocalic memory, of historical and contemporary placemaking, and of identity construction and heritage. It is also a space, an idea, a governmental distinction, an historical treasure, a vacation spot, a cemetery, and a park, among many other things. This place serves as one of the most powerful touchstones of meaning in the American social memory; it is all of these things and more to many different people. Each individual negotiates their own relationship with the place in their own fashion, though they are each guided by shared ideas held in common.

The construction and citation of social memory at the Gettysburg National Military Park has always been very much tied to the physical landscape of the place. Since the early framing of the place by President Abraham Lincoln as ‘hallowed ground’, the landscape of the park has been continually inscribed with memory. This process has created a physical presence on the landscape through monumentation, and the constant reshaping of the natural environment by the Park Service has created a tightly controlled space with a clearly articulated message directed at visitors. This control of space has led to conflict over issues of temporality; the park’s policy of ‘viewshed restoration’ calls for the destruction of nonperiod buildings on the battlefield, including one with possible historical or architectural value from the 20th century.

Traditional historical scholarship of the place focuses on the three days in July of 1863 when the small crossroads town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania became nationally famous for the cost of human life lost in the clash of armies that occurred across the town and surrounding fields. This mode of historical inquiry serves to locate all of the academic importance on the short section of the biography of Gettysburg which covers the years of the American Civil War.

The landscape of the park is the localization of a plethora of social memories which have been cited by various actors and groups over the years, ranging from United States presidents to hate groups. This multivocalic citation of the memories inscribed into the landscape at Gettysburg demonstrates the preeminence of the place as a conveyer of social messages. This paper will chart the process of memorialization and monumentation at the Gettysburg National Military Park since before its inception to the present, taking as a focus the multivocalic citations of the social memories which have been inscribed into the landscape of the park through these dual processes. Of particular interest will be the

But the engagement of the American people with this landscape stretches much further through time than this short span (Boritt 2006; Desjardin 2003). The story of commemoration, monumentation, and placemaking that has taken place over the course of 150 years is an incredible chance to access projects of both social memory construction and the citation of social memories. This allows us to access past actors conception of their 103

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inscribing practices ‘require that we do something that traps and holds information, long after the human organism has stopped informing’ (Connerton 1989, 73), and cites as examples monuments, markers, and other alterations to a landscape (inter alia).

interplay between attempts at top-down control over, and bottom-up appropriation of, these memories. Framing the Discussion The earliest discussions of social memory were framed by Halbwachs’ ‘collective memories,’ which he theorized were the shared memories of a group. This collective memory was a conglomeration of many individual memories; they exist only in the communication between group members of their individual memories. It is through this process of sharing that ‘predominate thoughts of the society’ come to the fore (Halbwachs 1992, 21-8). This consensus, as it occurs at a time removed from the remembered past, is shaped not only by the different people which are part of the remembering, but also by the cultural milieu wherein the past is being reconstructed (Halbwachs 1992, 46-51). As he says of individual memory, so too does he say of collective (social) memory:

Connerton (1989, 53-61) sees myth, and by extension social memory as a whole, as a ‘reservoir of meanings’ from which agents may draw endless permutations of lessons and ideas to stress or obfuscate in retellings and re-workings of the tales. These endless permutations are one of the first instances we see in social memory work, which hints at the ‘opening up’ of multivocality which comes after Connerton. Halbwachs’ conception of social memory as unified and monolithic (Halbwachs 1992, 218) finds its counterpoint in multivocality — the acknowledgement that each individual or sub-group will have its own take on social memories, based on their relation to that particular aspect of the past whether as a result of a contestation of power or just difference in interest.

… [it] is nevertheless a part or an aspect of group memory, since each impression and each fact, even if it apparently concerns a particular person exclusively, leaves a lasting memory only to the extent that one has thought it over- to the extent that it is connected with the thoughts that come from the social milieu (Halbwachs 1992, 53).

As will be demonstrated in this paper, multivocality and conflict are crucial and inescapably integral parts of all social memory; each individual and group shaped not only by their own thoughts, but by the currents of the social milieu within which they re-interpret the past. Scholarship of the past fifteen years has fruitfully incorporated these interpretive developments into the realm of anthropology, archaeology, and heritage (i.e. Ashmore 2009; Hendon 2010; Meskell 2005; Pauketat and Alt 2003; Shackel 2001; Van Dyke and Alcock 2003, inter alia). The more recent proponents of this type of scholarship have moved away from an explicit focus on multivocality, and instead incorporate it into the practices behind their work. Whether discussed as ‘opening up’ the dialogue or ‘complicating’ the narrative, this is a worthy direction for our field to travel. It is not yet, however, a path often taken in the realm of Civil War archaeology (but, see: Shackel 2001). The following paper seeks to redress this issue.

