Postcolonialism, Heritage, and the Built Environment: New Approaches to Architecture in Archaeology (SpringerBriefs in Archaeology) 3030608573, 9783030608576

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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN ARCHAEOLOGY

Jessica L. Nitschke Marta Lorenzon  Editors

Postcolonialism, Heritage, and the Built Environment New Approaches to Architecture in Archaeology 123

SpringerBriefs in Archaeology

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Jessica L. Nitschke  •  Marta Lorenzon Editors

Postcolonialism, Heritage, and the Built Environment New Approaches to Architecture in Archaeology

Editors Jessica L. Nitschke Department of Ancient Studies Stellenbosch University Stellenbosch, South Africa

Marta Lorenzon Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland

ISSN 1861-6623     ISSN 2192-4910 (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Archaeology ISBN 978-3-030-60857-6    ISBN 978-3-030-60858-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60858-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Archaeology, Architecture, and the Postcolonial Critique ������������������    1 Jessica L. Nitschke and Marta Lorenzon 2 Architecture and Gender: Lessons from Building Archaeology in Africa����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   13 Marta Lorenzon 3 Boats, Burials, and Beehives: Seeking the Subaltern in the Fortifications at Isthmia, Greece��������������������������������������������������   27 Jon M. Frey 4 Postcolonial Manifestations of African Spatiality in Europe: The Invisible “Public” Spaces of Ghent������������������������������������������������   43 Luce Beeckmans 5 “No Houses and Skin Garments, Sheep, Poultry and Fruits of the Earth”: Aboriginal Australia, Narratives of Human History, and the Built Environment ������������������������������������������������������   59 Martin Porr 6 Colonial Past and Neocolonial Present: The Monumental Arch of Tadmor-Palmyra and So-called Roman Architecture in the Near East����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   73 Jessica L. Nitschke 7 The Archaeology of Remembering: Colonial Specters and the Processes of Repackaging the Materiality of Violence, Displacement, and Disenfranchisement����������������������������   91 Vuyiswa Lupuwana and Navashni Naidoo

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8 Multicultural Burial Spaces and Cities: Constructing Identity and Memory with Postcolonial Kuala Lumpur Chinese Cemeteries����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  109 Yat Ming Loo 9 Conserve the Sacred: The Profound Needs of the Indigenous Communities of Arica y Parinacota, Chile��������������������������������������������  129 Magdalena Pereira Campos and Cristian Heinsen Planella

Contributors

Luce  Beeckmans  Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium Jon M. Frey  Department of Art, Art History and Design, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA Cristian Heinsen Planella  Fundación Altiplano, Arica, Chile Yat Ming Loo  University of Nottingham Ningbo, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China Marta  Lorenzon  Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Vuyiswa Lupuwana  Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa Navashni  Naidoo  Department of GeoSciences/African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa Jessica  L.  Nitschke  Department of Ancient Studies, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa Magdalena Pereira Campos  Fundación Altiplano, Arica, Chile Martin  Porr  Archaeology/Centre for Rock Art Research and Management, University of Western Australia, Albany, WA, Australia ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

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Chapter 1

Archaeology, Architecture, and the Postcolonial Critique Jessica L. Nitschke and Marta Lorenzon

Abstract  The built environment is central to human activity, serving as a stage upon which social activity takes place and is shaped. Built spaces not only reflect people’s needs and beliefs but also affect their experiences. As the material manifestation of human values and histories, buildings are instruments of power and enforcers of hierarchy, but also serve as powerful sites for protest or resistance. Architecture and the built environment should then hold a central place in postcolonial archaeology and especially the decolonization movement, which seeks to rebuild narratives of place through the empowerment of the historically underrepresented. However, despite the significance of the postcolonial critique for both archaeology and contemporary architectural theory, its impact has not been felt very deeply at the point where these two disciplines intersect. The first half of this introductory chapter summarizes the influence of postcolonial theory on the study of the built environment and explores its applicability in the analysis and interpretation of architecture from archaeological contexts. The second half summarizes the main themes of the volume as well as the individual contributions themselves. Keywords  Archaeological theory · Postcolonial archaeology · Decolonisation · Built environment · Architecture

The built environment is central to human activity, serving as a stage upon which social activity takes place and is shaped. Built spaces not only reflect people’s needs and beliefs but also affect their experiences, playing a key role in the articulation of identity and sense of self (Archer 2005; Blier 1994). Buildings are in a continuous process of transformation and becoming, from the moment they are imagined J. L. Nitschke (*) Department of Ancient Studies, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa M. Lorenzon Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland © The Author(s) 2020 J. L. Nitschke, M. Lorenzon (eds.), Postcolonialism, Heritage, and the Built Environment, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60858-3_1

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through their various phases of construction, occupation, appropriation, remodeling, recycling, abandonment, and destruction (Segaud 2010; Lawrence-Zúñiga 2001). As a culmination of countless small actions involved in creating, inhabiting, and maintaining space, the built environment presents a dynamic repository of information on invisible actors across time, which is in part why architecture has long been one of the “cornerstones” of archaeology (Bille and Sørenson 2016: 4). As the material manifestation of human values and histories, buildings are instruments of power and enforcers of hierarchy. Architecture has been (and still is) used by the wealthy and ruling classes to impose order, manipulate identities, and control social relationships (Yeoh 2003; Coslett 2019; Weizman 2012). At the same time, built structures—whether monumental or modest, fixed or ephemeral—can serve as a powerful symbol or medium for protest and resistance. Constructed spaces are “sites of assertion, contestation, and subversion of difference” (Hosagrahar 2012: 82); as such, the application of the postcolonial critique to the built environment is both natural and essential. Indeed, over the last 30 years or so, there has emerged within the fields of architectural theory and urban studies a rich body of research embracing the postcolonial critique, which we broadly define here as the critical examination of the cultural and ideological legacies of colonialism and imperialism (Sidaway 2000: 594; Liebmann 2008: 2). This embrace has been facilitated by the increase of anthropologically-­ informed theoretical approaches to architecture and space since the mid-to-late twentieth century. These approaches have tried to steer the field away from simply focusing on the aesthetic or technical characteristics of architecture and towards viewing buildings as social objects (Buchli 2013; Segaud 2010; Amerlinck 2001; Ingold 2000; Rapoport 1969). A concerted effort has been made to open up urban histories to diverse viewpoints, to “re-think … the connection between production, power relationships, architecture and urbanism” (Loo 2017: 631). The postcolonial critique has provided architectural historians and theorists with frameworks that allow them to deconstruct traditional Eurocentric conceptions of architecture; challenge the notion of a singular Western modernity; reflect on how design is combined with policy to reinforce relationships of power; and highlight subordinated spaces and agency (Hosagrahar 2012; King 2003; Nalbantoğlu and Wong 1997; Kusno 2000; Akcan 2014; James-Chakraborty 2014). As for archaeology, the field has undergone its own sustained period of critical self-reflection with respect to its origins and complicity in the perpetuation of colonial power structures (Effros and Lai 2018; Lydon and Rizvi 2010). The postcolonial critique has provided the means for archaeologists to confront how core intellectual aspects of the discipline, such as the ordering of the past and conceptions of cultural identity, are enmeshed in modern colonial systems and nationalism (Croucher 2010; Trigger 1984). This self-awareness has intensified in recent years, as archaeologists have increasingly recognized the “deeply colonial, racist, and sexist epistemology of our field” (Rizvi 2015: 156). The postcolonial critique now has an established place within archaeological theory and practice, as scholars increasingly rely on postcolonial discourse to deconstruct Western traditions of knowledge that have produced distorted narratives of human history and culture (Johnson 2019; Gosden 2012; van Dommelen 2011).

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Imperialism, (neo)colonialism, racism, and sexism are of course still very much present in the world. Archaeologists, in their role as intermediaries between the materiality of the past and human society in the present, have begun to think more critically about the social impact of their individual actions and of the field as a whole. Some archaeologists and organizations (e.g. the World Archaeological Congress) are pushing the field beyond epistemological awareness towards a decolonization of the discipline, asking how we can undo or correct the harm caused by colonialism and the knowledge systems it produced (Harris and Cipolla 2017: 180). Decolonization in archaeology focuses on supporting indigenous communities and individuals in expressing their own perspectives on materiality, developing their own archaeological practices, and asserting their ownership with regards to knowledge, objects, and land (Sabloff 2016; Wynne-Jones and Fleisher 2015). Although “decolonization” is sometimes used interchangeably with “postcolonialism”, it is important to acknowledge that decolonization is not simply a metaphor or analytical framework, but rather an intrinsically political action concerned with redress and social justice (Rizvi 2019; Petti et al. 2013). Architecture and the built environment should hold a central place in postcolonial archaeology and especially the decolonization movement, which seeks to rebuild narratives of place through the empowerment of the historically underrepresented. However, despite the significance of the postcolonial critique for both archaeology and contemporary architectural theory, its impact has not been felt very deeply at the point where these two disciplines intersect. There remains a lack of focused studies in archaeological literature that use postcolonial approaches to rethink methodologies and frameworks employed in the study of architecture, which is often treated separately from other categories of material culture (Lucas 2016: 105). Archaeology emerged out of European antiquarian interest in the aesthetic qualities of ancient ruins, and the methods and attitudes towards architecture that developed then remain strong in the field today. Analyses are still based on neat typologies and strictly delineated categories that have their origins in Western colonial ordering of space and place (Bille and Sørenson 2016). Enlightenment attitudes about technology vis-à-vis progress continue to influence archaeological approaches and attitudes towards landscape and building (Porr 2018). In colonial and intercultural contexts in particular, evolutionary and diffusionist models of culture continue to be used to guide interpretations (Croucher 2010). There is still a tendency to rely on false dichotomies such as center-periphery, West-East, and colonizer-colonized, which oversimplify entangled cultural dynamics over time. These shortcomings reflect the reality that we are “traveling towards a post-­ colonial archaeology rather than having arrived there” (Gosden 2012: 259). The postcolonial critique will continue to shape archaeology in significant ways, as researchers try to deal with the understanding that their own biases, training, and privilege are just as much a variable in archaeological analysis as is the survival of the record (Rizvi 2015: 161). In pushing the discourse forward, especially with regards to the built environment, it is worth reflecting on some of the challenges of applying the postcolonial critique to the study of built spaces of the past.

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One challenge lies in the primary methodology used to document and interpret built spaces of the past, namely drawing and typologies. Two-dimensional plans and sections are the bread-and-butter of fieldwork and publication, but this method of observation and representation tends to isolate architecture and treat it as a static object, taking it out of its time, place, and human context (Bille and Sørenson 2016: 7). The focus on ground plans comes at the expense of equally important aspects for understanding not only the nature of the building structure (e.g. construction materials, building methods, roofing, floor materials, wall coverings, furnishings) but also the experiential, i.e. how people interact with the space. Ground plans and elevation drawings often stand in for physical buildings in reports and publications, becoming the basis for typological categories. As a result, discussion of function and meaning of a building can become fixed in an artificial way. To successfully apply the postcolonial critique to the study of the built environment in archaeology, it will be necessary to transform traditional practices of description, representation, and analysis in ways that will allow us to more easily conceptualize the full phenomenology of built spaces in the past. The problems of representation and interpretation of the built environment in archaeology have not gone unacknowledged. There have been efforts to bring a more anthropological approach to the subject, especially since the 1990s, when a number of studies emerged seeking to confront the reality that “archaeologists have not been very successful in formulating a theory of architectural interpretation” (Kamp 1993: 293; see also Steadman 1996; Moore 2003). This work has reframed architecture as a dynamic rather than static form of materiality; highlighted the symbolic importance of not just building but also space; emphasized the need to bring more attention to process; and brought focus on the analysis of materials—not only for their technical role, but also their social meaning (Parker Pearson and Richards 1994; Scattolin et al. 2009; Ingold 2013; Bille and Sørenson 2016; DeLaine 1997). Progress, however, has been somewhat slower more recently (Bille and Sørenson 2016: 4). Even with the rise of digital technologies that help us visualize ancient built spaces in more experiential ways, we still lack the theoretical frameworks for how to incorporate such tools and (more importantly) evaluate the effectiveness, authenticity, and ethics of such representations (Pujol-Tost 2019; Richter et al. 2013). Another way in which the application of postcolonialism to the study of the buildings of the past is complicated is the place of these structures and spaces in the present. Whether uncovered through excavation or standing above ground for millennia, built spaces often have long histories of use and adaptation within changing social, natural, and urban landscapes. We must acknowledge the reality that not all periods of use, repair, or remodeling of a given building or space are of equal interest to archaeologists or heritage managers. The decision to give primacy to certain material pasts can be ideologically or economically motivated, and there is often an inherent contradiction between conservation of historical spaces and urban development. The question of which built spaces are to be preserved versus which are to be dismantled, either to discover what lies below or for the sake of progress, is

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complicated and fraught, with repercussions for the well-being and identity of local communities (Harrison and Hitchcock 2005; Abu Al Haija 2012; Loo, this volume). Historical buildings and places have complex meanings in modern social imaginaries, a complexity which can be lost in broad applications of the label “heritage”. Heritage itself is a Western concept, the meaning of which is fluid and constituted through complex processes (Graham et al. 2005). Places of heritage are frequently contested; one person’s heritage can be the symbol of another’s oppression (Abdelmonem 2017; Lupuwana and Naidoo, this volume). Western notions about so-called universal or world heritage continue to have an oversized influence on what is preserved and what is changed in historical spaces, often in ways that are at odds with the interests of current inhabitants (Coslett 2019; Odiaua 2013; Hosagrahar 2012). Applying the postcolonial critique to architecture in archaeology means recognizing that archaeologists cannot separate themselves or their work from the heritagizing of urban and rural landscapes, nor ignore the question of who benefits and for what purpose (Yeoh 2001). Archaeological narratives of space and place provide meaning and lend authority, shaping public perceptions now and in the future. As public intellectuals, archaeologists have responsibilities not just to their research question or to the publication of results, but also to the reception of their analyses and to the communities they work in, even if these perspectives challenge archaeologists’ academic knowledge base (Johnson 2019: 255). If the aims of postcolonial archaeology are to dismantle colonial bias and to empower subordinated voices, we must continue to rethink our analytical frameworks and methods for investigating ancient structures, as well as reflect more critically about the potential of our work to affect communities and shape public perceptions of the past. The present volume tries to do just that with a series of essays written by scholars from six continents, each presenting a case study examining the ways in which we describe, analyze, and interact with the built spaces of the past in the present or how the contemporary built environment is used to remember, modify, or erase the past. The goal of this collection is to connect and complement existing anthologies in three related areas: architecture in archaeology, postcolonial archaeology, and global architecture and urban studies (e.g. Bille and Sørenson 2016; Wynne-Jones and Fleisher 2015; Lydon and Rizvi 2010; Hamilakis and Duke 2007; Coslett 2019; Lewi and Peckham 2017; Bishop et al. 2003). The SpringerBriefs in Archaeology Series is meant to provide a snapshot of a topic, and therefore the compact format means that only a limited selection of case studies can be included here. We nonetheless wanted to present a collection that encourages global comparisons and brings together the connected threads of intellectual discourse taking place in different fields, as it has long been recognized that in order for the archaeology of architecture to progress, multidisciplinary and comparative approaches are necessary (Steadman 1996: 77; see also Bille and Sørenson 2016). Accordingly, the chronological, geographical, and disciplinary range of the case studies presented here is purposefully wide. While the intended audience of this collection are readers who identify (at least in part) as archaeologists, we have included essays by professionals in the fields of architectural history, urban studies, and conservation in addition to archaeology because we believe their analyses offer

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archaeologists fresh perspectives on extracting and interpreting social and cultural information from the built environment. The hope is that these essays provide inspiration to think critically about the ways in which the built environment of the past continues to shape identities and social relationships today. While this collection in no way claims to address all sides or even a small portion of the issues raised, it is hoped that these essays show how continuing engagement with the postcolonial critique can help us pursue more inclusive, sensitive, and nuanced interpretations of the built environment of the past. In the essays that follow, many issues are touched upon, but there are three interconnected themes that draw the different contributions together. The first group of essays is primarily concerned with recovering the perspectives of groups traditionally excluded from historical and archaeological narratives of architecture—people who might be termed the “subaltern” in postcolonial terminology. As noted by  Trouillot in his introspective critique of the historical process, “any historical narrative is a particular bundle of silences.” (Trouillot 1995: 27). Accordingly, this group of essays reflects on how subordinated people—including the colonized (Frey, Porr), women (Lorenzon), migrants (Beeckmans), and builders (Frey)— “speak” and be seen through architecture and built spaces. The second group of essays, while still taking the perspective of subordinated peoples as a central concern, is focused on the use (and abuse) of the past in the present, exploring the intersection of power, building, and identity in postcolonial landscapes. This group of essays feature case studies concerning recent heritage controversies and initiatives, some that perpetuate colonial hierarchies and Eurocentric viewpoints (Nitschke; Lupuwana and Naidoo), and others that try to reconcile colonial pasts with contemporary identities for the purpose of healing and sustainability (Loo; Pereira and Heinsen). A third theme that recurs through several of the contributions in both groups is community and public engagement. The most positive outcomes that occur in the case studies described in this volume came about as a result of collaboration with communities. Such interactions not only have the effect of challenging our intellectual assumptions about buildings, process, and identity, but can also assist in developing positive connections between communities, heritage, and the contemporary urban landscape, contributing to a greater social benefit. Marta Lorenzon begins by confronting a long-running bias in traditional archaeological approaches to architecture, namely gender. As part of the embrace of postcolonial approaches in archaeology, gender theory is thriving in contemporary archaeological discourse (Ströbeck 2010). However, traditional attitudes associate the construction and design of buildings with men. While the identity of designers and laborers is often hard to trace in the archaeological record, Lorenzon shows what the fields of building archaeology and ethnoarchaeology have to offer as tools for detecting and understanding the presence of invisible agents—in this case, women. Through her survey of ethnoarchaeological studies of mudbrick architecture in Africa, Lorenzon points a way forward for thinking more critically about social roles broadly and gender roles specifically in building processes and building

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as a trade. She advocates for a type of fieldwork in which archaeologists actively engage with local communities who often have unique knowledge and expertise. Jon Frey continues with the challenge of detecting the invisible agents behind architecture through his reconsideration of a fifth-century Byzantine fortification wall in Greece. Originally spanning the Isthmus of Corinth, this wall was erected as part of imperial efforts to “protect” the inhabitants from the perceived threats from northern invaders. In his analysis, Frey shifts the perspective from that of imperial purpose to that of the builders and inhabitants, and considers the impact of this imperially-imposed wall on local cultural perceptions of the landscape. His approach builds on recent work in Roman architecture that has pushed back against older traditions of scholarship that perceives ancient monuments as ideal structures, perfectly conceived and executed. Frey argues that certain aspects of the wall’s archaeological remains that have long puzzled observers should be read as evidence of ambivalence and dissent towards this “defensive” structure and a re-appropriation of the space by the local community. For archaeologists, imagining how spaces were used apart from and in addition to how they may have been intended, particularly by those who are hidden in the material record, is an ongoing challenge. In her contribution,  Luce Beeckmans explores the phenomenon of intentional invisibility and the built environment through her ethnographic study of African diaspora populations in Ghent. She shows us in detail how a nineteenth century terrace house has been invisibly (at least from the outside) transformed by political refugees to serve multiple functions: shop, home, restaurant, bar, and hair salon. The manipulation of this space has been done in such a way so as to respond to the needs of a dispossessed migrant community trying to retain their sense of identity and successfully exist within a new setting with different traditions about urban, public, and private space. Beeckmans’ analysis is a reminder of how dynamic urban space can be, even when façades seem unchanging. Martin Porr presents to us the case of agents whose traditions regarding the built environment have long been ignored or misunderstood: Aboriginal Australians. The perceived lack of a “proper” built environment was used by European settlers to legitimize their acts of dispossession in Australia. While numerous scholars have brought attention to Aboriginal built structures and settlements in order to disprove characterizations of Australia as empty and undeveloped, Porr suggests that such efforts, rather than countering colonial narratives, actually validate colonial frameworks of analysis that equate “civilized” society with certain types of built structures. What is needed, Porr argues, is to challenge the premise of the framework itself. Through a discussion of different types of Aboriginal interventions in the landscape of Australia, Porr demonstrates that social complexity need not be accompanied by urban densification, thus encouraging us to think more holistically about social constructions of space. He shows how Aboriginal Australian philosophies provide different perceptions of the relationship between humans and environment which necessitate rethinking analytical categories such as “building” and “structure”.