Halbwachs focuses on the reality of the present in relation to the formation and recollection of memories, both collective and individual. In other words, the ‘truth’ of these memories lay with the actors which recall that memory. Halbwachs (1992, 199) also pioneered the concept of memory as an ingrained part of an important place or landscape: ‘Sacred places thus commemorate not facts certified by contemporary witnesses but rather beliefs born perhaps not far from these places and strengthened by taking root in this environment.’ Halbwachs says that for a supernaturally based religious event to be concretely entered into the collective memory it needs a location to be bound to. Rather than being exclusively spiritual, collective memories can be inscribed in common locations with egalitarian access and therefore perpetuate and spread the memory over generations and into new groups. Public memorialization or localization of abstract ideas aided the process of remembering (Halbwachs 1992, 193-200).

An integral part of opening up the dialogue at a site like the Gettysburg National Military Park is broadening the temporal scope of any scholarly engagement with the site. By taking the long view, conflicts over memory come to the fore. Just as the past is conceived of through the present, so too does the past shape the present in which memories are cited. While Halbwachs stresses the importance of the present social milieu in the reconstructing of the past, Connerton also emphasizes the inverse:

Following this idea of emplaced memory, Connerton (1989) writes on practices which mediate this emplacement. Social memories are themselves conveyed and sustained through both inscribing practices and incorporating practices, which re-create the memories for the benefit of the newer generations. Connerton’s incorporating practices, while influential in its own right, deals with corporeal enactment of memory and therefore touches only tangentially on the subject of this paper. His inscribing practices however, deal directly with the localization of memory to a place. He states that

Concerning memory as such, we may note that our experience of the present very largely depends upon our knowledge of the past. We experience our present world in a context which is causally connected with past events and objects, and hence with reference to events and objects which we are not experiencing when we are experiencing the present… Hence the difficulty of extracting our past from our present: not simply because present factors tend to influence104

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growth, and the day to day lives of residents and visitors were all shaped by those three days.

some might want to say distort- our recollections of the past, but also because past factors tend to influence, or distort, our experience of the present (Connerton 1989, 2).

The residents of the town were heavily involved with the aftermath of the battle. It fell to them to care for the wounded and dying, to feed themselves and the thousands of temporary residents, and to bury those that had already died (Boritt 2006). These tasks took months, but by November 19, 1863, the nation was knocking at the door once more. This time they had come, not to fight, but to begin the commemorative process and monumentation that was to become the hallmark of Gettysburg. President Lincoln and a host of other dignitaries (politicians, military commanders, and orators) had come to preside over the dedication of the new national cemetery, where some reburials had already begun to take place. This was to be the first lesson in mass-tourism that the residents of Gettysburg were to receive. Everyone in town hosted visitors; people stayed three or four to the bed, floors were covered, hotels rented out rocking chairs on their porches, and some people, who were unable to find accommodations, roamed the street all night before the ceremonies (Boritt 2006, 69-90). Life at Gettysburg that was not related to the ceremonies stopped. After Lincoln’s famous speech, which was unenthusiastically received and vastly overshadowed by the main oration, the nation went back to the business of conducting war. Tourism never disappeared at Gettysburg, but it certainly declined in this period.

The interwoven relationship of the past and present when discussing issues of memory presents an interpretive challenge: how to discuss these issues in a clear and useful way, without detracting nuance from this complex relationship. I have adopted a roughly biographical frame for this discussion, moving the narrative temporally forward in as linear a manner as possible. I have, however, chosen to divide the body into two parts, the first referencing the creation of the monumental landscape at Gettysburg, the second the citation of the same. This division of creation and citation is for narrative and structural purposes only. As I hope to have made clear throughout, these two processes take place simultaneously and each is immensely influential on the manifestation of the other. To separate the one from the other entirely is to misunderstand the nature of memory. The past is always viewed, cited, and reconceived in the present. This engagement of the past in the present informs every aspect of memory citation and creation. This is especially true of social memory where direct personal engagement with the remembered past is not likely. Direct personal engagement does however, characterize the act of remembering. This direct personal engagement is of the physical as well as the mental variety— an act of remembering tied to a place is directly prompted and influenced by the landscape within which the memory has been inscribed.

The Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association (GBMA) was the first organization to preserve the land from development and guide the creation of the memorial landscape. This organization was responsible for placing the Park on the memorializing track which it currently manifests. Started by the interest and agitation of private citizens at Gettysburg, the GBMA was incorporated by the State of Pennsylvania in 1864. This body was responsible for purchasing and preserving land as well as administering the placing of monuments on the field of battle. In 1894 the Federal Government assumed control over the management and ownership of the battlefield, placing it under administrative control of the War Department. It was in 1933 that the park system was reorganized and the battlefield at Gettysburg was placed under the direction of the National Park Service (NPS), who are responsible for its administration to this day (Unrau 1991, v-viii). These three periods of time (GBMA, War Department, and NPS) can be conceived of as having different trends developing during their tenure: Monumentation, Consolidation, and Heritage, respectively. There is obviously overlap of these trends in the other time periods, but each period does have its own emphasis and/or focus.

The Creation of a Commemorative Landscape The Gettysburg National Military Park is a federally maintained battlefield commemorative area abutting the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A part of the landscape there has been set aside in one way or another for the purposes of commemoration since the construction of the National Soldiers Cemetery in 1863 (New York Times 1869), just a few months after the battle. The process continued for many years, first as a private attempt at commemoration then, later, on a national scale, by the US Government. This provides a tailor-made opportunity for interpretation of the processes of commemoration, placemaking and monumentation. The landscape that would become the Gettysburg National Military Park (GNMP) includes the town of Gettysburg, which existed before (and developed in concert with) the commemorative landscape that followed in the aftermath of the battle in early July of 1863. As this paper is in some ways a reaction against studies of Gettysburg which address only the three days in July, this paper will not address (in depth) concerns of tactics, strategy or historical reconstructions of the battlefield. Suffice it to say that between July 1st 1863 and July 3rd, the fate of the town was decided. For the next one hundred and fifty years the identity of the town, the occupations of its residents, the size and layout of its

It is also important to note that these distinctions are not drawn to point to a temporal cut-off for when memory stopped being made or inscribed at Gettysburg, and when citation began. Memory making and citation are dual processes which occur simultaneously and affect one another. Just as memory making does not stop at 105

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materials; a sad victory of fiscal reality over the Ohioans attempt to out-compete their fellow veterans in an arms race of monumentation.

Gettysburg, neither does the inscriptions of those memories into the landscape. These memories, meanings, and messages are constantly negotiated, altered, and manipulated through the materiality of the commemorative landscape. This process continues to this day, though it began in earnest in 1878 with the placement of the first monument on the field (Unrau 1991, vi), dedicated to the death of a Union general.

In addition to the controls on building materials, there were the controls on monument placement. This top down control over spatiality also presents a false consensus which hides an historical controversy. The placement of the marker of the 72nd Pennsylvania regiment was highly contested by the GBMA in the 1880s when it was first proposed by the surviving veterans of that group. During the battle, when the Confederates charged across the field during Pickett’s charge, the 72nd was placed in reserve behind the front line at a distance of about an hundred yards. When the time came for them to move forward and engage the enemy, they refused the orders of the commanding generalseveral times. It was not until after the surrender of the Confederates, who had reached the stone wall, that the regiment moved forward to the line of battle (Desjardin 2003, 161-2).

Regimental monuments, the vast majority of the markers on the field now, began to appear the year after. The frequency of their placement exploded in the 1880s. The GBMA by this time was beginning to be controlled not by local Pennsylvanians but by members of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a national veteran’s organization consisting of members of the Union forces during the war. This contributed heavily to the exclusion of Southern unit markers in this period. The only Southern monument to be placed during the tenure of the GBMA was the 2nd Maryland Infantry in 1886 (Unrau 1991, 67). This was just one of the many controls that the GBMA exercised over monumentation on the field.

When the time came in the 1880s for the regiment to place its marker, the GBMA ruled that it had to place it not on the line of battle where it now stands, but at their position 100 yards to the rear. The members of the 72nd wanted to commemorate their actions, and physically represent their regiment, on the line of battle to secure for themselves part of the valor of posterity. When they were denied their desired placement, they sued the GBMA. The legal proceedings would eventually stretch to the State Supreme Court, where it was decided that the 72nd could place its monument on the line of battle (Desjardin 2003, 161-5). It still stands there today, the bronze soldier charging into the breach of the line, in direct contradiction to historical fact.