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Jessica Nitschke continues unpacking the negative legacy of western intellectual traditions in her case study on the reproduction of the Monumental Arch from Tadmor-Palmyra (Syria) in Trafalgar Square following the destruction of the original by the Islamic State in 2015. She argues that the replica is a poor representative of the original, and that its presentation as a triumphalist relic of Roman rule perpetuates old characterizations of Near Eastern cities in a way that is fundamentally neocolonial. The project missed the chance to illuminate the debt of Western architecture to ancient Near Eastern builders, whose contribution to the global history of architecture is underappreciated. She notes that the postcolonial critique, although widely embraced in some areas of Mediterranean archaeology, has yet to make a substantial  impact on public perceptions of architecture in the Roman Empire, which is still unfortunately viewed and taught through the lens of Greek and Roman culture and identity. Vuyiswa Lupuwana and Navashni Naidoo continue to examine the relationship between academics and public perception of monuments, space, and the past through their discussion of colonial heritage and modern development in Cape Town. They begin with the #RhodesMustFall movement as a window into how architecture and monuments continue to stand in the way of post-apartheid healing and social equality in South Africa. Arguing that archaeologists and historians have a key role to play in negotiating heritage and space, Lupawana and Naidoo provide an analysis of the controversial rescue excavation of the seventeenth century Prestwich Street burial ground in central Cape Town and the subsequent failure to respectfully memorialize graves and curate the remains. The Prestwich Street burial ground is a textbook example of the confrontation of heritage and modern development, and Lupuwana and Naidoo’s autopsy of the affair highlights intertwined issues of class, race, identity, heritage, and economy, ending with a call for archaeologists to use their positions of privilege to help silenced communities reimagine and re-appropriate the materiality of the colonial world. In the pressure to achieve “progress” in postcolonial cities, there is a constant tension between development and heritage, which is itself contested in larger power struggles that often have an ethnic or religious element at play. Yat  Ming Loo explores these conflicts in the case of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, where the state, in their pursuit of a national identity based on Malay-Muslim cultural, has actively suppressed the status, culture, and identity of ethnic minorities who have been a part of Kuala Lumpur since its founding. Loo details how the Chinese community has successfully transformed the historical Chinese cemeteries into a Heritage Park in order to preserve places in the landscape of old Kuala Lumpur that not only function as monuments to the Chinese community’s role in the history of Kuala Lumpur but also serve as sites for maintaining a sense of belonging in the city and nation. By including cemeteries of other ethnic groups and therefore imbuing the Heritage Park with a multicultural identity, these community efforts have promoted an alternate interpretation of Malaysian national identity to counter the ethno-culturally restrictive one put forward by the state. Going beyond cities to the countryside, Magdalena Pereira Campos and Cristian Heinsen Planella demonstrate how conservation, government support, and

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community organization can come together to preserve heritage and achieve sustainable progress in postcolonial contexts within rural landscapes. The region of Arica y Parinacota in northern Chile has been heavily affected by the legacy of colonialism and economic globalism, and the resulting migration of Indigenous people to cities is unsustainable and problematic. Pereira and Heinsen outline their efforts to create economic opportunity and social cohesion through the restoration of historical churches in the countryside of this region, combining architectural preservation, heritage management, and ancestral knowledge. These churches reflect a building type and cultural practice that were introduced by colonial rule but were adopted and adapted over the long term by the indigenous inhabitants. As a result, the churches, in terms of both their material form and the rituals surrounding them, became a locus of social life and type of heritage unique to the region. Their preservation is key to maintaining the identity of the Indigenous inhabitants and their traditional connection to the landscape. Pereira and Heinsen show that if we wish to successfully combine postcolonialism with heritage, archaeology, and the built environment to bring about an equitable and sustainable future, then there must be as much focus on small communities as there is on urban centers.

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Chapter 2

Architecture and Gender: Lessons from Building Archaeology in Africa Marta Lorenzon

Abstract  This chapter focuses upon the role and contribution of women in the architectural process, specifically in earthen architecture, discussing numerous case studies from Africa. The main aim is to foster interdisciplinary research, combining building archaeology, ethnoarchaeology and postcolonial theories to shed lights on understudied aspects of earthen architecture. This contribution also presents the case for a more participative form of archaeology based on community engagement as a key aspect in the analysis of the architecture from archaeological contexts. The chapter addresses two major questions: What is the impact of postcolonial theories on the analysis of earthen architecture in building archaeology? How have gender and subaltern studies improved our understanding of the construction process and overcome pre-existing discipline bias? Keywords  Earthen architecture · Decolonization · Gender · Building archaeology · African archaeology

2.1  Introduction In archaeological research we tend to associate the design and creation of architecture and the built environment with men. However, there are many examples of the prominent role of women in the creation of the built environment, both in modern and ancient contexts. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa there are numerous instances of women playing a significant role in the architectural process and participating actively in the construction and decoration of architecture (Blier 1994; Dalton 2017; Jolaoso 2001; Morton 2007: 168–169; Odeyale and Adekunle 2008). Archaeologists, however, tend to overlook the role of women in the architectural M. Lorenzon (*) Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. L. Nitschke, M. Lorenzon (eds.), Postcolonialism, Heritage, and the Built Environment, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60858-3_2

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processes of the past, and gender bias persists in the analysis of architectural remains. This is well exemplified by the male narrative which is dominant in the archaeological research on the topic (Prussin 1995: 58; Tringham and Chang 1991; Wylie 1991). Part of the reason for this is that while the postcolonial critique and gender theory have become a mainstay of current archaeological thought, they have only been incorporated in a limited way into the study of architectural remains in the archaeological record. As explored in the introduction to this volume, architecture is still too often treated as the setting rather than as an active agent in social life that both reflects and shapes human experience. Through the new discipline of building archaeology together with ethnoarchaeological approaches, we can begin to correct these problems and misconceptions. The case studies I am discussing in this contribution show the importance of integrating these two disciplines, building archaeology and ethnoarchaeology, to investigate the built environment through more inclusive and encompassing lenses.

2.2  Gender Theory and Archaeological Approaches to Architecture Building archaeology, or archaeology of architecture, is a distinctive branch of archaeology that concentrates on the analysis of architectural remains—the built environment—as part of material culture (Egenter 1992; Steadman 1996). Building archaeology focuses on studying architectural remains through a combination of macroscopic and microscopic observation to investigate the multiple steps of construction, building functions, and eventual alteration to original structures as key evidence of the socio-cultural and economical information embedded in the built environment (Bartlett 1994; Butzer 1976; Rapoport 1969, 1976; Steadman 1996). Building archaeology plays a critical role in offering insights into the life of past and present communities through the artificial, human-made landscape, in which interactions take place, peoples’ belief and values are tangibly represented, and a space for industriousness and creativity is created (Hodder 1994; Horton 1994). The traditional approach to architecture in archeology has tended to problematically divide architectural remains into the fixed categories of “polite” versus “vernacular”, especially within western academia. “Polite” architecture is often used to describe buildings that are the product of elite classes and are designed and built following a predetermined set of conventions. “Vernacular” architecture is often conceived as that which represents the non-elite part of society, in which architectural form is determined by local knowledge and materials arranged in a mere functional fashion (Archer 2005; Brunskill 2000: 27–31; Upton 1983). This division oversimplifies the series of entangled and multifaceted relationships communities have within themselves and with the built environment, including the relationship between architecture and power. Glassie’s (1984, 2000) and Güvenç’s (1990) research have extensively broadened the term “vernacular”, arguing that the lexis

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should include the full range of the built environment, overcoming the strict taxonomic divide between vernacular and polite architecture, which was created during the “modernization of the profession” (Güvenç 1990: 286). More recently, studies on earthen architecture as a form of construction that can be included in both categories have helped to blur the “vernacular” versus “polite” divide (Blier 2006: 230–239; Herrmann 1999; Hodder 2000). Although earthen materials have traditionally been broadly considered as characteristic of vernacular architecture, recent work has brought attention to the fact that from prehistory until the present earthen material has also been employed worldwide in monumental structures, for example at sites such as Uruk, Djenne, Malia, and Merv (Bourgeois 1987; Devolder and Lorenzon 2019; Herrmann 1999; Strommenger 1980). The study of earthen architecture in what are classically defined as polite and vernacular contexts has also widened the set of interdisciplinary data that archaeologists employ in their investigation and interpretation, such as records collected through geoarchaeology, building archaeology and ethnoarchaeology (Aurenche 1993; Gosden 2001; Liebmann 2008; Trigger 1984; van Dommelen 2011).

2.3  Gender Theory in archaeology Gender theory in archaeology emerged from the lack of inclusion in researching gender and social roles in past societies, in which “archaeologists, consciously or not, are propagating culturally particular ideas about gender in their interpretation and reconstruction of the past” (Conkey and Spector 1984: 2). Gender theory focuses on widening the interpretative horizon to include, for instance, female, trans-, and generally non-binary perspectives and representations that have been seriously underrepresented as active agents in the creation of material culture (Conkey and Spector 1984: 4–7; Gilchrist 1999, 2004; Sørensen 1996). Analysis of material culture in archaeological research has traditionally focused on elite material expressions and then extrapolated these as representing the experience and point of view of all members of society. Gender theory is one way that archaeologists have sought to include narratives that were previously excluded, in order to achieve a more comprehensive and inclusive understanding of past society (Tringham and Chang 1991; Tringham 1994; Gilchrist 1997, 1999). In building archaeology, archaeologists have put gender theory into practice by providing an approach directly based on ethnoarchaeology to reshape and rethink gender dynamics within past societies based on a task-differentiation framework (Conkey and Spector 1984: 14–28; Spector 1983: 90–95). This framework calls for an analysis of the archaeological record based on the social, temporal, spatial and material definition of any given activity such as raw source procurement and building construction. The existing androcentric bias in archaeology has been compounded by the lack of archaeological data linked to gender roles in architecture and the tendency of Western perspectives to associate certain pursuits, such as architecture, with masculinity and thus the “androcentric” domain. By contrast, a

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task-­differentiation approach together with ethnoarchaeological research have progressively dismantled the foundation of this bias and created a more inclusive gender narrative for archaeology (Conkey and Spector 1984; Joyce 2000, 2004; Miller 1988; Sørensen 1996; Spector 1983; Tringham and Chang 1991; Wylie 1991). In building archaeology, ethnoarchaeology has been employed as a useful method to bridge these various gulfs as shown by numerous case studies that in the last decades helped disprove these androcentric stereotypes, demonstrating a long-­lasting relationship between female craftmanship and architecture (Blier 1981; Joshi 2011; LeMoine 2003; Miller 1988; Mills 2013; Tringham 1994). Within this new theoretical framework, it is impossible to disregard the reductive narrative frequently employed in the analysis of architectural remains from archaeological sites regarding gender, especially when local and indigenous communities were excluded from their investigation and interpretation (Boivin 2008; Gamble and Porr 2005; Ingold 2000; Kusimba 2017). The following discussion presents case studies that employ these aforementioned approaches to discuss the architectural creation of underrepresented groups, community narratives, and their archaeological values in SubSaharan Africa. These case studies demonstrate the importance of integrating ethnoarchaeology in building archaeology to reach an in-depth understanding of gender dynamics in the building process.

2.4  Case Studies from African Archaeology Several case studies from North and Sub-Saharan Africa exemplify the importance of interaction between ethnoarchaeology, building archaeology, and gender theories as described above. In a study focused on Nubian earthen architecture, Dalton (2017) employed geo-ethnoarchaeological methods to investigate the creation of mud plaster and the related specific social practices near Amara in Northern Sudan. His investigations revealed a gender role division within the earthen construction process of the region: while the men carried out the bulk of the building activities, the women were in charge of the mud-plaster preparation and application. His descriptions of the active role of female plasterers, who use specific and diverse methods of raw material procurement, and their individual plaster recipes support the idea of a specialized craftsmanship and a diachronic skill transfer among craftswomen (Dalton 2017: 357–388; Elcheikh 2018: 245). Through the collection of ethnoarchaeological and geoarchaeological data from modern domestic contexts, this work provides fresh insights into the gender roles in local building practices in Amara, especially regarding the women’s contribution to house construction and maintenance (Dalton 2017) (Fig. 2.1). The comparison of these data, specifically micromorphological data regarding seasonal plastering from historical and modern domestic contexts, highlights the presence of personalized recipes in the ethnographic and archaeological record in Amara, trailblazing the relevance of ethnoarchaeology in understanding past architectural practices, while also suggesting that

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Fig. 2.1  Plaster layered by the women in the Amara community. (Photo by Matthew Dalton, Amara West Research Project. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum)

we think more critically about question of women’s contribution to the building process in the past (Dalton 2017: 369–381). Similarly, in Togo, Blier’s (1981) analyses of historical earthen construction have drawn attention to the role of female plasterers and decorators working alongside male architects. In this case, ethnoarchaeological evidence suggested both roles were based on a strict apprenticeship and were regarded as having a high social status within the Tamberma community (Blier 1981; Morris and Blier 2004: 201–204). Studies of other Sub-Saharan pre-colonial architectural traditions have also highlighted the significant role of women in the creation of the built environment, presenting tangible evidence from multiple sub-Saharan communities, such as Ghana (Frafra women), Kenya (Kikuyu women), Zimbabwe and South Africa (Ndebele women) (Arceneaux 1989: 82–84; Leakey 1977: 139–143; Odeyale and Adekunle 2008; Prussin 1969: 57, 88; Sheldon 2017: 15–19; Sogah 2010: 25; Whelan 2003) (Fig. 2.2). Odiaua (2008) stresses how women in Daura communities (Nigeria) not only as worked as decorators, but also took an active part in the construction process, such as overseeing flooring and roofing. While the construction of walls and foundations is a male responsibility, women take over to prepare the roof finishing and ensure waterproofing (Odiaua 2008: 121). In the Maghreb and Saharan desert, Prussin (1995) describes extensively the role of women builders in nomadic communities through archaeological and ethnographic data. For example, in the cases of Toubou (Lybia-Chad), Kababish, and

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Fig. 2.2  Wall painting with Zaalenga and Wanzagesi, Sirigu, Ghana, March 9, 2013. (Photo courtesy of Brittany Sheldon)

Mahria nomadic communities (Sudan), the pitching of the tent, its design, the selection of building materials, and structural stability are always a female responsibility (Holter 1995: 130–133; Prussin 1995: 56–58). In addition to ethnographic data, Prussin also points to rock paintings in Tassili n’Ajjer (Algeria), which portrays female figures building a tent. This seems to mirror the evidence of her ethnographic research on the presence of women builders in the nomadic Saharan communities. These examples illustrate the importance of women in the creation of the built environment in African landscapes, in which women have been and continue to be in charge not only of the raw source collection, but also of the design and construction of flooring, roofing, and plastering in both domestic and non-domestic structures (Jolaoso 2001; Odiaua 2008; Prussin 1974; Van Vuuren 2008a, b; Whelan 2003). This reality underscores the need to incorporate gender studies more systematically in building archaeology and the importance of local community knowledge in understanding the significance of material culture and architecture as social agents. First, gender studies open a new level of investigation that overcome the characterization of architecture from archaeological context as a “masculine accomplishment” prominent in Western academia (Tringham 1994; Sogah 2010: 12–13). Second, the inclusion of local narratives helps to reverse colonial misconceptions about factors such as gender and produce a more complex, nuanced and genuine interpretation of the archaeological data. Schmidt (1983, 2014) has been an early

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proponent of the importance of community inclusion in Africa, especially Tanzania, in answering archaeological questions that focus on identity and social roles. His research has played a key role in raising community engagement as an active investigative tool of ethnoarchaeological research and decolonizing archaeological practice in Africa. Schmidt (2014) also raises the important issue of how archaeology can impact the everyday life of local communities and the importance of oral traditions in understanding the values and significance of built environment. Community engagement with indigenous and local communities is already part of the archaeological practice in numerous Western contexts, such as in North America where Native American communities are key stakeholders in archaeological investigations. In these cases, archaeologists, often pushed by government regulations, learned to engage with local communities as equal partners (Kusimba 2017; Nicholas et al. 2008; Nicholas 2010; Pereiria Campos and Heinsen Planella, this volume). As a result, the inclusion of diverse narratives and a more public approach has improved the ways archaeological and anthropological projects are designed, executed and disseminated (Atalay 2012; Schmidt 2014; Moser et  al. 2002; McKinnon et al. 2014). In Africa, unfortunately, community-inclusive approaches such as just described are still the exception rather than the norm. Local communities who are essential stakeholders of architectural and archaeological research are often not included, even though community collaboration is crucial for understanding not only the building process, but also the values communities embed in buildings and the craftsperson’s social role within the community (Dalton 2017; Fodde 2009; Lorenzon and Sadozaï 2018; Morris and Blier 2004). The author’s ethnoarchaeological and community project at the site of Tell Timai, Egypt, carried out within the University of Hawaii at Manoa excavation project, aimed at including local communities in the archeological process with a shared focus in better understanding the construction process, while increasing awareness and preservation of the archaeological site among the local community (Lorenzon and Zermani 2016). The project targeted two specific types of audience: children through a bilingual book and a series of educational initiatives, and members of the community through an earthen architectural preservation project that directly involved local expertise and knowledge (Lorenzon and Zermani 2016). The need for overcoming the disenfranchisement of most local communities from their local heritage is one of the biggest challenges for community engagement, as it impacts not only the everyday protection of archaeological heritage but also the preservation of skills and expertise within local communities, which belong to the intangible heritage domains (Hanna 2013; Ikram 2013). In the course of the Timai project, local knowledge of earthen architectural practices and techniques was invaluable not only for its ability to improve our academic knowledge, but also for its role in bridging local community and experts and creating a better understanding on how the whole community, women and men, participate to some degree in the construction process. For instance, members of the Tell Timai community described in detail the process of earthen plaster production and application, which included more steps than is usually assumed by archaeologists. The builders revealed that an important step is to include incisions of the first plaster

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layer to guarantee more grip to the successive coatings, which we were unaware of. This is a concrete example of the importance of integrating local knowledge in archaeological projects. In this case this step was added to the earthen conservation practices in Timai and it was possible to finally explain the perpendicular incision found on historical plaster recovered at the site. The benefits of community engagement so far encountered are numerous and have included a developing sense of ownership of the heritage by the local community and better understanding of the archaeological evidence and its history in connection to the local population, especially regarding earthen architectural practices (Fig. 2.3). Although the project so far has met with positive feedback, the lack of diversity in gender participation is perceived as one of the few shortcomings. The project has involved only a limited number of female adults (i.e. one woman as compared to eight man). However, one of the future aims is to extend the targeted audience to include a more gender-balanced population, with specific earthen architectural workshops targeted to women, where they can feel more empowered to share their knowledge and expertise regarding their role in the building process. This difficulty demonstrates the need for long term bridge building and trust building within the community, which could not be achieved in the short timeframe of one excavation season.