During this period, they set regulations for stylistic requirements of monuments, limiting what they considered ostentation and regulating the location of monuments. This early limitation heavily influenced the uniformity of appearance which most monuments evidence: We [the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association] are not unmindful of the fact that Gettysburg is now classed among the great battles of the world, or that this field is already the best marked battlefield in the world, or that it is our desire that the artistic character of the monuments shall be of the same high order (Bachelder 1887 cited in Desjardin 2003, 155).

The material presence on the landscape of the regimental marker hides the convoluted story of its placement, and also hides the reality of the actions of the 72nd Pennsylvania on that day. But the marker also serves as an index through which to investigate the memory of that regiment, and the battle. It demonstrates that the top down control of the GBMA and NPS is not all encompassing, and that there is room for multivocality even in the creation of the commemorative landscape, not just its citation.

The GBMA enforced rules regulating the spatial placement of monuments on lines of battle, as well as rules regulating the building material, stylistic elements and even exercised some control over the inscriptions on the monuments themselves. Limiting the construction of the monuments to the use of granite and bronze as building materials has had an obvious impact on the sculptural appearance of the field, lending an appearance of unity of purpose. This veneer of intentionality and consensus obfuscates the reality of the process. The various agents and groups responsible for these monuments were engaged in a struggle of competitive self-aggrandizement with one another, constantly trying to out-do and one-up. This can be seen in cases of units, like the 1st Minnesota, which would not erect a monument to themselves which cost ‘less than $12,000 or inferior to any on the Battlefield which marks a single regiment’ (Desjardin 2003, 155). Also demonstrative is the case of the 4th Ohio Infantry, which erected a massive 32 foot tall monument (Desjardin 2003, 156). The monument now stands at 12 feet, the missing 20 feet having been lost over time due to poor building

This negotiation between the top-down control over the monuments by the GBMA and the bottom-up maneuvering of the individual veteran’s organizations constituted the give and take process of the creation of the early commemorative landscape at Gettysburg. This process was multivocalic and sometimes contested, but the end result (due to the controls on spatiality and materiality) is a landscape of monuments which presents itself to the viewer as a unified and intentional construction. The messages it presents are naturalized by this uniformity and, in a way, manufacture a shared agency of the monuments themselves, which will be discussed later in the case of equestrian statues of the General Staff. 106

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When the administration of what was now known as the Gettysburg National Military Park (GNMP) passed from the War Department to the National Park Service in 1933, all of these trends continued. Shortly after the NPS took over the administration at Gettysburg, hundreds of veterans, and thousands of onlookers, descended on the town for the 75th reunion of the battle. This was to be the largest reunion ever hosted at Gettysburg, and the ‘last hurrah’ for many of the veterans. The trends of inclusion, commemoration, consolidation, and pomp and circumstance from reunions past were continued at the 1938 reunion, but we see them coming together to begin a new process at Gettysburg. It was a process born of national reconciliation, of national thanksgiving for the veterans and of national identity; this new process, born in 1938, has shaped the social memory of Gettysburg to this day. In 1938, Gettysburg became a symbol of a unified America—politically, culturally, mythologically, and in some ways spiritually. Before this, the memories of Gettysburg had been cited in dialogues of regional or individual import and commemorated in much the same way. This temporal moment can be seen as a signal of a transition from Gettysburg as a place of personal memory to Gettysburg as a place of social memory. With the passing of the veterans, Gettysburg did not lose importance on the national scene, but rather increased in significance. After this, Gettysburg is cited as an American place of meaning, and was incorporated into the national narrative of identity.

The GBMA was only the first of the three administrative bodies at Gettysburg to exercise top-down control in order to enforce standardization, or else an idea of how the past should look. The mission of the War Department at Gettysburg, starting in 1894, had a similar intention. Earlier in this paper the period of history under the auspices of the War Department was characterized as a period of consolidation; this consisted of land purchases, Federal unit markings, Southern inclusion and, most importantly, passage of federal law, creating the Gettysburg National Military Park, and preserving it as a cultural heritage area. There was an efflorescence of reunions in this period as well. Before this, there had been a tradition under the GBMA, of Union officers visiting and touring the battlefield together on occasion, and a few examples of veteran’s organizations at the regimental level visiting the field on anniversaries. Toward the end of the tenure of the GBMA, the Grand Army of the Republic (the umbrella veteran’s organization for all the Union soldiers) began hosting a yearly encampment on the field. However, all of these were rather ad hoc events, and sparsely attended. Furthermore, only one event (a Union regimental reunion) invited Southerners to participate, and even then very few came. Under the War Department however, the trend was to change; massive reunions hosted with government money and planning, national figures as speakers, and the inclusion of Southern veterans were all to become themes during this period.

When President Franklin Roosevelt presided over the commemorative events at the 1938 reunion, he became part of a trend of re-appropriation of these older messages, which were used to present a new national narrative. The theme of this reunion, both officially and from all appearances in actuality, was reconciliation and reunion among old friends and old enemies. The veterans lived in a large tent city erected by the US Army mixed together regardless of civil war affiliation. The remaining veterans on both sides of the conflict re-enacted Pickett’s Charge, though when the Southerners reached the Northern positions they engaged in ceremonial handshakes rather than hand-to-hand combat (Figure 1). This had been a tradition since the 50th anniversary of the battle; the physical enactment of the past with a vastly different ending was staged by the organizers of the event and reflected the implicit theme of the reunion: ReUnion.

The inclusion of a Southerner on the commission, which was responsible for the running of the Park, signaled both an ever-spreading feeling among Americans that Southern veterans ought to be included in the commemorative process, as well as the Government’s need to include people from both sides of the issue. The result was the gradual placement of Southern monuments in the early years, and a flood in the years between the 50th and 75th reunions (Unrau 1991). Also during this period of consolidation, the directors concretized what we now think of as the landscape of the Park; by regulating the appearance of the field, repairing and constructing fences (stone and wood) as well maintaining defensive infantry structures, and perhaps most importantly by solidifying the road system which crisscrosses the park. This is the truly formative period of landscape appearance at Gettysburg. The appearance of the landscape was standardized and partitioned by the layout of the avenues, the regulated maintenance and manicuring of the fields normalized their static appearance to visitors, and inclusion of Southern monuments not only added to the splendor of the field in their number, but also helped to reshape the narrative of the battle. Furthermore, during this period, the government set a legal precedent which allowed for the use of eminent domain to aid in the preservation of cultural heritage lands, a point to which the discussion will return when it reaches the turn of the 21st century. All of these processes are clearly seen in the changing nature of the reunions which took place during this period.

At the close of the reunion FDR dedicated the Eternal Peace Memorial, a huge stone pillar capped with an eternal flame that represents the everlasting peace between the two belligerents of the Civil War (NPS 1940). Ironically however, the peace light’s message does not extend outside of the borders of the United States. Even as he dedicated the memorial in 1938, the President directly compared the challenges faced by the nation in 1863 and the challenges faced by the nation then, namely the situation in Europe. This monument then was not a monument to peace on earth, nor was it to a specific unit, person, or group at Gettysburg. In fact, by 1938 it made sense to place a monument at Gettysburg that 107

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Figure 1. Veterans from both sides of the Battle of Gettysburg shake hands at the scene of Pickett’s Charge, during the 75th reunion of the battle. (US Signal Corps photo, provided by the Special Collections and Archives of Gettysburg College)

commemorated and celebrated America, the American people, and their unity. By 1938, the process of localization of ‘American-ness’ at Gettysburg was already well underway.

The Citation of a Commemorative Landscape The construction of a landscape of memory at Gettysburg has always taken place in a context of citation of that same landscape. The interpretations of monuments have always been to some extent individually mediated; sometimes based on state affiliation, conflict affiliation or even (early on) personal remembrances. These personal and social memories effected not only the construction, but also the citations of this landscape (through interaction with, interpretation of, and allusion to). The largest group of multivocalic voices in contemporary Gettysburg would, of course, be the Southern supporters, running counter to the themes of Northern victory and Federal re-unification. This faction accounts for a large portion of the visitors to the field, and they make their presence known through signs and symbols of the Confederacy which adorn their cars, T-Shirts and the hats of their children. This contemporary point of view on the battle is informed by a long historical trajectory, which can be traced back to the Southern Revivalist and Lost Cause viewpoints of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Though not through a material or archaeological lens, this topic has been covered in detail by historians (see, Desjardin 2003; Reardon 2002), and will therefore not be dealt with in this paper. Rather, it will take as a focus a phenomenon of multivocality at the Park which has a similar historical trajectory, and which is still present at the contemporary Park, but which has received little scholarly attention: hate groups.