Fig. 2.3  Mudbrick manufacturing in Egypt, Tell Timai. (Photo by the author)

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2.5  Future Perspectives The project from Timai together with the other case studies described above demonstrate the ways in which community engaged-research relies on a more equitable sharing of knowledge regarding the reconstruction of the past, for instance documenting how the architectural process is often a community activity that includes both men and women in the process (Boivin 2008; Joshi 2011; Prussin 1974; Dalton 2017; Blier 1981; van Vuuren 2008a; Odiaua 2008). This provides archaeologists focusing on earthen architecture in Africa with new insights and new approaches to overcome the previous limitations regarding of the inclusions of gender narratives in the creation of historical architecture. Through the inclusion of local communities who possess unique knowledge and expertise as active agents of the construction process, archaeologists can develop a more holistic interpretation that utilizes a multi-vocal narrative and framework for interpreting the past. The built environment plays a critical role in the life of past and present communities as the artificial, human-made landscape, in which interactions take place, peoples’ beliefs and values are tangibly represented, and as a space for industriousness and creativity. The case studies discussed in this chapter highlight two important points of theoretical progress in the development of a more inclusive discipline. First are the different ways in which postcolonial theories have impacted the analysis of architecture, especially the inclusion of gender and ethnoarchaeological studies, by exposing the existence of a persistent bias in building archaeology that rarely acknowledges the role of the female workforce in the architectural process. This preconceived notion plays a significant role in the archaeologists’ understanding of the archaeological record and it is at the origin of subsequent misconception in the analysis of the built environment. Second, building archaeology as a discipline can assist in overcoming fixed Western perspectives not only by incorporating postcolonial theories, but also by including multiple viewpoints from academics and indigenous communities, integrating local histories, and largely decolonizing the discipline. By reevaluating the archaeological data through these lenses, we can better understand the role of diverse individuals in architecture, especially women (Blier 1981; Dalton 2017; Elcheikh 2018). Such an undertaking is particularly relevant at the current socio-cultural moment, as there is an urgent need for a more gender-inclusive narrative in creating and managing archaeological projects that can positively impact local communities (Elcheikh 2018; Humphris and Bradshaw 2017). The African case studies presented here are a representative example of reevaluating archaeological and ethnographical data to provide a more holistic interpretation of the built environment. The primary goal is to bring agency back to the overlooked part of the communities, who often play an active role in the architectural process. Not only that, communities—together with archaeologists—are the stewards of intangible and tangible heritage, and they are entitled to have an active voice in its preservation and representation. Architectural remains have an important role in the archaeological contexts, but they are also an active subject of interest

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for local communities’ agency, therefore there must be a participatory component in any archaeological study to bridge different perspectives (Moser et  al. 2002; Lorenzon and Zermani 2016; Schmidt and Pikirayi 2016; Kusimba 2017). Finally, building archaeology should aim at displaying two main functions, academic and civic, this latter voicing communities’ perspectives as participant stakeholders.

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12th World Congress on Earthen Architecture. Articles sélectionnés pour publication en ligne/articles selected for on-line publication/artículos seleccionados para publicación en línea. Villefontaine: CRATerre. Available at https://craterre.hypotheses.org/files/2018/05/ TERRA-­2016_Th-­1_Art-­226_Lorenzon.pdf. Accessed 10 June 2019. Lorenzon, M., & Zermani, I. (2016). Common ground: Community archaeology in Egypt, interaction between population and cultural heritage. Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage, 3(3), 183–199. McKinnon, J., Mushynsky, J., & Cabrera, G. (2014). A fluid sea in the Mariana Islands: Community archaeology and mapping the seascape of Saipan. Journal of Maritime Archaeology, 9(1), 59–79. Miller, V. (Ed.). (1988). The role of gender in pre-Columbian art and architecture. Lanham: University Press of America. Mills, S. (2013). Gender and colonial space. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Morris, J., & Blier, S. P. (2004). Butabu: Adobe architecture of West Africa. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Morton, C. (2007). Remembering the house: Memory and materiality in Northern Botswana. Journal of Material Culture, 12(2), 157–179. Moser, S., Glazier, D., Phillips, J. E., Nasser el Nemr, L., Mousa, M. S., Nasr Aiesh, R., Richardson, S., Conner, A., & Seymour, M. (2002). Transforming archaeology through practice: Strategies for collaborative archaeology and the community archaeology project at Quseir, Egypt. World Archaeology, 34(2), 229–248. Nicholas, G. P., Welch, J. R., & Yellowhorn, E. C. (2008). Collaborative encounters. In C. Colwell-­ Chanthaphonh & T. J. Ferguson (Eds.), Collaboration in archaeological practice: Engaging descendant communities (pp. 273–298). Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Nicholas, G.  P. (2010). Seeking the end of indigenous archaeology. In C.  Phillips & H.  Allen (Eds.), Bridging the divide: Indigenous communities and archaeology into the 21st century (pp. 233–252). Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Odeyale, T.  O., & Adekunle, T.  O. (2008). Innovative and sustainable local material in traditional African architecture  – Socio cultural dimension. In D.  D’Ayala & E.  Fodde (Eds.), Structural analysis of historic construction: Preserving safety and significance. Proceedings of the 6th international conference on structural analysis of historic construction, SAHC08 (pp. 991–998). London: CRC Press. Odiaua, I. (2008). Earth building culture in Daura, Nigeria: From mythological origin to reality. In L. Rainer, A. B. Rivera, & D. Gandreau (Eds.), TERRA 2008: The 10th international conference on the study of conservation of earthen architectural heritage (pp. 120–123). Los Angeles: Getty Publications. Prussin, L. (1969). Architecture in northern Ghana: A study of forms and functions. Berkeley: University of California Press. Prussin, L. (1974). An introduction to indigenous African architecture. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 33(3), 183–205. Prussin, L. (1995). African nomadic architecture: Space, place and gender. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Rapoport, A. (1969). House form and culture. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Rapoport, A. (1976). The mutual interaction of people and their built environment: A cross-­cultural perspective. The Hague: Mouton Publishers. Schmidt, P. R. (1983). An alternative to a strictly materialist perspective: A review of historical archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and symbolic approaches in African archaeology. American Antiquity, 48(1), 62–81. Schmidt, P. R. (2014). Rediscovering community archaeology in Africa and reframing its practice. Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage, 1(1), 37–55. Schmidt, P. R., & Pikirayi, I. (2016). Community archaeology and heritage in Africa: Decolonizing practice. London: Routledge. Sheldon, B. (2017). Indigenous expertise: African women’s artistry connecting across time and space. Africa Review, 9(1), 13–27.

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Chapter 3

Boats, Burials, and Beehives: Seeking the Subaltern in the Fortifications at Isthmia, Greece Jon M. Frey

Abstract  Erected in the first decades of the fifth century CE, a fortification wall spanning the Isthmus in Greece, now known as the Hexamilion, is commonly seen as part of an empire-wide response to the growing threat of “barbarian” invasion. Careful study of this monument since the 1960s, especially near the site of Isthmia, has revealed several features that defy an easy explanation in terms of the defensive goals of the project. Some, such as graffiti etched into the still wet mortar between stones in the wall, date to the time of construction, while others, such as blocking walls that sealed off the main gates, occurred in the decades that followed the completion of the project. In adopting a postcolonial approach informed by the work of the subaltern studies group, this study argues that such aberrant details may be better interpreted as evidence of intentionally ambivalent local acts of resistance to a building project that negatively impacted local communities in its effort to achieve larger imperial goals. Keywords  Isthmia · Byzantine · Fortifications · Construction · Hexamilion

3.1  Introduction Although it has now been reduced to long stretches of mounded earth broken by discrete sections of excavated mortar and stone, at the time of its construction in the fifth century CE, the roughly 7.5  km long wall, commonly referred to as the Hexamilion, would have been an impressive sight. Standing at a height of up to 7 m, the roughly 3 m thick barrier wall stretched across the Isthmus of Greece from the Corinthian Gulf on the west to the Saronic Gulf in the east (Fig. 3.1). As part of an

J. M. Frey (*) Department of Art, Art History and Design, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. L. Nitschke, M. Lorenzon (eds.), Postcolonialism, Heritage, and the Built Environment, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60858-3_3

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Fig. 3.1  Contour map of the Corinthia showing course of Hexamilion

empire-wide response to the growing threat of “barbarian” raids into the central Mediterranean, the Hexamilion effectively blocked all movement by land into the Peloponnese, making it the first permanent barrier to realize a defensive strategy that had been contemplated many times in Greek history, most notably at the time of the Persian invasion under Xerxes in 480 BCE (Gregory 1993). Survey along the entire length of this fortification shows that the structure was consistently built with a thick mortared rubble core poured between two parallel rows of ashlar masonry. Typically, the blocks of the northern façade are larger and joined with more carefully drafted edges, while the southern face is finished with smaller stones set in mortar. A structure of this size required an immense amount of building material, and so, existing structures and monuments were either incorporated into the defenses wholesale, or far more commonly, dismantled and the stone recycled for use in the fabric of the wall. This economical approach becomes most apparent near the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Isthmia along the eastern side of the Isthmus, where the number of buildings and monuments would have been particularly dense (Fig. 3.2). Evidence of activity at Isthmia reaches back into the Bronze Age, but it was in the sixth century BCE that the Sanctuary of Poseidon gained wider fame as the home of the biennial Isthmian games. This gave the site a unique status. For, like Olympia, it was not a continuously occupied urban center, but rather an athletic sanctuary under the administrative control of a nearby city. Yet, within decades of the cessation of the games in the late fourth century CE, perhaps as the result of a

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Fig. 3.2  Plan of the Fortress and Sanctuary of Poseidon at Isthmia

destructive Visigothic raid, Isthmia took on a new character as the site of a large fortified enclosure. While not as famous as the Land Walls of Constantinople, this equally impressive example of early Byzantine defenses in Greece is useful as a case study into the impact that these types of construction projects had upon the populations that they were intended to protect (Turnbull 2014). For unlike traditional studies of fortifications that offer general analyses of defensive strategies on a regional scale, this study seeks to demonstrate that a site-specific, postcolonial approach can help us to recognize evidence for the actions of local communities and individuals whose participation on and reaction to large-scale, centrally planned projects may not have always been uniformly grateful or positive (Given 2004; Sarantis and Christie 2013). The Fortress at Isthmia is an irregularly shaped enclosure attached to the southern side of the main Hexamilion wall just to the north and east of the main Sanctuary of Poseidon. The location of this fortification was clearly intended to take advantage not only of the local terrain—the northern and eastern sides of the enclosure follow the upper edge of deep ravines—but also pre-existing structures, such as an

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enormous triple-bayed arch erected in the first century CE that was converted into the main entryway. A total of nineteen towers project outward from the walls of the 2.7 hectare enclosure, which must have been intended to house the military garrison charged with defense of the Hexamilion as a whole. Detailed investigation of this enclosure, which has occurred intermittently since the 1950s, has revealed a number of surprising inconsistencies in construction. For example, the Fortress’ towers are nowhere of consistent shape and size, even at the main gates where one might expect an emphasis on symmetry. In addition, in the two locations where the east and west sides of the Fortress join up with the main east-west span of the Hexamilion, the walls do not share a consistent width or orientation, and the entrances to these important towers are either outside the enclosure (Tower 2) or cut through a misaligned wall (Tower 15) (Fig. 3.3). Overall, the Fortress does not give the impression of a carefully and uniformly executed design (Frey 2015). In the past, it was common to see such inconsistencies, as well as the demolition of monuments for building material, as evidence of a hurried and desperate effort of a crumbling empire in the face of waves of invaders. Recently, such explanations have been challenged by a wide range of specialists. Military and architectural historians note that the erection of thick masonry defenses requires much more time than is available in the face of an imminent attack (Crow 2013; Sarantis 2013). Rather, monumental defenses are more likely to have been state-level reactions after an initial threat had passed. Moreover, the effort saved in reusing construction materials was often offset by the added difficulty of building with a heterogeneous supply of spoliated blocks (Frey 2016). Instead, another recent development in the study of Roman architecture suggests a more mundane, yet no less important, explanation for such irregularities in construction. Over the past two decades, a small number of scholars have sought to redirect the field of architectural history away from analyses of classical monuments as perfect manifestations of architectural design and toward a close scrutiny of the structures themselves as evidence for the people and processes responsible for their creation (De Laine 1997; Lancaster 1998, 1999, 2000; Taylor 2007; Wilson

Fig. 3.3  Plan of Tower 15 (left) and Tower 2 (right)

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Jones 2009; Sahotsky 2016). These researchers focus on inconsistencies in design not as details to be corrected in reconstructions, but as opportunities to gain insight into the discrete moments in time when conflicts between the plan and physical reality of construction required creative solutions. On the one hand, these process studies in Roman architecture have shown that large-scale construction projects in antiquity were immensely complex, to the point that the act of building should be considered as much a spectacle and expression of Roman power as the finished monument (Favro 2011). On the other hand, these studies have assumed a large degree of compliance and cooperation among project planners, site managers, skilled craftsmen, and unskilled laborers in carrying out the difficult and dangerous task of building in antiquity. This is in keeping with process studies of Roman architecture more generally, which typically take it for granted that large scale imperial projects were perceived as an inherent good and received unanimous support from the Roman people. Yet the postcolonial movement and the work in subaltern studies, which encourages us to turn a critical eye toward essentialization and silencing of colonized groups as well as the narratives that support such a simplistic view, suggest that this was rarely so, even in the case of fortifications designed to protect urban centers within the boundaries of the Roman Empire (Guha and Spivak 1988; Webster and Cooper 1996; Given 2004). In the case of the Hexamilion, the simplification of a complex set of relationships is twofold. First there is the generic heading of “builder” or “laborer” under which fall all individuals below the level of patrons who typically receive mention in the written sources. Then there is the historically generic presentation of cities in many regions of the Later Roman and Byzantine Empires as collectives of frightened individuals needing the protection of a beneficent imperial power in the face of “barbarian” invasion. Both assumptions fail to acknowledge that one’s participation in the construction process or even the use of its final product are not necessarily indicators of universal support.

3.2  “Builders” The tendency to speak of construction labor in terms of “man-hours” rather than as the work of individuals is likely due to the fact that the literary evidence for the various roles in the building industry is remarkably thin. To date, the most informative discussions on the topic have focused on the Roman Republic, for which the evidence is at its most detailed (Anderson Jr. 2002). But this information does not easily map onto the later Imperial and Byzantine periods, which may have seen a higher degree of intervention of centralized administrators (Frey 2016). A particularly clear example of this concerns the training, status and responsibilities of the ancient architect (Anderson Jr. 2014). In earlier times these individuals were charged with the building’s design, the supply of construction materials and work force, and on some occasions the inspection of the finished structure. Their training required a theoretical knowledge of engineering and geometry as well as an understanding of

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the practical necessities of construction management acquired through “hands on” experience (Ousterhout 2008). Yet, by the early Byzantine period, the task of planning a project appears to have become the responsibility of a centralized team of architects in Constantinople, whose designs were then communicated to the work site to be carried out, and almost certainly modified, on location by lower ranking colleagues (Zanini 2003). When it comes to those skilled and unskilled workers whose job it was to turn these designs into physical realities, we know even less (De Laine 2000; Cuomo 2007; Taylor 2014; Zanini 2007). There is some evidence to suggest that those whose contribution required a higher degree of skill had, by the later Roman period, begun to organize into “collegia”—precursors of the more familiar medieval guilds—that moved among projects within a region as teams (Bouras 2002, 2005; Zanini 2006). Arguably, these groups of itinerant workers also included units of the Roman army, which were remarkably adept at constructing defenses while on the march. However, scholars are divided on the contribution of soldiers in the case of permanent regional and civic defenses (Frey 2016). Finally, at the lowest levels of unskilled labor—those who cleared a building site, leveled the soil, or transported the building supplies—we are almost entirely ignorant. On the one hand there is good evidence for a large supply of unskilled labor willing to work for a daily wage at all times throughout the Roman period (Brunt 1980). At the same time, references to compulsory labor in the later Roman law codes serve as important reminders that not all effort was freely negotiated, especially in the case of defensive works (Frey 2016). In spite of the paucity of the evidence, it stands to reason that throughout the history of the Roman empire these laborers rose to the challenge of developing innovative solutions to unforeseen problems when erecting a building or monument, especially those utilizing recycled architectural elements. Moreover, in the case of a project of larger size and scale such as a regional fortification, there was ample room for individuals and groups of workers to follow their own traditions and possibly even express their own styles (Bouras 2005; DeStaebler 2008; Ousterhout 2008). Thus, when seen in terms of the building process, the inconsistencies in construction in the standing remains of the Fortress at Isthmia become critical evidence for the agency of unique individuals and work crews, who were likely gathered in large numbers, possibly from different regions in the eastern Mediterranean, in order to accomplish an architectural feat that, due to its size and geographic location, was more likely to be adaptive than fully planned (Frey 2015).

3.3  “Cities” While the initial construction of the Hexamilion receives no discussion in the written sources, a mention of the renovation of this defensive wall in the reign of the Emperor Justinian (527–565  CE) allows us some insight into the attitude of the Byzantine Empire toward the defense of its cities. As the historian Procopius

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(De Aedificiis 4.2.27–28) reports, “the emperor Justinian learned that all the cities of the Peloponnesos were unwalled. He reasoned that a very long time would be consumed if he attended to them one by one, and so he securely walled the whole of the Isthmus because so much of it had already collapsed… In this way he made all the towns of the Peloponnesos inaccessible to the enemy…” (Procopius et al. 1960). This passage, as well as the wall it describes, illustrates the type of “forced dependency and hegemony” (not to mention the essentialization of “city” and “enemy”) that characterizes the relationship of colonizer to colonized (Guha 1988b; Liebmann 2010: 2). Thus, we need to consider if is it possible that individuals living in this Byzantine province perceived this act of imperial protection as something other than a beneficent gesture. To be sure, this fortification of the Isthmus occurred almost six centuries after the devastating Roman sack of Corinth in 146 BCE that ended military resistance to Roman rule in Greece, and therefore may be stretching even Ashcroft et al.’s (2002: 2) expansive definition of postcolonial as “all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day.” However, it is likely the case that there remained some degree of tension between indigenous Greek society and Roman rule throughout the Corinthia and especially at Isthmia. After all, the Sanctuary of Poseidon held a place of particular notoriety in the history of “free” Greece. It was on the occasion of the Isthmian Games in 196 BCE, that the Roman general Titus Flamininus declared the “freedom of the Greeks” from Macedonian rule (Gebhard 1993). Yet, as the Greeks soon learned, freedom from an enemy of Rome did not mean freedom from Rome itself. Already by 111 BCE, the territory around Corinth, which had been declared ager publicus, was being divided up for sale. In 44 BCE the city of Corinth was re-founded as the Colonia Laus Iulia Corinthiensis, repopulated with Roman freedmen and veterans, and from that point forward functioned administratively as a copy of Rome itself (Romano 2003; Walbank 2002; Pawlak 2013). In 66  CE, the Emperor Nero used the Games at Isthmia as an opportunity not only to restage Flamininus’ famous pronouncement of freedom, but also to begin a project to cut a canal through the Isthmus. In this context, the construction of a barrier wall may well have been seen as yet another example of Roman domination of the landscape masked in terms of freedom and security. On a much more practical level, the Hexamilion likely had immediate and long-­ lasting negative effects on the local population. As with the walls built around the urban center of Rome during the reign of Aurelian (270–275 CE), the appropriation of land and leveling of buildings along the route of a fortification would have been an unwanted imposition of state authority over individual property holders (Dey 2011). Moreover, in the decades and centuries that followed its completion, when the threats to which it was intended to respond had passed, this fortification was just as likely to be perceived as a means of state control as protection. Travel through the region by land was now restricted to only a couple of guarded gateways, which almost certainly became points of taxation. The only recorded instance of an indigenous response to the Hexamilion is admittedly anachronistic, but nevertheless relevant. When faced with the threat of

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invasion from the Ottoman Turks, in 1415 CE, the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II personally came to the Corinthia to supervise the project to repair the Hexamilion (Necipoğlu 2012). While the accounts disagree on many details, they uniformly report that this refortification of the Isthmus led to an open revolt among the local population that Manuel put down by force. A near contemporary letter composed by the emperor himself states that the rebellion, “…can be attributed to one cause, their desire not be within those walls…inasmuch as [they] completely prevented them from continuing to perpetrate their former outrages…” (Manuel and Dennis 1977). Other accounts, however, explain the causes differently. According to Demetrios Chrysoloras’ Panegyric to Manuel II, …the inhabitants [of the Peloponnesos] were obligated to grant him as many favors as possible and to furnish such things in which each might abound, be it on one hand money, or on the other hand zeal, or willingness; and no one ought to have appeared as a non-­ participant in such greatness of a height of wisdom. But some men counseled the opposite course to the aforesaid inhabitants, and they were endeavoring from the outset to hinder this leader of good counsel: secretly at first, to be sure, and advising and effecting such action as would serve towards the ruin of the task; then finally becoming openly hostile to the ruler… (Barker 1962).

Thus, Manuel’s account explains the incident as a resistance to a reinstatement of imperial control of the region while Chrysoloras’ account seems to document a growing frustration with the burden of funding and actually building the wall.

3.4  Evidence of Opposition? Recognizing that it is possible, even likely, that some individuals and groups in the Byzantine Corinthia would have had reason to react negatively to the creation of the Hexamilion is one thing. Finding material evidence beyond the narratives of an incident in the fifteenth century will require a much closer scrutiny of the monument itself. For the time being, three features of the Isthmian enclosure show that there is much potential in such an investigation. The first example concerns the discovery of graffiti scratched into the rear face of the Hexamilion just to the west of Tower 15 (Fig. 3.4). Uniquely, these marks—a series of roughly sketched shapes that have been interpreted as a row of three ships,

Fig. 3.4  Ship Graffiti

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perhaps sailing from east (right) to west (left)—were made before the mortar had hardened, making them unarguably the work of individuals associated with the initial construction of the wall or its repair. According to the published description, “the first two ships are obviously galleys, since a series of oars extends down from the deck. The third (easternmost) ship has a rounded keel, sails and no oars; it is undoubtedly meant to represent a different kind of vessel” (Gregory 1993). A structure projecting westward from this third ship toward the other two has been interpreted as either rigging or as a boarding device. If this interpretation is accurate, this graffiti could be interpreted as a scene of naval combat. Graffiti of ships are not unusual in this period and the presence of the Diolkos—a paved roadway built to transport goods and possibly even ships over the Isthmus—may have inspired an idle worker to sketch this scene (Stamatatou 1997; Pettegrew 2016). But the location of this scene on a wall intended to protect the Isthmus from invasion suggests another interpretive possibility. In spite of its massive size and strategic position, the Hexamilion could not defend against an attack from the sea. The eastern terminus of the wall is no longer preserved, but assuming it mirrored the western end, it would have been roughly 10  m on a side and perhaps one story taller than the roughly 7 m reconstructed height of the curtain walls, but it would not have projected any significant distance into the sea. Moreover, Corinth’s ports at Lechaion on the Corinthian Gulf and Cenchreae on the Saronic were both located well south of the line of defense. Could it be that the builder who sketched this graffiti was playfully pointing out that the project as a whole did little to stop any sea borne invasion or trade? While it is true that recent studies of the topic have sounded a note of caution against reading all forms of graffiti as inherently subversive and illicit, it is enticing to follow Harmanşah (2018: 62) who states that “If we think of the production of monuments as a state-sponsored technology; shaping the public space using architectural, visual and textual narratives that fabricate an official version of history for the public at large, graffiti can be understood as a counter-movement—a visually powerful form of expression that undermines, ridicules or subverts the stern face of the monumental” (Baird and Taylor 2012; Keegan 2014). The second example is not tied directly to the construction of the fortification, but appears to have occurred only a couple of decades after its completion. Excavations in the area of the Northeast Gate, which served as the main entrance into the Fortress, uncovered several graves located, somewhat inexplicably, at the foot of a staircase leading up to the upper fighting platform (Fig. 3.5). The creation of one of the graves resulted in the removal of the bottom tread of the staircase, an act that would have significantly compromised the utility of one of the most important points of defense along the Hexamilion. Not only did these graves contain multiple interments spread out over decades, which suggests that their locations were well enough marked to be identified and reopened, but many also contained women and children (Gregory 1993; Rife 2012). These two details together suggest that soon after it was finished, the Fortress at Isthmia had, either intentionally or through abandonment, passed to local residents to maintain. But these individuals appear to have had little interest in doing so. Could this “demilitarization” of the Fortress be interpreted as an act of re-appropriation of a space that had been seized by the

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Fig. 3.5  Graves at foot of Northeast Gate staircase

Fig. 3.6  Plan (left) and view from south (right) of Northeast Gate blocking wall (shaded in grey)

Byzantine state? The nearby presence of other burials that predate the construction of the defenses suggest that these graves continue a longer local tradition that had been interrupted by the Hexamilion (Gregory 1993; Rife 2012). The last example, which is even more difficult to understand, concerns another modification of the gateways into the Fortress. While the earlier routes of travel through the Isthmus are difficult to trace, it is almost certainly the case that the construction of the Hexamilion significantly limited the points of passage into the Peloponnese. Thus, along the eastern shore of the Isthmus, the roadway from Athens was made to pass directly through the Fortress itself before branching off in the direction of Corinth to the west and Epidauros to the east. As a result, Isthmia was immediately transformed from an athletic sanctuary with little permanent occupation to a major thoroughfare into southern Greece, guarded by a military garrison. Yet at some point in the later sixth or early seventh century, oddly enough, both the Northeast and South Gates through the Fortress were sealed shut with thick walls placed directly upon the well-worn roadway between the flanking towers (Fig. 3.6). The construction style of the walls suggests that they were built quickly and

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somewhat carelessly. Yet, at the same time, the wall blocking the Northeast Gate was equipped with sluice gates for drainage, which indicates that this was not built as a temporary measure. Such a dramatic alteration of the Fortress gateways could be seen as a desperate response to some threat of imminent attack, but this does not explain the fact that neither blocking wall was ever altered or removed. In fact, from this point until a gate was roughly cut into the western wall of the Fortress in the fourteenth century, easy passage into and out of the enclosure was not possible. A postcolonial approach may offer a better explanation. As a general rule, most literary references to the Hexamilion discuss repairs of the fortification, which would suggest that the condition of this structure was allowed to deteriorate quite rapidly in between renovations. As with the graves that appear in the Northeast Gate mere decades after its completion, these blocking walls also follow closely the documented effort of the Byzantine empire under Justinian to repair the gates. Thus, it appears that the history of the Hexamilion follows a cyclic pattern of imperial concern followed by local indifference or even opposition to outside interventions. In this last example, it may well have been the case that the small population of Isthmia resisted the transformation of their land into a major thoroughfare and therefore acted in ways that attempted to reclaim the area’s agrarian character. One small but potentially informative discovery that supports this interpretation comes in the form of beehives. Over the long history of beekeeping in antiquity, these devices have been constructed in a number of different shapes and from a wide variety of materials (logs, cork, woven reeds, mudbrick), many of which have survived only in artistic representations (Crane 1983). Yet, in the classical period, many beehives were built from fired clay in the shape of an elongated cone, typically 1 m long and a third as wide in diameter (Kritsky 2017). When discovered in their typically fragmentary state, pieces of Greek and Roman beehives are almost indistinguishable from sherds of large transport vessels, were it not for the fact that their interior surfaces have been deliberately roughened by scratching the wet clay with a comb during production. This surface treatment is intended to aid the bees in attaching the honeycomb to the pot. Surface survey and excavation in the Fortress and at Isthmia more generally has recovered a noticeably large number of fragments of this type of beehive. Study of these artifacts has shown that they range in date from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine periods and therefore represent an agricultural tradition that predates the fortification by centuries (Anderson-Stojanović and Ellis Jones 2002). In fact, as the location of an athletic sanctuary that saw only intermittent use, this area would have satisfied the recommendation of the ancient treatises that hives be kept “…far from the noise and the assemblage of men and beasts” (Columella On Agriculture IX.V). Yet the construction of the Fortress and rerouting of the roadway to pass directly through this site would have significantly impacted the quiet environment that had allowed beekeeping here. Could it be that the blocking walls represent a local effort to reinstate a traditional agricultural practice that had been interrupted by the state-­ sponsored defense of southern Greece? In the process of discussing the significance of roads and walls as tools of colonial control, Given (2004) asks, “What happens when a line on the map becomes a barrier in your landscape…?” In the case of a Byzantine fortification at Isthmia, local responses may have ranged from the playful critique of a mason’s graffiti to an

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architectural intervention that used the pretense of augmented defenses to mask a negation of the structure’s function. The fifteenth century sources concerning a rebuilding of the Hexamilion indicate not only that such subversive responses were possible, but that they may have been more common than we might expect, given the overarching narrative concerning the “barbarian invasions”. In many ways, then, a study of the evidence for responses to the construction and repair of the Hexamilion as (re)imposition of imperial rule in Byzantine Greece finds much in common with work in the postcolonial subfield of subaltern studies. While the problematization of this term leaves much in doubt as to who may rightly be considered subaltern, as a general concept we may accept that at various moments and places in time the activism of disadvantaged or oppressed groups goes unrecognized by those in power because these groups do not, or cannot, express their desires in ways that align with the modes of communication that have been imposed from the outside (Morris and Spivak 2010). In the present case, the construction of a barrier wall and the associated reorganization of travel routes across the Isthmus of Greece were measures that a central imperial authority considered to be the most appropriate responses to invasions that threatened those living in the Peloponnese. Arguably then, the defensive nature of this project shaped and constrained the dominant narrative so that the emperors and their chronographers could only see the wall in terms of protection and control, which in turn silenced those whose lives may have been affected by the wall in other ways. As a result, the acts of resistance of these subaltern groups either went unrecognized (graffiti or graves) by imperial authorities or, perhaps rather creatively, utilized the vocabulary of defensive measures as a way to undermine the function of the fortification altogether (blocking the main gate). But perhaps even more importantly, as Ranajit Guha (1988a) has explored with respect to the historiography of resistance to British rule in India, it is often the case that scholars play a significant role in silencing for a second time the voice of these subaltern elements in society by attributing their agency either to the inspired work of intellectual elites or to an unexplored sense of natural impulses and processes. This is again the case with respect to the study of this, and one may assume, many other architectural interventions for which the scant primary written evidence expresses the world view of the Byzantine elites. All too often in the study of classical and post-classical architecture such accounts are taken at face value as the impartial report of faithful observers. Yet, the scholarship of the subaltern studies group has demonstrated that this is never the case. As Guha (1988b) notes, it is the job of a post colonial scholar to find the “chinks” in the dominant narratives where the subaltern may speak, which in the case of Isthmia can quite literally be the spaces between blocks in a wall.

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References Anderson, J., Jr. (2002). Roman architecture and society. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Anderson, J., Jr. (2014). Architect and patron. In R. Ulrich & C. Quenemoen (Eds.), A companion to Roman architecture (pp. 127–139). Malden: Wiley Blackwell. Anderson-Stojanović, V., & Ellis Jones, J. (2002). Ancient beehives from Isthmia. Hesperia, 71(4), 345–376. Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2002). The empire writes back: Theory and practice in post-colonial literatures. London: Routledge. Baird, J. A., & Taylor, C. (2012). Ancient graffiti in context. New York: Routledge. Barker, J.  W. (1962). On the chronology of the activities of Manuel II Palaeologus in the Peloponnesus in 1415. Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 55, 39–55. Bouras, C. (2002). Master craftsmen, craftsmen, and building activities in Byzantium. In A. E. Laiou (Ed.), The economic history of Byzantium: From the seventh through the fifteenth century (pp. 539–554). Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks. Bouras, C. (2005). Originality in Byzantine architecture. In J.-P.  Sodini & F.  Baratte (Eds.), Melanges Jean-Pierre Sodini (Travaux et Memoires 15) (pp. 99–108). Paris: Association des amis du centre d’histoire et civilization de Byzance. Brunt, P.  A. (1980). Free labour and public works at Rome. The Journal of Roman Studies, 70, 81–100. Crane, E. (1983). The archaeology of beekeeping. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Crow, J. (2013). Fortification and the late Roman East: From urban walls to long walls. In A.  Sarantis & N.  Christie (Eds.), War and warfare in late antiquity: Current perspectives (pp. 397–432). Leiden: Brill. Cuomo, S. (2007). Technology and culture in Greek and Roman antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Laine, J. (1997). The Baths of Caracalla: A study in the design, construction, and economics of large-scale building projects in imperial Rome (Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 25) Portsmouth, RI. De Laine, J. (2000). Building the eternal city: The construction industry of imperial Rome. In J.  Coulston & H.  Dodge (Eds.), Ancient Rome: The archaeology of the eternal city (pp. 119–141). Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology. DeStaebler, P.  D. (2008). The city wall and the making of a late-antique provincial capital. In R. R. R. Smith, C. Ratté, & L. Bier (Eds.), Aphrodisias papers 4: New research on the city and its monuments (pp. 285–318). Portsmouth: Journal of Roman Archaeology. Dey, H. (2011). The Aurelian Wall and the refashioning of imperial Rome, A.D. 271–855. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Favro, D. (2011). Construction traffic in imperial Rome: Building the arch of Septimius Severus. In R.  Laurence & D.  J. Newsome (Eds.), Rome, Ostia, Pompeii: Movement and space (pp. 332–360). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frey, J. (2016). Spolia in fortifications and the common builder in late antiquity. Leiden: Brill. Frey, J. (2015). Work teams on the isthmian fortress and the development of a later Roman architectural aesthetic. In E.  Gebhard & T.  E. Gregory (Eds.), Bridge of the untiring sea: The Corinthian Isthmus from prehistory to late antiquity (pp. 311–326). Princeton: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Gebhard, E. (1993). The Isthmian games and the Sanctuary of Poseidon in the early empire. In T. E. Gregory (Ed.), The Corinthia in the Roman period: Including the papers given at a symposium held at the Ohio State University on 7–9 March, 1991 (pp. 78–94). Ann Arbor: Journal of Roman Archaeology. Given, M. (2004). The archaeology of the colonized. New York: Routledge. Gregory, T.  E. (1993). Isthmia V: The hexamilion and fortress. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

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Turnbull, S. (2014). The walls of Constantinople AD 324–1453. London: Osprey Pub. Walbank, M. E. H. (2002). What’s in a name? Corinth under the Flavians. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 139, 251–264. Webster, J., & Cooper, N. J. (1996). Roman imperialism: Post-colonial perspectives: Proceedings of a symposium held at Leicester university in November 1994. Leicester: University of Leicester. Wilson Jones, M. (2009). Principles of roman architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press. Zanini, E. (2003). The urban ideal and urban planning in Byzantine new cities of the sixth century A.D. In L. Lavan & W. Bowden (Eds.), Theory and practice in late antique archaeology (pp. 196–223). Leiden: Brill. Zanini, E. (2006). Artisans and traders in the early Byzantine city: Exploring the limits of archaeological evidence. Late Antique Archaeology, 3(1), 371–411. Zanini, E. (2007). Technology and ideas: Architects and master-builders in the early Byzantine world. In L. Lavan, E. Zanini, & A. Sarantis (Eds.), Technology in transition A.D. 300–650 (pp. 381–405).