Prior to this date, Gettysburg had been a place of fractured remembrances; of individual and group memory, or of local or state identity. The official discourse imposed upon it under the auspices of the federal government, combined with the passing of both time and veterans, enabled the re-appropriation of the place by the President at the closing ceremonies, which reflected the changing nature of this now national symbol. The Peace Light on Oak Ridge is one of many material signs for this particular change in meaning which was occurring, and which had been occurring, for some time. Multivocality in memory certainly remained, and remains to this day. But the ground-swell of popular conception of the battle had turned, and the top down narrative turned to meet it. This in turn, however, began a period in which the top-down messages of the NPS would be met with bottom up resistance. The multivocalic citations of memory at the field had become the deviation, not the norm. This continues to this day; it can be seen in benign ways like unorthodox interpretations of monuments, state’s pride, and Southern pride. It is contested by resistance to Park policies of viewshed restoration and conflict over the end of history. It is challenged by the citations of hate groups. These contemporary resistances or negotiations of the top down messages of commemoration and memory at the Park have historical foundations, and the ways that contemporary groups interpret the past are reflected in the ways in which past actors have conceived of their own past.

One of the earliest examples of hate group public citation of the field came in 1926 when the Klu Klux Klan held a massive rally at Gettysburg, on the very hill where President Roosevelt was to place the Peace Light in little more than a decade. More than 10,000 Klansmen 108

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Figure 2. Photo in a Gettysburg College student scrapbook from 1926. Members of the KKK marching in the town of Gettysburg for a rally of 10,000. (Special Collections and Archives of Gettysburg College)

Figure 3. Photo in a Gettysburg College student scrapbook from 1926. Members of the KKK marching in the town of Gettysburg for a rally of 10,000. (Special Collections and Archives of Gettysburg College)

This is in contradiction to present usages of the Park by the contemporary KKK and other hate groups. Exercising their constitutional rights, the KKK, Aryan Nation, and others have held mixed-organization rallies of much smaller size in recent years. In 2006 and 2010, these people have held rallies in such iconic locations as the National Cemetery. In contrast to the hate group rallies of the 1920s, however, these are surrounded by police cordons, attended by few and publicly protested. The modern town is both ashamed at the presence of these groups among them, and angry at the costs they are required to pay as a municipal body for the police forces

attended the rally, and it drew crowds of onlookers from the town and the surrounding countryside; the Klansmen were greeted with enthusiasm and loud cheers from the population when they proceeded through town (Desjardin 2003). Gettysburg College students of the time were excited enough to go out to the parade, photograph the proceedings, and place those photographs in their scrapbooks as mementos of the occasion (Figures 2 and 3). The activities of the Klan in this period were openly publicizedand attracted a great many people, as contemporary leaflets from nearby areas illustrate (Figure 4). 109

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For many years there was an ‘insider story’ about these equestrian statues; it linked the appearance of the statue to the fate of the specific general during the battle. Until the 1990s, it was an accident of fate that, when a general was depicted on his horse, the number of hooves of the horse that were not touching the ground reflected the outcome of the general in the battle. The pattern supposed that one hoof off the ground meant wounded in battle, and two hooves meant killed in action. The commissioners and sculptures responsible for these horses had no contact with each other or any knowledge of the pattern. But, because of their aggregation on the same field, visitors drew patterns between them that shaped the way future generations interpreted the monuments. The fact that the depictions of the generals were all alike and all contained in the same landscape outweighed the actual messages that the agents responsible for the monuments may have been trying to convey. The intentionality of the commissioners is not always transmitted perfectly through the layers of interpretation people lay upon the monuments. In fact, due to the creation of this gigantic landscape of monuments at Gettysburg, individual monuments are seldom examined as discrete objects, but rather as part of the larger whole. The agency of the commissioners is to a certain extent obfuscated or redirected by the manufactured agency of the place itself.

Figure 4. Pamphlet advertising a local Klan meeting in 1928, indicating the openness with which this organization was operating in the area at the time. (Special Collections and Archives of Gettysburg College) which separate the hate groups from the protestors (Messeder 2010). The hate groups, however, do persist. Presently and in the past, hate groups have found the landscape of Gettysburg to be a powerful conveyer of meaning. Despite the history of pro-union and proequality messages at Gettysburg (Lincoln’s address, national reunions, and the Peace Light), these groups find the landscape of Gettysburg to be inscribed with messages and memories which conform to their own ideals. This multivocality may stem from the fact that the landscape at Gettysburg is charged with meaning for so many Americans that it can be incorporated into almost any citation of ‘American-ness.’ This co-option of space, in order to legitimize non-standard messages, is grounded in the acknowledgement of the place’s importance in American memory. These groups’ ultra-conservative messages use Gettysburg as the localization of their values, citing both the tragic loss of the South and the triumph of America in the same breath.