Chapter 4

Postcolonial Manifestations of African Spatiality in Europe: The Invisible “Public” Spaces of Ghent Luce Beeckmans

Abstract  The focus of this chapter is on everyday spaces of African migration in the mid-sized city of Ghent. One manifestation of African spatiality is discussed in-depth in relation to its (in)visibility and publicity: an African shop located in an ordinary terraced house. With no less than 12 activities taking place in the building, the shop is rather a “public” place than solely a space of commercial transactions, although this is not signaled in very visible ways. By analyzing the modest stylistic appropriations of the façade and the significant re-arrangements of the buildings’ interior spaces that challenge more conventional usages of spaces in Ghent’s ordinary houses, this chapter puts this African shop to the fore as emblematic of how the process of materialization of transnational lifestyles and connections is always a balancing act between the visibility necessary for functioning as a (semi-)pubic place and the invisibility required to circumvent hegemonic regulatory regimes. Keywords  African diasporic spatiality · Mid-sized city Europe · Shop · Invisibility · Publicness · Materialities of migration 

4.1  E  veryday African Spatiality in the Mid-Sized City: An African Shop in Ghent Since the turn of the century, the interplay of economic globalization and transnational network formation have resulted in more complex patterns of migration to Europe, including Belgium. This has resulted in the influx of migrants from more African countries of origin, channeling African migrants not only to the capital Brussels, but also to secondary cities or ‘mid-sized cities’, such as Ghent. However, while the number of sub-Saharan African migrants in Belgium has risen fast during L. Beeckmans (*) Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. L. Nitschke, M. Lorenzon (eds.), Postcolonialism, Heritage, and the Built Environment, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60858-3_4

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the last decades, their presence seems almost invisible, both in the literature, where we can speak about a blind spot, and in the city. Aside from the “Congolese neighborhood” Matonge in Brussels (Arnaut 2006; Demart 2013), sub-Saharan African spatiality is a neglected topic of research. The focus of this chapter is on everyday spaces of African migration in the mid-­ sized city Ghent. We will take a close look at the processes and products of physical place-making by African migrants from below, i.e. self-organized and outside any institutionalized framework of intervention. While I will highlight the agency of African migrants in contemporary processes of urban place-making, I will try not to fall into the “postcolonial trap” of overestimating their power or romanticizing their interventions. This approach is in line with recent advances in migration studies, in which migrants are increasingly considered as constitutive forces in the shaping and making of contemporary cities in Europe (Çağlar and Glick Schiller 2018). Yet, while we can speak about a spatial turn, often the relationship between migrancy and cities addresses migrants’ spatiality on a highly abstract and theoretical level, for instance by questioning the role of migrants as “scale makers” in the global scalar repositioning of cities (Glick Schiller and Çağlar 2011). While some scholars have recently contested “this unitary and monolithic understanding of the city” (Van Dijk 2011: 105) by conceptualizing “everyday diversities” or “lived diversities” in specific urban spaces (Wessendorf 2014; Husband et al. 2014), often the focus is predominantly on social space. How physical space shapes the unfolding of diversity and conversely is being shaped by diversity are dimensions that have only recently come under close scrutiny (Berg and Sigona 2013: 356; Erdentug and Colombijn 2007; Cairns 2004). In her co-edited book Ethno-Architecture and the Politics of Migration Mirjana Lozanovska (2015: 4, 1) explores more deeply into this interrelationship, by foregrounding architecture as an identity category for under-privileged migrants, thereby pointing to the importance of Hall’s (1997) work on ethnicity and globalization and Spivak’s (1988) work on the subaltern in allowing us to fully consider the migrant as spatial agents. Through architecture, broadly understood as “expression, form of settlement and inscription through use”, and in interaction with existing architectural conditions, migrants negotiate questions of home, belonging, citizenship, culture and (diasporic) community. Yet, while migrants’ architectural agency is crucial in the process of resettlement after displacement (Beeckmans et al. 2020), the resulting architecture with its “migrant aesthetics” and “ethnic identifiers” often provokes processes of “othering” by the host society (Lozanovska 2015: 230; Lozanovska et  al. 2013). This tension between migrants’ architecture as way of expression and as initiator of “othering” results in intricate, and sometimes paradoxical, mediations between (in)visibility and publicity, on which I will dwell on this chapter. In order to expand our understanding of the materiality of immigrant space, I will discuss here one manifestation of African spatiality in Ghent more deeply: an African shop, located in ordinary terraced houses and therefore quite invisible within the urban fabric of the city. For this I draw on extensive ethnographic fieldwork I have conducted in a number of sites in Ghent, also including African churches

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which I have analyzed from a similar perspective elsewhere (Beeckmans 2020).1 As an architect, employing interdisciplinary research methods including visual methods (cf. Hall et al. 2015), and inspired by some recent scholarship in the field of archaeology of the contemporary past, in particular its focus on material culture (Holtorf and Piccini 2009), my excavation of Ghent’s post-industrial urban tissue is an endeavor in “presencing absence”, that is, “foregrounding the subaltern, life on the margins, the ordinary” (Harrison and Schofield 2010: 10), and “materializing that which is forgotten or concealed” (Buchli et al. 2001: 171). By critically shedding light on the spatial dimension of contemporary processes of transnational migration, the related questions of (geo-political) power, and processes of spatial inclusion and exclusion, this chapter also engages in a “politics of space” (Certomà et al. 2012, see also González-Ruibal 2008). Yet, exactly by focusing on the “real” space and its overlooked materiality, this chapter also attempts to make abstract, postcolonial concepts, such as “hybridity” or “appropriation” more concrete and tangible (Teverson and Upstone 2011). In the mid-sized city of Ghent, most migrants from African originate from Ghana and Nigeria. Although still relatively small in size today, they are the fastest growing immigrant group in Ghent after East-Europeans (Stad Gent 2018). Although it would be far from appropriate to speak about an African “ethnopolis” as is to some extent the case for Matonge in Brussels, there exists a certain concentration of African spatiality in the eastern periphery of Ghent, around the railway station and along the former docks. It is in this area that the African shop discussed below is situated. In the following I will describe and analyze the African shop, today the centre of the African diasporic community in Ghent, in relation to its (in)visibility. While similar studies have been done already by some authors in the context of African churches in global cities such as London (Garbin 2013; Knowles 2013), extensive research on non-religious African spatiality in a mid-sized city is still rare, even though there are strong indications that Africans have occupied and appropriated urban locations in similar “invisible” ways to fulfil essential social and economic needs.

4.2  Mediating Degrees of (In)Visibility In some neighborhoods of global cities, such as London or Chicago, ethnic stores form a highly visible manifestation in the streetscapes of the new condition of societal complexification that emerged as a consequence of intensifying and intermeshing migration (Hall and Datta 2010; Sen 2015), often referred to as “superdiversity” 1  Apart from my own fieldwork, I am also grateful to my students for their preliminary fieldwork conducted within the framework of a research seminar Mapping the Invisible City we organised in 2017 at Ghent University (Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, together with Johan Lagae). I moreover also rely on fieldwork done in this shop by two master students at Ghent University (Department of African Languages and Cultures), published as part of their theses (Desender 2005 and Dikomitis 2007).

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(Vertovec 2007). This can be seen, for instance, through screaming signboards, colorful logos and neon-lighted banners which work as strong “ethnic identifiers” (Lozanovska et al. 2013). It is somewhat different for the African shop in Ghent discussed here, which is situated in a narrow, fairly decayed, three-storied terraced house. The terraced house is a type of single-family domestic dwelling that first emerged in Belgium and the Netherlands in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and remains the most popular type of urban housing in the region today. Such houses are arranged side-by-side in a single city block, sharing their side walls, often using the same materials and adhering to a similar plan; some, like this one, have space on the ground floor for a shop. The structure housing the African shop was originally built in the second half of the nineteenth century, and still retains its original façade including a shop window on the ground floor. At the time of its construction, this street was a flourishing retail area connecting the city center to the docks and the eastern railway station (Fig. 4.1). Two specific characteristics mark the African shop’s invisibility. First, only little visual markers on the façade of the house indicate its African identity. Second, the ordinary terrace house accommodates much more than simply a shop, instead functioning as a type of public space, although this is not signaled in visible ways. In what follows, we will first have a look at the shop’s modest spatial manifestation in the streetscape. Subsequently, we will conceptualize the shop as a liminal space between public and private, which is another key issue in assessing its (in)visibility.

Fig. 4.1  Historical photo of the street in which the shop is located. In the second half of the nineteenth century it was a flourishing retail street connecting the city to the docks and the eastern railway station. Today the street contains many ethnic stores. (Copyright Ghent Municipal Archive)

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Although the façade of the shop bears a big red and blue signboard with the shop’s name and some advertisement for money transfer and mobile phone services, it does not break significantly with the terraced houses at both sides. This uniformity in the streetscape is because the neighboring houses also have shop windows, even though they do not function as shops anymore. Moreover, unlike many ethnic stores, the name of the shop does not directly refer to the African identity of its owners.2 Asked to explain the reason for this, the owner “William”, a political refugee trained both in Ghana and Belgium as an electronics technician, explained that the name signifies “a shop that sells foreign products” (emphasis added). Taking up this generic “foreign” branding was a strategic choice of William and his wife “Sophia” when they opened the first shop devoted to African goods in Ghent in 1993. Although a major motivation for them to open the shop was the lack of African food and cosmetic products in Ghent, it was also from the outset their ambition to attract a wide range of customers. This is different for most of the other African shops in Ghent today. As these other shops almost exclusively target an African clientele, they choose to showcase rather than conceal their African identity in their name. Yet, on the glass window of William and Sophia’s shop, which is placed a little deeper, adhesive letters state: “African Shop. We bring Africa to your doorsteps”, resulting in an ambiguous message. This is intended, however, mostly to attract the eye of Belgian customers, as under it is written “South-African wine for sale”, a product which is only seldom bought by Africans but loved by Belgians. The same holds for the stereotypical African objects in the dark, deep and quite messy show window of the store, such as some djembes, masks and pearled bracelets. Asked for the reason behind these objects, the owner explained that he thought Belgian people feel attracted by such exotic products. When taking a closer look to the shop’s clientele, William and Sophia, seem to have succeeded in attracting a broad range of returning customers. William assesses, and observation seems to confirm, that on an average day 70% of his clientele is African or Afro-Caribbean, 10% is Hispanic Latin-American (according to William a group with similar eating habits), 10% is Belgian (mostly people who tend to use the shop as a cheap night shop due to its late opening hours) and 10% a mix of other population groups, especially of Indian and Turkish descent. The latter is no coincidence, as the Turkish community of Ghent is the largest, more settled immigrant community in the city, with many of them attracted as guest workers from the 1970s onwards (De Gendt 2014; De Bock 2018). In this neighborhood Turkish people make up around 25% of the population, and the many Turkish stores and businesses in the street, such as a butcher, a barber, and a shop for wedding dresses, mark their presence. Yet, for a couple of decades, some Turkish merchants closed their shops in this neighborhood, sometimes opening bigger ones elsewhere, following a certain tendency of suburbanization of this population group. Some of these vacant buildings were occupied by more recent migrants, among them William and Sophia,

2  The shop’s name is omitted and the name of its owners are anonymized in this essay for sake of privacy.

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who bought the current building from a Turkish owner. As I noticed similar property transactions between Africans and Turkish in Ghent in the context of African churches, this demonstrates the importance of older immigrant groups in the materialization of today’s “superdiversity”, still a rarely explored perspectives in migration studies (for an exception, see Wessendorf and Phillimore 2019).3 Although the street is now indeed a “superdiverse” mixture of Belgian, Turkish and African retail businesses, it is called by some “the African street of Ghent”. Another common name is “Little Matonge”, referring to the Congolese neighborhood in Brussels, even though most of the Africans in Ghent are from Ghana or Nigeria and do not live in this neighborhood. While both nicknames are exaggerating the street’s “Africanness” (De Witte 2014), it has indeed become the street with the highest density of non-religious African activities in Ghent with two African shops, two bars, one restaurant, one hair saloon and one money transfer shop. Most of the retailors in the street are members of an association (Dekenij), which is promoting their interests. Yet, the African shop discussed here is the only African retailor that joined, illustrating William’s ambition to integrate in the neighborhood. Yet, when asked for his appreciation of the African shop, the head of the association pointed to some noise nuisance from the “African café”, complaining that it is difficult for the police to intervene in such a “public place” (Desender 2005: 42). Hence, in the eyes of the neighbors, the African shop is much more than only a shop, and when we go inside, we discover why.

4.3  Mediating Levels of Publicity While we have now taken a close look at the materiality of the shop’s façade, it is not an understatement to say that also in a metaphorical way the shop functions as a façade (Fig. 4.2). The shop is characterized by a high multifunctionality, as no less than 12 more “hidden” activities take place in the building, making it a more public place than solely a space of commercial transactions, although the extent to which it is truly public is debatable. The owner and his son tend to describe the space as “public”, pointing to the fact that no membership is necessary for access. Indeed, already on my first fieldwork visit, I was welcomed with great hospitality, which is quite uncommon in most public urban spaces in Europe. It is obvious that the shop enables the encounter between strangers from different backgrounds, albeit predominantly from African descent. At the same time, the degree of publicity varies throughout the building. Some of the functions have a more openly public character, such as the shop itself, while other functions, such as the hair salon hidden in the shop, I would rather describe as “parochial” (Wessendorf 2014; Werbner 2002). In the salon, relations between people are less ephemeral and contingent, and instead more marked by commonality and conviviality. Overall the shop could probably

 Research in Land Registry, Ghent Municipality, 2017.

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Fig. 4.2  Drawing of the shop, visualizing its multifunctionality as well as the varying degree of publicity throughout the building. (Drawing by Jade Kerremans, based on fieldwork notes of Luce Beeckmans. Copyright Luce Beeckmans and Jade Kerremans)

best be captured by what Amin (2002) describes as “micropublics”. These are places where “prosaic negotiations” between people are compulsory and therefore often lead to “meaningful encounters” (Valentine 2008: 325; Fincher and Iveson 2008; Merrifield 2012). Yet, as will become evident from the subsequent socio-spatial analysis, the relationship between visibility and publicity is not always as straightforward as is often the case in Belgian micropublic places (Staeheli et al. 2009). When we enter the shop and stand in the area in front of the cash desk on the left where the popular money transfer and mobile phone services are also located, we see at first sight a rather standard shop layout consisting of two corridors separated by shelves in the middle filled with packed foodstuffs, mostly African products, such as fufu, palm oil and spices, but also some “white products” from Belgian supermarkets. On the wall to the left are shelves with African vegetables, such as okras and yams; some freezers with frozen fish; and on the ground some large bags of white rice. The large wall on the right side is stuffed with African cosmetics and hair products, including wigs. Some of the food and cosmetic products are imported from Ghana by William with the help of his sister who lives there. Together they established their own brand, which William also sells elsewhere in Belgium, France and Germany with his personalized minibus. Yet, despite William’s busy

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transnational trafficking, some of the shelves look a little empty and activity in the shop proved always very low on fieldwork visits during day time. Only after working hours and during weekend days does the shop turn into a dynamic place. This bustle is not caused by the strolling of shopping people. In fact, a large part of the (predominantly male) persons that enter the shop do not even have the intention to buy anything. The main aim of their visit is to socialize. Some of them drink soft drinks or beer which is stored in large freezers in the entrance area in front of the cash desk, which functions as a kind of ad valvas (bulletin board), as people are allowed to hang posters and advertisements for Pentecostal churches and music performances on the walls. As such, it has become a major communication channel within the African community. Liquor by the glass is also for sale at the cash desk, as well as some snacks, made by William’s wife or delivered by other African women living in the city. Others do not even consume anything but come to the shop to warm up and save energy bills at home. Some of them watch international news, African music concerts, or African football on the large television screen, placed next to a surveillance camera. Completely in the back of the shop, three more freezers provide drinks to people who use them also as benches or tables. This somewhat bigger area functions as a meeting place, where people meet and share a drink before going to other (African) bars. In the back, drinking people are also a bit more hidden from the sight and less hindering of potential shoppers. One day, a young man even organized a birthday party in this area, treating his friends to a drink. In the corner of this back area, a door gives way to a toilet. Since the shop also functions as a bar, this smallest room is frequently visited. When the weather allows, people also have drinks on the pavement in front of the shop. In the past this caused some problems with the neighbors, complaining about noise pollution and public drunkenness, with some police interventions as a result. After the shop officially closes for the night, people (almost exclusively men, as African women who go out late are often considered promiscuous) often stay drinking a couple of more hours inside. William closes the run-down shutters while the customers, who know the procedure, just slide them up when they want to enter. When asked for information about the café services, William and Tom (William’s adult son and my main informant) responded rather reservedly, even with suspicion. This restraint likely arises from past police raids, which were frightening events they further want to avoid. Also, the fact that they probably do not have a license to serve alcoholic drinks, obligatory in Belgium, contributes to their reservations and their tendency to downsize the scope of the café services and hide them from the public eye. Although everyone and at every hour can have a drink at the shop, Tom explained me that when an inspector once formulated objections, he declared that drinks were only served as an extra service for people waiting for a money transfer. Probably to better balance the legality/illegally and visibility/invisibility of the café services, William hopes that his daughter Jessica will be able one day to take over the neighboring African café, which could then become connected to the shop by a door in the dividing wall.

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At the back of the shop, an opening in the wall gives out to a corridor-like space where some computers are installed. Some time ago, this place was rented out to a company as an internet shop. However, as most Africans now have Wi-Fi on their smartphone, the company closed its business. Misuse of the computers to watch pornography also brought William to the decision to not continue this service. Now this space in the back serves as a busy graphic design office of William’s son Tom. Within the African community in Ghent, Tom is famous for his layout work and most of the posters in the entrance area of the shop are from his hand. Last year, William and Tom also started to publish the SearchLight Africa Magazine. Distributed through the shop, the magazine brings success stories of the African diaspora and African entrepreneurs. In addition to advertisements for the shop, its brand products, as well as Pentecostal churches and African nightclubs in Ghent, the magazine also contains a breast cancer prevention campaign and charity works in Africa, highlighting William’s role as (or ambition to become) the caring father of the African community in Ghent. Another example of this is an association he founded some years ago that provides money to people in need, for instance to cover funeral costs when someone of the community suddenly passes away.4 The magazine’s layout is done with the help of a graphic designer in Ghana and is also printed in Ghana. Therefore, like the family brand, the magazine is another materialization of the transnational life the family of William is leading in Ghent (Smith and Eade 2008). These deep transnational ties of the family, linking people in the host country, the country of origin and in the broader diasporic group, are also significantly facilitated by social media (Fortunati et  al. 2012), for instance by the shop’s Facebook page. While the shop has its own website, which provides rather dry information of the imported products from Ghana and Tom’s graphic design services, the Facebook page looks more like a dynamic discussion group than a promotion page of a shop. Mainly African people, from various international locations, post on the page information about a variety of things, including worship services, luxury cars, international news, among other topics. As such, it is the virtual counterpart of the community center that the shop actually is. Not many women patronize the shop itself. This is somewhat surprising, as African women do most of the household shopping. From my fieldwork, however, it appears that most African women in Ghent buy food products in the so-called “African shops” (or sometimes “Afro-Asian food shops”) run by Pakistani and Afghan traders of which around seven can be found in Ghent. The main reason for this is that these shops provide food at lower prices, as it is imported from Africa by a hyper-efficient and large network of Pakistani food retailers. To attract an African clientele, the Pakistani and Afghan shopkeepers mimic the layout of the “real” African shops in Ghent, and possibly elsewhere in the African diaspora and even Africa, including the freezers with frozen fish, the large-sized bags of rice on the ground and the shelves with African cosmetic and hair products, but not the social

4  Brochure ‘Vogels die niet vliegen gaan dood, 30 jaar Ghanezen in Gent en Oost-Vlaanderen’ http://www.ghanezeningent.be/?page_id=71

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program which is attached to it in the African shop discussed here. However, women do pass through the shop, that is, they enter the shop, pass the cash desk and via an inconvenient swing door take the staircase to the next floor, the character of which is more intimate than that of the shop. Partly mixed with the living space of William’s family, we find some more semi-public functions on this floor. First, there is a large, rather dark kitchen, were Sophia prepares African meals, not only for her family, but also for customers. Often there is a busy atmosphere, as people chitchat, drink, and eat at the sitting places in the kitchen or sometimes even in the dining and living room of the family, blurring the boundaries between private domestic and more public space. Many authors have pointed to the importance of food and food culture within the diaspora, as food and food-related practices trigger cultural memories and enable connection with the wider diasporic group through processes of belonging, home-making and identity-formation, albeit never without certain degrees of adaptation and hybridization (Mintz 2008; Sen 2016; Watson and Cardwell 2005). Yet, African food culture also has a profound impact on place-making, as the integration of a restaurant on the semi-public floor leads to a profound cultural and physical transformation of a regular terraced house in Ghent. Even more hidden from the view, and only accessible by crossing the kitchen and the adjacent storeroom, is a hair salon. Although probably the smallest room on this floor, it is indisputably the most busy and full of atmosphere. Only women seem to enter this dynamic place stuffed with hair cosmetics and lacking direct sun light, yet opened up a little by the mirrors on the wall (once a week a male barber rents the place to shave African men). Partly this is a gendered space, a place for “woman’s talk” as much as hairdressing. Yet, as has been argued elsewhere, it is more than that; it is above all a cultural site within the diasporic community: “Although the word salon refers to a site of hair care and comfort, it can also be defined as a constructed community for social and intellectual talk on agreed issues” (Alexander 2003: 105). Remarkably, there is nowhere on the façade or even in the shop a sign referring to this hair salon. And even though one has to cross numerous thresholds to access the hair salon, my fieldwork has revealed that this hair salon is the best known among Africans in the neighborhood, even more than the African hair salon in the same street that has its function advertised (albeit rather vaguely) on the façade. The reason behind this invisibility is the need of the women to separate themselves from men, and from the outside world more broadly, to create a secure place to socialize. The fact that this is an unregistered hair salon, and thus attracts customers through word-of-mouth only, contributes to its state of invisibility. The presence of the hair salon decisively redraws the conventional arrangement of an ordinary terraced house with shop on the ground floor, in particular the threshold between publicness and domesticity. Only the top floor, which contains the sleeping rooms and is only accessed by the members of the family, belongs to the private sphere alone.

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4.4  N  ew (Invisible) Collective Worlds in the Postcolonial City in Europe Ethnic stores can be regarded as the materialization of the transnational life many migrants lead. Indeed, the African shop discussed above is part of larger global flow of trade, labor, and migration, and is, through the sale of ethnic products, the diverse clientele, and the multitude of (virtual) activities, linked to places elsewhere in Africa and in the broader diasporic community (Sen 2015). At the same time, the African shop is fixed to a certain locality. Therefore, territorial embeddedness and global relationality are deeply intertwined. Moreover, in addition to ethnic products, physical place-making practices are also circulated across the real and virtual trans-­ urban networks of the African diaspora, from which they land in a given locality and are adapted to the specific architectural and urban context (Beeckmans 2017). The result is a form of “hybrid” architecture, which is sometimes described as “third world-looking architecture” (Beynon 2005) because it often remains in an eternal, unfinished state, waiting on new financial injections to come. However, at the same time, Africans are contributing to alternative ways of urban regeneration by reinvigorating decayed or vacant buildings in the city (Garbin 2013; Beeckmans 2019). Therefore, even if African migrancy does not always produce new sites of insurgent citizenship and often forms spaces of incapacity and marginality, African spatiality creates places where the “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968) is re-negotiated as it most often occurs outside normative places. Sometimes the results are new “public” or collective worlds existing outside the urban regularity. Yet, as has become salient through this case study, levels of publicness sometimes stand in tension with degrees of visibility. Two reasons behind this tension are particularly insightful. First, the analysis of the shop challenges the universality of what is commonly, or according to a Eurocentric vision, considered as “public” and “private”. Indeed, analogous to what happens in many African churches, we see a certain inversion of these notions, resulting in a high interiorization of (public) space. Comparable processes have been described by Benchelabi (1998: 5) in her study of a “hidden” network of salons de thé for Maghrebi women in Brussels. Muslim women, and for other and similar reasons African people, regularly feel a certain disinterest and discomfort in European public space, the “space of appearance”, with its specific, but often unfamiliar, visibility regimes and hegemonic ideals of the public sphere (Staeheli et  al. 2009: 633). Therefore, they turn to the intimate and “‘private’ sphere of ‘invisibility’, a space of ‘mere giveness’ that allows the (political) subject, the citizen, to be just what she or he ‘is’”, also for (semi) public purposes (Arendt 1996; cited by Bialasiewicz 2017: 382). Second, it appears that many of the “public” spaces in the shop were kept under the radar because of legal questions. Apart from the fact that many of the Africans I encountered in the shop are illegal immigrants in Europe, some of the place-making practices also conflicted with hegemonic regulatory regimes, for instance municipal laws on the consumption of alcohol and building and fire safety regulations. Also, here there is a parallel between African and Muslim spatiality in Europe. Bialasiewicz

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(2017: 381) notes, within the context of THE MOSQUE project on the Venice Biennale, that Muslim claims on public space are often met with feelings of inconvenience and even fear: “as long as it [the mosque] is an inconspicuous structure, blending into the warehouses and car dealerships that make up this strip of periurbanized countryside, ‘no one will complain’”, resulting in strategies of invisibility. Bialasiewicz (2017: 377) describes that once a mosque becomes a visible element in the urban landscape, community members sometimes try to shut it down citing “public health reasons” or sanitary and fire safety regulations as a technical pretext (see also Beynon 2015). I encountered similar negotiations over visibility and invisibility in the shop discussed here, both at the side of the African shop owner and the municipality. In conclusion, this African shop is an example of the materialization of transnational lifestyles and connections, for instance by semi-fixed, stylistic appropriations of the façades (logos, signboards, banners, etc.) and above all by significant re-­ arrangements of the buildings’ interior spaces that challenge more conventional usages of spaces in Ghent’s terraced houses, reminiscent of what Hall called “mutualisms” (2015: 32). The discussion above has sought to demonstrate how this process of materialization is always a balancing act between the visibility necessary for functioning as a (semi-)pubic place and the invisibility required to circumvent hegemonic regulatory regimes. If we use the conceptual framework of De Certeau (1984), the place-making practices underscoring these materializations can sometimes be understood as deliberate “strategies” to manoeuvre within a legislative context marked by a deep Eurocentric, normative and secularized conceptualization of urban/public space. Yet, just as much, African place-making is simply the crystallization of the manifold everyday tactics African migrants deploy to make a living, without ever having the intention to break with the prevailing legislation or resist against dominant regimes of publicity. As has been argued by Casas-Cortes et al. (2015), “Most of the time, migrant struggles are concerned with neither representation nor claims for rights nor border policies as such. Rather, they are struggles of (migrant) everyday life: they consist in the mere fact of persisting in a certain space, irrespective of law, rights and the pace of the politics of mobility.” Some scholars have declared that with their research they aim to resolve the invisibility of African spatiality in Europe’s urban space as they consider “visibility vital in generating more open forms of urban encounter and, ultimately, citizenship” (Knowles 2013: 651). However, while this seems a legitimate intention, many of the place-making practices of African migrants just seem to require certain degrees of invisibility (see also Staeheli et al. 2009: 635). Hence, making the coping mechanisms of migrants visible on the (political) public stage may also be dangerous, as this could result in an even higher fragility and instability of these groups. This is a difficult dilemma that requires a profound reflection on the position of the researcher and the ethics of research. If I wanted to make something visible with this chapter, however, then it was above all the manifest paradox between “the role of the material world in shaping ethnic identity” and “the strategy of invisibility” deployed by African migrants in Ghent (Frazier 2015).

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Postscript After this essay was written but prior to publication, a disaster befell the African shop: a fire due to a malfunctioning washing machine, making the building completely uninhabitable. The family members not only lost their home, but also their employment. Although the family hopes to re-establish the shop one day, for now the African community has lost one of its major points of reference in the city. This tragic event has also changed the nature of this essay, from a detailed spatial ethnography of one of the city’s invisible “public” spaces to a document preserving memory of this place and highlighting its importance in terms of (destroyed) cultural heritage.

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Knowles, C. (2013). Nigerian London: Re-mapping space and ethnicity in superdiverse cities. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(4), 651–669. Lefebvre, H. (1968). Le droit à la ville. Paris: Anthropos. Lozanovska, M. (2015). Introduction: Ethnically differentiated architecture in a global world. In M.  Lozanovska (Ed.), Ethno-architecture and the politics of migration (pp.  3–8). London: Routledge. Lozanovska, M., Levin, I., & Gantala, M. V. (2013). Is the migrant house in Australia an Australian vernacular architecture? Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, 24(2), 65–78. Merrifield, A. (2012). The politics of the encounter and the urbanization of the world. City, 16(3), 269–283. Mintz, S. (2008). Food and diaspora. Food, Culture and Society, 11(4), 509–523. Sen, A. (2015). Awe and order: Ethno-architecture in everyday life. In M.  Lozanovska (Ed.), Ethno-architecture and the politics of migration (pp. 151–164). London: Routledge. Sen, A. (2016). Food, place and memory: Bangladeshi fish stores on Devon Avenue, Chicago. Food and Foodways, 24(1–2), 67–88. Smith, M.  P., & Eade, J. (2008). Transnational ties: Cities, migrations, and identities. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In L. Grossberg & C. Nelson (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Staeheli, L., Mitchell, D., & Nagel, C. (2009). Making publics: Immigrants, regimes of publicity, and entry to “the public”. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 27, 633–648. Teverson, A., & Upstone, S. (Eds.). (2011). Postcolonial spaces, the politics of place in contemporary culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Valentine, G. (2008). Living with difference: Reflections on geographies of encounter. Progress in Human Geography, 32(3), 323–337. Van Dijk, R. (2011). Cities and the social construction of hot spots: Rescaling, Ghanaian migrants, and the fragmentation of urban spaces. In N.  Glick Schiller & A. Çağlar (Eds.), Locating migration: Rescaling cities and migrants (pp. 104–122). Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Vertovec, S. (2007). Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(6), 1024–1054. Watson, J., & Cardwell, M. (2005). The cultural politics of food and eating. Malden: Blackwell. Werbner, P. (2002). The place which is diaspora: Citizenship, religion and gender in the making of chaordic transnationalism. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 28(1), 119–133. Wessendorf, S. (2014). “Being open, but sometimes closed”: Conviviality in a super-diverse London neighbourhood. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 17(4), 392–405. Wessendorf, S., & Phillimore, J. (2019). New migrants’ social integration, embedding and emplacement in Superdiverse contexts. Sociology, 53(1), 123–138.

Chapter 5

“No Houses and Skin Garments, Sheep, Poultry and Fruits of the Earth”: Aboriginal Australia, Narratives of Human History, and the Built Environment Martin Porr

Abstract  This paper critically discusses how the Australian Aboriginal built environment has been conceptualized in the past and how it should be viewed in the light of current archaeological and ethnographic evidence. The historical view of Aboriginal built structures is necessarily entangled in Western or European perceptions of Australian Aboriginal lifeways. Western narratives of global human history prioritized economic practices (e.g. farming) as well as material technologies (which also included permanent built structures) to measure the degree of progress of societies. Australian Aboriginal societies were invariably placed at the bottom of these schemes. These narratives are fundamentally challenged on two levels. The first is a recognition of the complexity of the material transformations that are observable in Australia and related to a wide range of complex Australian Aboriginal practices. The second is a critique of the established understanding of the processes of the establishment of meaning in the context of places and landscapes and their interrelationships with human practices, worldviews and values. Beyond the recognition that “complexity” does not depend on built structures as defined by dominant Western narratives, this latter aspect relates to a critique of the boundary between nature and culture and the definition of a built environment itself. Keywords  Australia · Australian Aboriginal cultures · Colonial narratives · Social evolution · Nomadism · Nature/culture · Hunter-gatherers

M. Porr (*) Archaeology/Centre for Rock Art Research and Management, University of Western Australia, Albany, WA, Australia ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. L. Nitschke, M. Lorenzon (eds.), Postcolonialism, Heritage, and the Built Environment, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60858-3_5

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5.1  Introduction – The Persistence of Colonial Narratives In 1993, in the famous essay “From three cheers to the black armband”, the historian Geoffrey Blainey had this to say about Aboriginal Australian traditional lifeways: “The world’s history has depended heavily on the eclipse of this old and wasteful economic way of life  – wasteful in terms of human potential” (Blainey 2012: 201; orig. 1993). Blainey made this assessment not in the context of an academic debate. Rather, it was part of the public discussion around the legislation of Aboriginal land rights that culminated in the Native Title Act in the same year. Blainey opposed these developments. He asserted that the Aboriginal “way of life was bound to be overthrown eventually because it supported so few people on so much land”. The Native Title bill would introduce “a form of ownership and an attitude to the land that served the world well in the Stone Age but will be self-­ defeating in the 21st century” (quoted in Breen 1996: 126). This example shows that the issues discussed here are not only of academic interest. In this paper, I want to critically discuss ways of approaching and understanding the Australian Aboriginal built environment. Such an endeavor is necessarily entangled in Western or European perceptions of Australian Aboriginal lifeways, which have from the very beginning been described as largely deficient of built structures. The perceived lack of a built environment was a key focus of arguments about the place of Aboriginal Australians in the history of humanity from the seventeenth century onwards. Western narratives of global human history prioritized economic practices (e.g. farming) as well as material technologies (which also included permanent built structures) to measure the degree of progress of societies. Australian Aboriginal societies were invariably placed at the bottom of these schemes, close to the origins of humanity and the boundary between nature and culture. The example mentioned above demonstrates that such narratives continue to persist in current public discourses and influence political decision-making processes. These narratives need to be fundamentally challenged on at least two levels. The first is a recognition of the complexity of the material transformations that are observable in Australia and related to a wide range of complex Australian Aboriginal practices. The second is a critique of the established understanding of the processes of the establishment of meaning in the context of places and landscapes and their interrelationships with human practices, worldviews and values. Beyond the recognition that “complexity” does not depend on built structures as defined by dominant Western narratives, this latter aspect relates to a critique of the boundary between nature and culture and the definition of a built environment itself.

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5.2  T  erra nullius, Australia’s “State of Nature” and Place in Humanity’s History De jure, the determination of the High Court in the case of Mabo and others v The State of Queensland in 1992 that the people of the Murray Islands retained native title despite European colonization ended the doctrine of Terra nullius in Australia. Terra nullius, literally “land of no one”, is a legal principle historically used to justify certain territorial claims of colonial powers. This principle was used to push the idea of Australia as an empty continent at the time of the establishment of British occupation in the late eighteenth century (David et al. 2002). Although the Mabo decision paved the way for many Native Title determinations across Australia that recognized ongoing cultural connections between Aboriginal people and the land (Ritter 2009), a range of problematic attitudes towards Aboriginal people and traditional culture persist. In particular, they are perceived within a primitivist framework as less culturally developed than other people, located closer to the origins of humanity and, therefore, to nature. The crucial element in these attitudes is the assumption that human history is a progressive process of an increased control over nature that leads to different expressions of material culture and structures, and the manipulation and exploitation of the environment over time. The built environment plays a key role in this context as the material reflection of a society’s supposed level of control or mastery over nature. The earliest European descriptions of Australian Aboriginal societies in the seventeenth century already stressed the absence of elements that were regarded as key identifiers of human advancement. William Dampier wrote in 1697 that Aboriginal people were “the miserablest … in the world.” His view was based on his observation that Australian Aborigines had “no houses and skin Garments, Sheep, Poultry and Fruits of the Earth” (Anderson and Perrin 2007: 3). Dampier clearly concentrated on the aspect that seemed most significant and extraordinary to him. This was the apparent failure of Aboriginal people to cultivate the land and to build any recognizable structures and improvements. It was the failure to construct and live within a built environment. Based on these writings, Australian Aboriginal people started to replace African people as the lowest living representatives of humanity’s deep history and ascent to civilization among eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers. This characterization is at least partly based on the perceived lack of or the simplicity of a built environment or architectural structures. For example, in the 1770s, Lord Mondobbo stated that “the Australian Aborigine was ‘Man in his original condition’  – whose ‘huts are not near so well built as those of beavers’” (Anderson 2007: 75). The earliest European observers were particularly puzzled by the apparent lack of cultivation and any recognizable forms of agriculture. Joseph Banks, who was at the time President of the Royal Society, accompanied James Cook on his journey to Australia in the eighteenth century. He especially notes that Aboriginal people were “ignorant of the arts of cultivation” and, therefore, “their reason must be suppos’d to hold a rank little superior to that of monkies” (Anderson 2007: 77). He also

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speculated that, because of the lack of agriculture in the coastal regions they had surveyed during their voyage, the interior of the continent was most likely uninhabited. This assessment fundamentally influenced the European perception of Australia for a very long time and it supported the view of a Terra nullius available for invasion and dispossession. Again, this understanding was also extended to living structures and architecture. In his journal, Banks states that “their houses ‘though they never make any stay in them but wandering like Arabs from place to place … are framed with less art or rather less industry than any habitations of human beings probably that the world can shew” (Anderson 2007: 78). Anderson and Perrin (2007) have argued that the lack of agriculture was particularly mystifying for European observers during the eighteenth century because of the Enlightenment discourse that related humanness closely to control over nature. The latter was specifically expressed in the following terms: different forms of cultivation, land management and domestication of animals and plants. Early observers were often unable to establish the presence of any of these elements; subsequently, this lack of widely accepted markers of “civilization” presented a challenge to Enlightenment ideas about the variability of human lifeways in time and space. Enlightenment thought generally interpreted human history as a movement out of and away from nature and believed that this development was recognizable through the presence of more extensive and sophisticated technologies of resource exploitation, complex living conditions, as well as durable material structures. As such, Australian Aborigines were immediately placed at the beginning of human history and at the bottom of these developmental schemes because of the simplicity of the perceived technologies and shallowness of impact on the environment (Murray 2015). It needs to be stressed that these observations are not restricted to the Australian context. They are rather related to deeper issues of the Western construction of history and the relationships between nature and culture in this context. Key elements of the discussions above can also be found in conversations about the assessment of hunting and gathering people in more general terms (Barnard 2004; Cummings et al. 2014). These conversations focus on questions of how the practices and material culture of hunting and gathering people should be understood and how hunter-­ gatherers should be seen in relation to the origins of humanity. It has often been argued that full humanity and human history only began with a proper built environment, i.e. when people started living in permanent architecture, which allowed the development of a full cultural and architecturally modified environment (Rapoport 1994; Wilson 1988). In Australia, this understanding has been amplified by the long-standing perception that it is not only the human cultures that are ancient but the continent and its flora and fauna as well (Watson 2014). This has resulted in the misconception that the condition of Australia’s Aboriginal populations is the product of a natural process and of an overarching temporality that supposedly governs the whole history of the world: “Just as the platypus, laying its eggs and feebly suckling its young, reveals a mammal in the making, so does the Aboriginal show us, at least in broad outline, what every man must have been like before he learned to read and write, domesticate animals, cultivate crops and use a metal tool” (Spencer and Gillen 1927: vii).