This pattern was purposefully broken in the 1990s with the dedication of the statue to General Longstreet (Figure 5). Not only was he not placed on the traditional pedestal, but furthermore he was depicted as a general in action, his horse with a hoof off the ground as he rears it to a stop. According to the now defunct ‘insider story’, one would assume Longstreet had been wounded in battle; he was not. This is another instance of contested monumentation, but also of changing trends in historical thought as well as commemorative appropriateness. The memorialization of Longstreet took so long to occur at Gettysburg because, for years after the war, he was demonized as responsible for the horrible loss suffered during Pickett’s charge, as the commanding general of that action. It was not until the late 20th century, with new scholarship and trends of historiographic thought that this image began to change in the academic community. It spread to the public in the film Gettysburg which reached millions of Americans, and helped touch off a resurgence of popularity for Civil War history as a whole. Longstreet is treated very kindly in the film, which raised the public’s awareness of him and the lack of a statue to him on the field. This same impetus however, is the cause for some consternation among the Civil War community — there are some negative feelings about the appearance of Longstreet, as well as the nature of the monument. Some believe the man depicted in bronze to look more like the actor who portrayed Longstreet than Longstreet himself. The breaking of this unofficial code was a direct challenge to traditionalism at Gettysburg, and the debates and comments it has fostered demonstrates the ongoing processes of multivocalic memory making at the park.

This is one of the fantastic research opportunities afforded to us when asking these sorts of questions. By tracing the practices of engagement with the landscape that people have had over the years, focusing on questions of construction and citation of the memorial landscape, we are able to access long historical trends of similar interactions. Studying these hate groups opens up not only the ability to study the contemporary populations’ conception of the past, but the exciting ability to study the historical populations’ conception of their own past. This multilayered interpretive question (‘how did past actors conceive of their own past?’) is a fascinating way to approach studies of emplaced social memory. Of course, there is also great utility in examining the contemporary conception of the past as represented in the memorial landscape. How people create, modify and perpetuate social memories of places without any topdown direction can be particularly illustrative of this process. One social memory in particular can demonstrate this process; that of the interpretation of equestrian statues of General Staff memorialized at the Park. 110

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Figure 5. The Longstreet equestrian statue, which breaks the unofficial rules of General Staff statuary on the field. Note the lack of a pedestal, and the rearing horse. (Photo by author)

to be located right on the Union line at the Angle. Built in the mid 20th century, the construction of this set of structures required the relocation of several unit markers from their original place on the field (Byrne 2008). This is the same area which is the most densely monumented space of the field, and which is most heavily visited. Their center was occupying prime real estate in that area, but because it was a non-historic building they destroyed it. The new visitors’ center is constructed in a large depression between two main roads further out from the field, which lowers the visibility of the structure from either of the roads. The structure itself has also been constructed to look like an historic round barn. So, even if one did catch a glimpse, one would not necessarily have any idea as to what the building was. This low impact, unassuming structure does not impede into the visual landscape of the Park in the way the old building had done.

The NPS policy of ‘viewshed restoration’ at the GNMP is another instance of a contemporary touchstone of multivocality. This top-down governmental policy seeks to restore the battlefield to its appearance as it would have been around the time of the battle, and is a continuation of similarly intentioned policies of the past (Byrne 2008; Unrau 1991). Viewshed restoration calls for the destruction of non-historic structures, the reforestation of large areas, and the re-planting of certain historic crops and orchards. This decision bespeaks an attempt at control over every aspect of the landscape within the Park, both man-made structures and natural areas. This control is very fine grained, seeking to hold the landscape in temporal stasis. The NPS is trying to reproduce an historic landscape by manipulating almost every variable they can control. Of course, it’s important to note that the removal of monuments and markers was never considered, despite the fact that these were not placed on the field until decades after the fighting. The NPS’s stated reason for its policy is that it is supposed to allow visitors to more easily understand the decision making processes of the generals in charge of the battle. For this reason, over the past few years, the federal government has been purchasing private homes on or near the fields and removing them. Structures of their own construction are also not out of the scope.

A part of the old building however, had been deemed to be eligible for enrollment in the National Register of Historic Places. This building, known colloquially and referred to hereafter as the Cyclorama Center, had been constructed in 1962 and designed by noted architect Richard Neutra. For years it had housed a famous 1880s panoramic painting of the battle by Philip Philippoteaux and had become the central part of a visitors engagement with the Park landscape, as intended by the NPS under a directive known as ‘Mission 66’ (Byrne 2008; Unrau 1991).

By tightly controlling the smallest details of the landscape, the Park Service is attempting to hold that landscape in a temporal stasis. We often talk about landscapes as palimpsests; if we carry that metaphor at this particular site, one could say that the NPS is scraping away the last 150 years of ink and retracing the faded words from three days in the past. They’ve even gone so far as to tear down their own visitor’s center, which used

However, due to the viewshed restoration efforts, this building had been slated for demolition. A private organization interested in the preservation of recent historical places sued the park service in order to prevent 111

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influences him- or herself, the memories of individuals through time.

this demolition. After years of legal battles (Bronin and Byrne 2012, 182-90) the NPS completed the legal requirements to demolish the building; this was completed just a few months prior to the 150th anniversary celebrations of the battle in 2013.

By acknowledging this fact, we should be prompted to move our discussions of the history of places like Gettysburg out of such tight temporal limits. The story of commemoration, monumentation, and placemaking that has taken place over the last 150 years is an incredible chance to access projects of social memory construction and citation, to access past actors conception of their own pasts, and to access how these spaces are controlled, presented and negotiated in the present.

This example calls for some interesting questions. Does the landscape of the battlefield include the buildings built to facilitate the commemoration of the field? Which buildings are covered under this statement? Is it really only the three days in July that is worth commemorating, or is there not something else which might be worth official attention? The resistance to the top-down policy of viewshed restoration evidenced in the struggle for the Cyclorama (among other examples) is a demonstration of the bottom-up and multivocalic citations of memory at the Gettysburg landscape. For supporters of the Cyclorama, the recent past – perhaps their own past, the memories of their childhoods – or modern architecture are more worthy of preservation than the ‘recovery’ of an historic viewshed.

Acknowledgements This project has benefitted from the guidance and support of many people and institutions. It was originally conceived as an undergraduate honors thesis while I was at Gettysburg College, under the direction of Dr. Julia Hendon, to whom I owe the greatest debt of thanks. Dr. David Landon at UMASS Boston encouraged me to deliver it as a paper at the 2012 Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) in Buffalo, where I was lucky enough to be included in Dr. Kurt Spring’s panel, which eventually developed into this volume. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Kurt personally for the opportunity, as well as the guidance throughout the publication process. The Special Collections of Gettysburg College family has always been very supportive of me, and that was just as true when it came to this project – thank you for the rights to publish your images, among the many other kindnesses. Finally, I would be entirely remiss if I did not mention the Andrew W. Mellon Summer Research Grant for Social Sciences I received in 2010 which supported my honors thesis research. Thank you to Gettysburg College, and particularly Assistant Provost Maureen Forestal, for making that wonderful resource available to students. Though I benefitted greatly from the input of these people and others throughout the process, any errors, omissions, or flaws are as always entirely my own.

Conclusions Since its inception as a memorialized landscape nearly a century and a half ago the Gettysburg National Military Park has been continually inscribed with memory. This process has often taken the form of monumentation to the memory of individuals, groups or political units. It has created an extensively memorialized landscape which both captures and evokes multivocalic interpretations of the past. It allows the anthropologist or archaeologist to access, not only contemporary conceptualizations of social memory, but also, how agents in the past conceptualized their own pasts and memories. The total control over the natural and manmade environment which the NPS is attempting to exercise at Gettysburg is evidence of the top down control which directs the official discourse at the Park. By attempting to create an historical landscape, the NPS is de-validating the history of the place that post-dated July 3, 1863. This top down control is met every day with bottom up resistance in the form of multivocalic citations of the memories inscribed into the landscape of the park.

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The visitor to Gettysburg engages in an active dialogue with the past. This dialogue is recursive and generative, not only consumptive. People that visit are not only remembering the past, they are creating the past and altering the landscape. Memory at Gettysburg is not just about the battle, nor only about American values and history, memory also includes the experience of the battlefield itself: the monuments, the visitors’ centers, and the views. Gettysburg is viewed as a whole, as an unchanging landscape of memories, both national and private. But, the experience of being in place at Gettysburg is one of remembering and memory making. The visitor there is engaged in a dialectic relationship with the landscape that prompts memories within the visitor, but also inscribes additional meaning onto the landscape. This is a true landscape of multivocality then, where each individual both is influenced by, and also

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