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Thus, following the initial European colonization and because of the prevailing Enlightenment ideologies, the interpretation of Australian Aboriginal lifeways became fundamentally skewed and biased towards their assumed primitiveness. It largely prevented a balanced engagement with Australia’s own deep historical trajectory, because the interest was mainly directed towards elements that were regarded to be relevant in terms of global origin narratives (Gamble 1992; Gamble and Gittins 2004; McNiven and Russell 2005; Porr and Matthews 2017). Russell and McNiven (1998) have discussed these processes specifically in relation to the early European interpretation of Aboriginal stone arrangements and features. These material markers that occur throughout the continent should have demonstrated to European observers that their initial assessments of an empty continent that is untouched by human activity need revision. The interpretations that were proposed, however, followed a colonial and racist structure that excluded the possibility of Aboriginal authorship of the respective structures. In early colonial Australia, Aboriginal stone circles and arrangements were foremost interpreted with reference to known examples from prehistoric Europe. Russell and McNiven (1998) list several publications from the mid-nineteenth century that stress supposed similarities between Australian structures and monuments from the “northern world”. In some cases, authors have used local Aboriginal myths and stories to argue that Indigenous built structures were the result of technological diffusion from the Northern hemisphere. In other cases, authors have argued that the lack of local Aboriginal people’s mythologies supports a similar assessment. The result in both cases was the creation of a non-Indigenous past for the Australian continent that could underwrite and legitimize colonial dispossession. This was achieved by integrating the available evidence into a global historical narrative and by severing it from local contexts: “The Aborigines were effectively removed from their own unique historical trajectory and incorporated into a world prehistory which was dominated by the West” (Russell and McNiven 1998: 288).

5.3  B  eyond Spirituality, Sociality and Economy. The Human Dimensions of the Australian Continent In light of the colonial representation of Aboriginal Australians as ignorant of agriculture and living in a “state of nature”, it is slightly surprising that accounts of early explorers and other early colonial descriptions frequently include descriptions of sophisticated cultivation practices, elaborate architectural structures and settlements. In recent years, Pascoe (esp. 2014) has compiled a large number of accounts from different parts of the continent that seem to undermine the idea of Australia as the “continent of hunter-gatherers” (cf. Lourandos 1997). For example, Pascoe (2014: 20–21) quotes the description by explorer and surveyor Thomas Mitchell (1792–1855) of extensive Aboriginal grain harvesting practices: “the grass is pulled … and piled in hayricks, so that the aspect of the desert was softened into the

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agreeable semblance of a hay-field … we found the ricks or hay-cocks extending for miles.” Furthermore, Mitchell reports on an Aboriginal village that he estimates to have a population of about 1000 people: “some huts… being large, circular; and made of straight rods meeting at an upright pole in the centre; the outside had first been covered with bark and grass, and the entirety coated over with clay. The fire appeared to have been made nearly in the centre; and a hole at the tops had been left as a chimney.” George Grey (1812–1898) reported on extensive yam fields he encountered in Western Australia and that had been purposefully established and maintained. He also encountered Aboriginal villages: “the huts of which they composed differed from those in the southern districts, in being built, and very nicely plastered over the outside with clay, and clods of turf, so that although now uninhabited they were evidently intended for fixed places of residence” (Pascoe 2014: 22). As an Aboriginal writer, Pascoe uses these reports and similar evidence to criticize the dominant Western and colonial reading of history and passionately to counter the image of Australian Aboriginal people as less developed or deficient (Pascoe 2018). However, such a strategy also contains the risk of supporting exactly those narratives that are being challenged. In specifically concentrating on evidence that demonstrates “that Aboriginals did build houses, did cultivate and irrigate crops, did sew clothes and were not hapless wanderers across the soil” Pascoe (2014: 156) seems to accept the defining characteristics of a civilized society and, consequently, the progressive understanding of human history that was developed during the European Enlightenment (Gascoigne 2002). The latter, therefore, still provides the achievements that define a society’s success. In terms of a critical research history, it must be acknowledged that during the 18th and 19th centuries there also existed a counter movement against progressive schemes of history, revolving around the work of French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Within these schemes, the hunter-gatherer was romanticized as a noble savage and idealized as untouched by modernity’s corrupt forces (Anderson 2007; Barnard 2004, 2014). The influence of these ideas on early colonial accounts cannot be completely discounted. A critical analysis must consider the possibility that early observers perceived the Australian landscape through a veil of British romanticism and created narratives that allowed their readers and themselves to comprehend the unknown through the reference to what was known and familiar: “in seeking to make indigenous customs comprehensible the colonial observers frequently overemphasized the similarities between their own culture and the culture of Others” (Russell and McNiven 1998: 285). The detailed archaeological and historical assessment of early colonial observations and interpretations remains an ongoing and important task for critical analysis. However, there is currently little doubt about the fact that Europeans did not encounter an untouched natural environment in the eighteenth century. They entered a highly culturally complex environment that was actively managed economically, socially, and spiritually. These aspects have been known within archaeological and anthropological research for a long time. At the time of European settlement, the Australian continent was a cultural landscape, and there is growing evidence that this had been the case for many millennia before. As mentioned above, Australia’s

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Aboriginal inhabitants and the continent itself were seen to represent an earlier stage of natural evolution and human history. This dialectic is encapsulated in the famous phrase of “unchanging people in an unchanging landscape” (Pulleine 1929: 310). This understanding is preserved in the mythology of the Australian Bush as untouched and untamed wilderness. However, as Watson (2014: 72) has fittingly demonstrated, “the first bush myth is the bush itself.” The landscape that Europeans encountered was not an untouched, neglected or pristine wilderness, but a constructed environment with social, economic and spiritual dimensions. The major tool that was employed throughout the whole continent was fire. Fire was used to encourage and prevent the growth of plants. It was used to create beneficial conditions for animals and enhance feeding and breeding patterns. Jones (1969) coined the term “fire stick farming” to describe these practices that drew on the natural adaptations of many Australian faunal and floral communities. In the tropical north, rainforest was transformed into more open parkland communities with beneficial effects for macropod grazing behaviors and populations. In desert environments, secondary succession communities were more productive than mature ones. In the Southwest, Aboriginal burning practices opened up forests and enhanced the growths of beds of yams (Hallam 1975; Lourandos 1997: 95–96). The overall effect of these practices was a landscape with a highly cultural structure on different levels. Based on this evidence, Gammage (2012) has therefore recently argued that Australia has to be seen as “the biggest estate on earth.” Although one can certainly argue about the appropriateness of the terminology, Gammage has provided a seminal and exhaustive treatment of Aboriginal land management practices at the time of European colonization. This has provided unprecedented insights into the interactions between Aboriginal people and the animals, plants and soils of the Australian continent, changing the perception of the Australian landscape forever. Can the latter be regarded as a built environment? It certainly does not follow the established categories of European observers in an obvious way. As such, it does not align with the supposed antagonism between nature and culture where the latter is imposed onto the former. The Australian Indigenous landscape must be seen beyond a nature/culture division. It was the product of active and intentional human actions that had different temporal rhythms, which interacted with physical rhythms and those of the biosphere. In this sense, it certainly was also a built environment (Ingold 1993). Anthropological, historical, and archaeological research continues to make impressive progress in understanding the different levels and scales of the human dimensions of the Australian landscape. This work is increasingly benefitting from collaborative arrangements with Aboriginal communities. The artificial creation and maintenance of parklands and open grasslands through the strategic employment of fire management techniques represent a vast impact on an almost unimaginable scale (Gammage 2012). Similarly, recent research has detected large-scale regional differences in the geographical distribution of economically important plant species in Southwest Australia, which can only be explained by long-term human interference and active propagation (Lullfitz et al. 2017). These recent findings continue a longer research tradition that has established a wide range of

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sophisticated plant management practices in Australia before European contact that cannot be understood as early or underdeveloped forms of agriculture (Chase 1989; Hynes and Chase 1982; overview in Lourandos 1997). The material imprint of these practices often appears to be shallow for the modern observer and requires sophisticated analytical techniques, which is reflective of general difficulties of detecting plant use in the archaeological record. However, in some parts of the continent, plants form a major category of rock art depictions, which not only relates to their importance in economic but also mythological terms. These depictions draw attention to the role of rock art in the creation of socialized and cultural landscapes (McDonald and Veth 2012; Porr 2018; Veth et al. 2018). Mythology and economy intersect in one of the most impressive and recognizable aspects of the Australian Aboriginal built environment. Most of the coastline of Australia shows elaborate stone constructions that have been generally described as fish traps or stone arrangements. While a great variability exists in these constructions, it is now generally recognized that most were built to influence and maximize the productivity and reliability of different marine resources. These can vary in function, form, and size and were apparently built to target different animal species such as fish, turtles or even dugongs. The authors of a recent study of stone-walled fish traps in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland, stress that these constructions must be seen as purposefully engineered. They are reflective of a deep understanding of animal behaviors and the conditions affecting the intertidal zone. The constructions also represent a significant communal investment because they sometimes are several hundred meters long (Kreij et al. 2018). Stone arrangements and stone settings of different types and sizes are a common phenomenon across the whole Australian continent. They can range from single standing or intentionally placed stones to arrangements of thousands of stones in the form of lines and circles. The formal variability in the arrangements reflect a variability in their functions, which can be mostly practical (e.g. marking a raw material source) or mostly mythological or ritual (e.g. marking a restricted initiation location). In any case, they are part of the social construction of space, which, again, refers to different spatial scales. Sophisticated and detailed analyses have, for example, demonstrated that the extensively painted rock shelter Nawarla Gabarnmang in Arnhem Land was also a structured social space (David et al. 2018). Recent research on this structure has revealed that Aboriginal people had purposefully interacted with the shelter and created the current space by removing and moving stone slabs and manipulating rock surfaces and bedrock pillars. The cave was consequently not a natural background to human activities. Its materiality was integrated into dialogues between human intentions, practices and cultural meanings and transformed in these processes (Delannoy et al. 2013). Much more obvious evidence of built constructions in rock shelters also appear in other contexts (Wallis and Matthews 2016). However, archaeological research has recently gained a much more detailed understanding of the occurrence and structure of Aboriginal stone houses or huts in different parts of the continent. As was mentioned above, early colonial observers repeatedly referred to solid domestic living structures and have claimed the existence of permanent villages. So far, clear

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archaeological evidence of Aboriginal stone houses/huts remains relatively rare and has been reported from four regions in Australia: the Western District of Victoria, High Cliffy Island in the Kimberley, Rosemary Island in the Dampier Archipelago (both Western Australia), and near the Georgina River (Queensland) (McDonald and Berry 2017; McNiven et al. 2017; O’Connor 1987; Wallis et al. 2017; see also Memmott 2007). All constructions seem to have been foremost domestic structures. They comprise relatively low wall features and foundations made with stone slabs and blocks. The shapes are either oval or round. They either occur in groups or in isolation. The features are mostly dated to a period either just before or overlapping with the early colonial period in the respective regions. However, the “houses” on Rosemary Island have been radiocarbon dated to ca. 8000 years ago and, therefore, among the oldest discrete built structures in Australia (McDonald and Berry 2017; but see Wallis et al. 2017). Aboriginal stone houses also occur within the Budj Bim cultural landscape in south-west Victoria (McNiven et al. 2017). Here, they are part of one of the most extensive and dramatic cases of an Aboriginal built environment in Australia, the Budj Bim eel traps. Archaeological surveys since the 1970s have established the presence of an extensive fish-trapping system that consists of numerous excavated channels hundreds of meters in length. Dozens of basalt blocks have been used to build dam walls in strategic locations to influence the flow of water and, accordingly, the eel population. Some channels were constructed to feed water into natural depressions that functioned as holding pools for water and eels. This technique made eels available for consumption for most of the year (Jordan 2012). Recent archaeological work has established that some channels are more than 6000 years old. Hundreds of stone-walled fish traps and stone house foundations are so far known from the area. In 2019, the Budj Bim eel traps were officially included in the UNESCO World Heritage register (McNiven 2017; UNESCO 2019) as the first Aboriginal site in Australia purely because of its cultural values.

5.4  Conclusion For the Western observer, the Budj Bim eel traps are possibly the most impressive case of an Aboriginal built environment in Australia. This example also demonstrates the strategic long-term manipulation of important resources and the successful enhancement of local conditions. Not surprisingly, this evidence is often described with terms like “farm”, “agriculture”, “aquaculture”, “resource management” or “engineering”. This terminology can easily be integrated into current discourses and rationalize the meaning of the respective constructions. However, this emphasis contains the danger of neglecting cultural and local historical aspects that are specific to the Australian Aboriginal situation. It also risks the impression that social complexity is somehow correlated with complex material architecture. Clearly, Australian Aboriginal societies developed their own historical trajectories that were not characterized by an accelerating increase in population numbers and

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densities, urbanization, and the increasing intensification of domestication processes. Apart from the framework that was provided by the Australian environment, plants and animals, the character of Aboriginal philosophies, knowledge systems and worldviews must also be considered. This latter aspect is explicitly included by Gammage (2012: 2) in his assessment of the Aboriginal creation of the Australian landscape/continent: “The Law  – an ecological philosophy enforced by religious sanction – compelled people to care for all their country” (see also e.g. Muecke 2004). In Australian Aboriginal philosophies, knowledge is intimately tied to the landscape, which cannot easily be divided into discrete entities such as bounded locations or territories. Places are rather constituted by levels of intersecting and interacting temporalities and are locations in which knots of narrative are tied and untied (Rose 2004: 37). Within this framework, the distinction between nature and culture breaks down as well as the distinction between the animate and inanimate. Seemingly “natural places” can be fully constituted by agential forces or spirit beings. Similarly, so-called artworks or stone structures can be the product of ancestral actions or other agencies. In both cases, material structures sometimes are those beings themselves. This view is not a consequence of a false understanding of reality. It rather reflects a different construction of reality. Following other scholars (e.g. Rose 1996; James 2015; Blundell 2003), I have argued elsewhere that Australian Aboriginal relationships with the land must be conceptualized as fundamentally relational and asserts the priority of relationships over essences (Porr and Bell 2012; Porr 2018). This assessment recognizes that in Australian Aboriginal philosophies the boundaries between mythical, natural and human-made phenomena do not follow a Western understanding and hierarchy. It is a reflection of the recognition of the fundamentally dynamic and multi-temporal character of reality and the irreducible relationality of the generation of meaning. Consequently, material structures and aspects of the environment can acquire qualities of beings and persons and vice versa. From a Western perspective, the Australian Aboriginal built environment consequently rather corresponds and is enmeshed with the materials and structures provided by natural environment rather than set in opposition and against it. The conceptualization of the Australian Aboriginal built environment must find the right balance between an acknowledgement of the sophisticated techniques of resource acquisition and extraction and the recognition that these practices are entangled with different perceptions and constructions of human-environment relationships (Porr 2018). The use of analytical notions such as “building”, “architecture” and “structure” need to be subjected to a critical assessment that also questions the observer’s viewpoint and attitudes, which are often influenced by colonial contexts and orientations (Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006). The Australian continent was not a wilderness before European colonization but a social, spiritual, inscribed and inhabited landscape (Rose 1996). It is important to fully recognize these complexities in future archaeological interpretations (McNiven 2018) and current collaborative engagements with Australian landscapes (Suchet-Pearson et al. 2013). Only in this way, it will be possible to secure the cultural and ecological survival of the richness of the Australian continent.

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References Anderson, K. (2007). Race and the crisis of humanism. New York: Routledge. Anderson, K., & Perrin, C. (2007). The miserablest people in the world: Race, humanism and the Australian Aborigine. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 18(1), 18–39. Barnard, A. (Ed.). (2004). Hunter-gatherers in history, archaeology and anthropology. Oxford: Berg. Barnard, A. (2014). Defining hunter-gatherers: Enlightenment, romantic and evolutionary perspectives. In V. Cummings, P. Jordan, & M. Zvelebil (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers (pp. 43–54). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blainey, G. (2012). From three cheers to the black armband. In R. Manne & C. Feik (Eds.), The words that made Australia. How a nation came to know itself (pp. 179–192). Collingwood: Black Agenda. Blundell, V. (2003). The art of country: Aesthetics, place, and Aboriginal identity in north-west Australia. In D. Trigger & G. Griffiths (Eds.), Disputed territories: Land, culture and identity in settler societies (pp. 155–185). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Breen, S. (1996). Human agency, historical inevitability and moral culpability: Rewriting black-­ white history in the wake of Native Title. Aboriginal History, 20, 108–132. Chase, A. K. (1989). Domestication and domiculture in northern Australia: A social perspective. In D. R. Harris & G. C. Hillman (Eds.), Foraging and farming: The evolution of plant domestication (pp. 42–78). Boston: Unwin Hyman. Cummings, V., Jordan, P., & Zvelebil, M. (Eds.). (2014). The Oxford handbook of the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers. Oxford: Oxford University Press. David, B., Langton, M., & McNiven, I. (2002). Re-inventing the Wheel: Indigenous peoples and the master race in Philip Ruddock’s ‘wheel’ comments. Philosophy Activism Nature, 2002(2), 31–45. David, B., Delannoy, J.-J., Katherine, M., Whear, R., Geneste, J.-M., & Gollings, J. (2018). Nawarla Gabarnmang. Landscape Architecture Australia, 158, 52–58. Delannoy, J.-J., David, B., Geneste, J.-M., Katherine, M., Barker, B., Wheat, R., & Gunn, R. (2013). The social construction of caves and rockshelters: Chauvet Cave (France) and Nawarla Gabarnmang (Australia). Antiquity, 87(335), 12–29. Gamble, C. S. (1992). Archaeology, history and the uttermost ends of the earth – Tasmania, Tierra del Fuego and the Cape. Antiquity, 66(252), 712–720. Gamble, C. S., & Gittins, E. (2004). Social archaeology and origins research: A Paleolithic perspective. In L. Meskell & R. W. Preucel (Eds.), A companion to social archaeology (pp. 96–118). Malden: Blackwell. Gammage, B. (2012). The biggest estate on earth. How Aborigines made Australia. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin. Gascoigne, J. (2002). The enlightenment and the origins of European Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hallam, S. (1975). Fire and hearth. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Howitt, R., & Suchet-Pearson, S. (2006). Rethinking the building blocks: Ontological pluralism and the idea of ‘management’. Geografiska Annaler – Series B, 88(3), 323–335. Hynes, R. A., & Chase, A. K. (1982). Plants, sites and domiculture: Aboriginal influence upon plant communities in Cape York. Archaeology in Oceania, 17(1), 38–50. Ingold, T. (1993). The temporality of the landscape. World Archaeology, 25, 152–174. James, D. (2015). Tjukurpa Time. In A. McGrath & M. A. Jebb (Eds.), Long history, deep time. Deepening histories of place (pp. 33–46). Canberra: ANU Press. Jones, R. (1969). Firestick farming. Australian Natural History, 16, 224–228. Jordan, J.  W. (2012). The engineering of Budj Bim and the evolution of a societal structure in Aboriginal Australia. Australian Journal of Multi-Disciplinary Engineering, 9(1), 63–68. Kreij, A., Scriffignano, J., Rosendahl, D., Nagel, T., & Ulm, S. (2018). Aboriginal stone-walled intertidal fishtrap morphology, function and chronology investigated with high-resolution

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close-range Unmanned Aerial Vehicle photogrammetry. Journal of Archaeological Science, 96, 148–161. Lourandos, H. (1997). Continent of hunter-gatherers. New perspectives in Australian prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lullfitz, A., Dortch, J., Hopper, S.  D., Pettersen, C., Reynolds, R.  D., & Guilfoyle, D. (2017). Human niche construction: Noongar evidence in pre-colonial Southwestern Australia. Conservation and Society, 15(2), 201–216. McDonald, J., & Berry, M. (2017). Murujuga, Northwestern Australia: When arid hunter-gatherers became coastal foragers. The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 12(1), 24–43. McDonald, J., & Veth, P. (Eds.). (2012). A companion to rock art. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. McNiven, I. (2017). The detective work behind the Budj Bim eel traps World Heritage bid. Available at https://theconversation.com/the-­detective-­work-­behind-­the-­budj-­bim-­eel-­traps-­ world-­heritage-­bid-­71800. Accessed 20 Dec 2018. McNiven, I. (2018). Inhabited landscapes. In S. L. L. Varela (Ed.), The encyclopedia of archaeological sciences (pp. 1–5). Hoboken: Wiley. McNiven, I.  J., & Russell, L. (2005). Appropriated pasts: Indigenous peoples and the colonial culture of archaeology. Oxford: Altamira Press. McNiven, I., Dunn, J. E., Crouch, J., & G. M. T. O. A. Corporation. (2017). Kurtonitj stone house: Excavation of a mid-nineteenth century Aboriginal frontier site from Gunditjmara country, south-west Victoria. Archaeology in Oceania, 52, 171–197. Memmott, P. (2007). Gunyah Goondie & Wurley: The Aboriginal architecture of Australia. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Muecke, S. (2004). Ancient & modern: Time, culture and indigenous philosophy. Sydney: UNSW Press. Murray, T. (2015). Social evolutionary theory and the fifth continent: History without transformation? In G. Emberling (Ed.), Social theory in archaeology and ancient history. The present and future of counternarratives (pp. 19–33). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Connor, S. (1987). The stone houses of High Cliffy Island, North West Kimberley. Australian Archaeology, 25, 30–39. Pascoe, B. (2014). Dark emu. Black seeds: Agriculture or accident? Broome: Magabala Books. Pascoe, B. (2018). The imperial mind. How Europeans stole the world. Griffiths Review, 60, 234–243. Porr, M. (2018). Country and relational ontology in the Kimberley, Northwest Australia: Implications for understanding and representing archaeological evidence. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 28(3), 395–409. Porr, M., & Bell, H. R. (2012). ‘Rock-art’, ‘animism’ and two-way thinking: Towards a complementary epistemology in the understanding of material culture and ‘rock-art’ of hunting and gathering people. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 19, 161–205. Porr, M., & Matthews, J. M. (2017). Post-colonialism, human origins and the paradox of modernity. Antiquity, 91(358), 1058–1068. Pulleine, R. H. (1929). The Tasmanians and their stone-culture. In C. E. Lord (Ed.), Report of the nineteenth meeting of the Australasian association for the advancement of science (Australia and New Zealand) (pp. 294–314). Hobart: Government Printer. Rapoport, A. (1994). Spatial organisation and the built environment. In T. Ingold (Ed.), Companion encyclopedia of anthropology: Humanity, culture and social life (pp.  460–502). London: Routledge. Ritter, D. (2009). Contesting Native Title. From controversy to consensus in the struggle over indigenous land rights. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin. Rose, D. B. (1996). Nourishing terrains: Australian Aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness. Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission. Rose, D. B. (2004). Reports from a wild country. Ethics for decolonisation. Sydney: University of New South Wales.

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Russell, L., & McNiven, I. (1998). Monumental colonialism: Megaliths and the appropriation of Australia’s Aboriginal past. Journal of Material Culture, 3(3), 283–299. Spencer, B., & Gillen, F. J. (1927). The Arunta: A study of a stone age people. London: Macmillan. Suchet-Pearson, S., Wright, S., Lloyd, K., & Burarrwanga, L. (2013). Caring as country: Towards an ontology of co-becoming in natural resource management. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 54(2), 185–197. UNESCO. (2019). Budj Bim cultural landscape. Retrieved from https://whc.unesco.org/en/ list/1577/ Veth, P., Myers, C., Heaney, P., & Ouzman, S. (2018). Plants before farming: The deep history of plant-use and representation in the rock art of Australia’s Kimberley region. Quaternary International, 489, 26–45. Wallis, L., & Matthews, J.  M. (2016). Built structures in rockshelters of the Pilbara, Western Australia. Records of the Western Australian Museum, 31, 1–26. Wallis, L., Davidson, I., Burke, H., Mitchell, S., Barker, B., Hatte, L., Cole, N., & Lowe, K.  M. (2017). Aboriginal stone huts from the Georgina River, southwest Queensland. Queensland Archaeological Research, 20, 1–8. Watson, D. (2014). The bush. Sydney: Penguin. Wilson, P. (1988). The domestication of the human species. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Chapter 6

Colonial Past and Neocolonial Present: The Monumental Arch of Tadmor-Palmyra and So-called Roman Architecture in the Near East Jessica L. Nitschke

Abstract  Soon after the destruction of the Monumental Arch at Tadmor-Palmyra by the Islamic State in 2015, the Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) erected a physical replica of the monument in Trafalgar Square, London. The IDA project has been subject to extensive criticism, but this essay focuses on an overlooked aspect of that discourse: the presentation of the Monumental Arch as essentially “Roman” by the IDA and in the media, which amounts to an erasure of its fundamental Syrianness. Through a brief survey of the historical and architectural context, I highlight how the monument is truly a Palmyrene work in terms of its purpose, form, décor, and construction. I also explore how the IDA’s framing of the Monumental Arch is a consequence of lingering colonial biases within the fields of Classical and Ancient Near Eastern archaeology. Thus, the IDA project was a missed opportunity to rightly situate the Monumental Arch within a true global history of architecture and give Syrian heritage its due. Keywords  Palmyra · Near Eastern archaeology · Roman architecture · Syria · Heritage

6.1  Introduction The monuments of ancient Syrian cities dating to the period of Roman colonial control (ca. 63 BCE to 384 CE) have long been celebrated in western imaginations for both their aesthetic qualities and the technological skill necessary for their creation. Recently, the monuments from Tadmor-Palmyra—Syria’s most well-known archaeological site—were thrust into the world spotlight following J. L. Nitschke (*) Department of Ancient Studies, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa © The Author(s) 2020 J. L. Nitschke, M. Lorenzon (eds.), Postcolonialism, Heritage, and the Built Environment, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60858-3_6

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their purposeful destruction by the forces of the Islamic State in 2015. In April the following year, the Institute for Digital Archaeology (hereafter, IDA) recreated a portion of the Monumental Arch from Tadmor-Palmyra using digital technology and displayed it in Trafalgar Square to great fanfare. Promoted as a cultural victory and an exemplar for digital heritage, the new arch has continued to be displayed in various American and European cities since then (Turner 2016; Reinertz 2020). The IDA project has been subject to criticism in both journalistic media and scholarly publications on several grounds, raising questions about authenticity, purpose, and especially the wisdom and ethics of using digital technology to rebuild Tadmor-Palmyra so quickly (Bevan 2016; Kriss 2016; Thompson 2017; Khunti 2018; Munawar 2019). Some have voiced concerns that projects like this perpetuate colonialist and Orientalist views of the East and “risk reifying a classical past at the expense of engaging with the present-day cultures of the Middle-East” (Mudie 2018: 140). Indeed, the arch has consistently been referred to as “Roman”, “Graeco-­Roman”, or “classical” by both journalists and scholars commenting on the project. However, while the Monumental Arch was built during a time when Tadmor-­Palmyra was subordinated to a greater or lesser degree to the Roman Empire, the population of Tadmor-Palmyra remained largely a Semitic-speaking, non-Greek, non-Roman one, and funding for the monumental architecture of Tadmor-Palmyra came from the local merchant elites (Smith 2013: 68). We should question, then, why such a building is regarded as primarily “Roman” or “classical” in modern imagination. This essay builds on the existing critique of the IDA project by focusing on the erasure of the Monumental Arch’s fundamental Syrianness both by the IDA and in the subsequent discourse on the project. First, I offer some of the historical and architectural context missing from the IDA’s presentation of the monument. Despite the monument’s modern status as a symbol of Roman engineering and colonial power, I hope to highlight how the Monumental Arch is truly a Palmyrene work in terms of its purpose, form, décor, and construction. Second, I hope to shed further light on persistent core biases and problematic analytical frameworks within the field of Mediterranean archaeology. The IDA’s unfortunate colonial framing of Syria’s complicated heritage did not emerge on its own but is firmly situated within the intellectual history of Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies. This case study exposes how deeply the colonial legacy is embedded in the study of the built environment of the ancient Near East1 and illustrates the need for a more concerted effort to deconstruct this legacy.

1  There is some debate as to how to refer to this region in English. For the past several decades, it has been conventional to use “Near East” with reference to more ancient periods and “Middle East” for more modern. These terms have been rightly criticized since they reflect a European geographical orientation; as a result, there has recently been a preference for “Western Asia”. However, since this essay is a commentary on the field, I have decided to use Near East to avoid confusion.

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6.2  Tadmor-Palmyra and Its Monumental Arch The city of Tadmor-Palmyra, which is situated in a prominent oasis in the eastern Syrian desert, served as an important caravan stop between Syria and Mesopotamia throughout much of its history. Archaeological data suggests that human occupation at the site goes back to at least the third millennium BCE, but little is known about occupation levels dating earlier than the Hellenistic period (ca. 330–63 BCE), in which there appears to have been a relatively modest settlement. The city grew significantly in the first century BCE through an influx of diverse people from the surrounding desert; onomastic research from the site reveals a prevalence of Aramaic names, as well as some Arabic and Iranian names (Sommer 2017: 96; Smith 2013: 33–37). A city identity seems to have emerged and existed alongside tribal identities which remained at the core of social and political relations (Sommer 2017: 146; Smith 2013). Following the creation of Syria as a Roman province in 64/63 BCE, Tadmor-Palmyra remained semi-independent during most of the early empire (first to second centuries CE) enjoying autonomy over taxation and internal affairs while still acknowledging broader Roman authority (Bounni 1997). Situated on the border between the Roman and Parthian Empires, Tadmor-Palmyra was economically and strategically important for Rome’s eastern frontier, serving as a focal point of long-­distance trade between inhabitants of the Roman Empire, the rest of western Asia, and regions further east. The cityscape of Tadmor-Palmyra underwent a process of monumentalization from the first century BCE onwards (Browning 1979). This building activity seems to have been connected to the emergence of a Palmyrene community identity and was made possible by the wealth generated through the inhabitants’ successful commercial activities, especially those relating to the desert caravan trade (Smith 2013). The best-preserved structures date to the late second and third centuries CE, a period thought to have been the height of the city’s economic prosperity. One of the most admired structures from ancient Tadmor-Palmyra has been the Monumental Arch, which straddled the long colonnaded axial street near its eastern end, where the road turns 30 degrees to lead to the main entrance of the sanctuary of Bel, the town’s largest religious complex (Figs.  6.1 and 6.2). There is no surviving inscription marking the Monumental Arch’s date of construction. However, based on its relation to surrounding buildings and inscriptions on the connecting colonnade, the current opinion among scholars is that the monument dates to the early third century CE (Burns 2017: 245; Will 1983: 73–4). Constructed out of locally-sourced limestone, the Monumental Arch stood 14.5 meters high at its tallest point, and had not one arch but eleven (Amy 1933). There were three arched bays on each of its two separate faces: a large central arch (spanning 6.9 meters) framed by two smaller arches (each with a span of approximately 3.3 meters). Each face was angled in such a way as to align perpendicularly to the two streets sections it connected, thus disguising the shift in orientation of the street and creating a trapezoidal footprint (Fig. 6.3). Transverse walls connected the two faces; these walls were punctuated in the lower sections by

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Fig. 6.1  The northwest face of the Monumental Arch of Tadmor-Palmyra (ca. early third century CE). The central bay is the part replicated by the IDA. (Photo taken by the author in 2004)

Fig. 6.2  The southeast face of the Monumental Arch of Tadmor-Palmyra, looking towards the city, with the Sanctuary of Bel at the rear. The central bay of this face is missing; the rear of the central bay of the northwest face (shown in Fig.  6.1) can be seen. (Photo taken by the author in 2009)

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a total of five small arches, which allowed the user access to the colonnaded walkways of the main axis and to the side streets going off to the Northeast. Each of these five smaller interior arches was topped with a “Syrian niche”—a recess framed by miniature columns, entablature, and pediment—typical of the monumental architecture of the Near East in this period. In terms of decoration, the surfaces of key elements of the monument (e.g. architraves, interior bays, pilasters) were richly decorated with ionic and Corinthian capitals, lion heads, and vegetal motifs, all in sculpted relief (Browning 1979: 133–134; Fig.  6.4). The theatricality of the Monumental Arch’s design together with its rich, varied floral decoration are typical of ancient “baroque” architecture, a style that emerged in Egypt and the Near East in the Hellenistic period and is distinct from that of architecture found in the western part of the Roman Empire (Ball 2016: 433–440; Lyttleton 1974). This “baroque” architectural style makes use of elaborate and playful facades and has affinities to decorative traditions further East in Iran and the Ghandaran architecture of north-western India. Elements of this style—such as the elaborate floral surface decoration and the framed niches—endured for a long time in Islamic architecture as well as Mughal and Buddhist Indian architecture (Ball 2016: 439–445). In terms of construction, the builders blended established local practices of corbelled arch construction with forms and embellishments that had become current in the cities of the Eastern Roman empire. Vault technology—including corbelling, voussoirs (i.e. “true arches”), pitched brick vaulting and other forms—has a long history in the Near East and Egypt, going back to the fourth millennium BCE (Besenval 1984; Oates 1990). Brick was more commonly used than stone, and corbelling was the preferred method for arcuated stone structures in the Near East and Egypt prior to the Roman period. Arch technology (especially in stone) was further developed by Greek builders from the fourth century BCE  onwards, and later by engineers working for the Roman state (Wright 2009: 184–5). During the Roman Empire, arches and vaults were constructed in a variety of materials, such as stone, brick, and/or concrete, depending on availability and local traditions (Dodge 1984: 198). By the time of the Monumental Arch’s construction (early third century CE), the true arch in stone could be found in several places in the Levant (e.g. Herodean building in Judea in the first century CE), but not at Tadmor-Palmyra, where the preferred method at this point was still the corbelled arch (Baranski 1999, 2019). The Monumental Arch, however, was somewhat of a hybrid: it gave the appearance of wedge-shaped voussoirs, but these blocks actually had arms extending at a right angle to fit into horizontal courses—referred to as “crosetted voussoirs” or “toed voussoirs”. These extensions shifted the center of gravity and weight distribution such that the arch was structurally corbelled, i.e. subject to vertical forces rather than lateral ones (Fig.  6.5). Crosetted voussoirs with shorter extensions can be found occasionally in arches in other parts of the empire; however, in these contexts, such blocks were employed for aesthetic reasons to more smoothly visually integrate the circular shape of the arch with the horizontal lines of the wall

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Fig. 6.3  Plan of the Monumental Arch at Tadmor-Palmyra. (Drawing by Uine Kailamäki and annotated by the author, after Browning 1979, fig. 70)

(Adam 2005: 344). In the Monumental Arch, by contrast, the horizontal extensions are totally disguised from view due to the skilled carving of the blocks, so that the arched bays are technically corbelled, but give the appearance of true, regular arches (Baranski 2019: 5). Serving as a transitional space between two street sections and their covered walkways, the Monumental Arch created an elegantly vaulted junction that provided shelter from the desert sun and framed pedestrian access to this quarter of the city. The structure was one of several projects in the second and third centuries sponsored by the local elite to develop and adorn a large axial thoroughfare across the city (Burns 2017: 237–239; Smith 2013: 68–77). Such long colonnaded streets are an iconic characteristic of Syrian cities in this period, but are rarely found in the western Roman Empire (Ball 2016: 210). As shown by Burns (2017), this type of urban design was not something handed down from Rome, but rather evolved from

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Fig. 6.4  Detail view of the Monumental Arch at Tadmor-Palmyra: joint springing of the side bays at the point where the two faces meet. (Photo taken by the author in 2004)

the complex intersection of local traditions of space, design, and behavior and broader trends of art and architecture.

6.3  “Roman” Architecture in the Near East With its trapezoidal design, method of construction, and baroque-style of decoration, the Monumental Arch of Tadmor-Palmyra was unique in the Roman Empire. As a project it was likely sponsored by the Palmyrene elite and carried out by local craftsman (more on this below); consequently, its creation reflects local perspectives about space, building, and identity. Yet the Monumental Arch and other public architecture from Syria in the Roman period do not traditionally form part of

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Fig. 6.5  Detail of the front and rear views (top and bottom photos, respectively) of the central arch of the northwest face of the Monumental Arch. From the back (which would have been hidden from view in the original monument), the use of crossetted voussoirs to create a corbelled arch is visible; from the front it is disguised. (Photos taken by the author in 2004)

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the canon of Syro-Palestinian or Near Eastern architecture, at least not from Western perspectives. Rather, these buildings are usually classified by archaeologists as “Roman” or “classical” architecture, on the basis of certain formal and stylistic similarities with architecture elsewhere in the empire (e.g. Segal 1997; MacDonald 1986; Ward-Perkins 1981). We must consider what the intention of labels like “Roman” or “classical” are, and what they communicate when it comes to categorizing material culture. The term “classical” has a complex history and is controversial, but has typically been used to invoke the societies and culture of Greece and Rome collectively in a generic way that not only is essentializing but also promotes a false separation from the rest of the ancient world (Stewart 2008: 1–6; Osborne and Alcock 2012: 1). The archaeological category of “Roman” is also vague. It arose from a tendency to categorize material by its approximate date or epoch, which often takes the form of the name of the politically dominant state or ethnic group. Such ethnic labels—e.g. Assyrian, Canaanite, Roman—are often applied loosely and uncritically (Porter 2010: 52). Thus artifacts from across the Mediterranean, from pottery to glass to coins to architecture, are frequently classified as “Roman” by virtue of being dated to the time of Roman Empire, even though the object may have no connection to Roman agency or even Italian traditions in material culture. This is a problem for both general and scholarly presentations of material culture, as the label “Roman” is often misunderstood to mean that such objects and structures were made by Romans or according to Roman cultural practices. In particular, it remains a popular misconception that the Roman state was primarily responsible for the public architecture in the East during the period of the empire. Epigraphic and other textual evidence, however, suggests that construction orchestrated by representatives of the Roman state in the provinces was largely restricted to infrastructure intended for military use (Pollard 2000: 244–245). Although imperial engineers sometimes supplied technical expertise, epigraphic evidence makes it clear that civic construction was normally financed by local organizations or wealthy local citizens and engineered and constructed by craftsmen and builders hired locally (Butcher 2013; Lancaster 2015: 7–10). The adoption of postcolonial approaches in Roman archaeology from the 1970s onwards has encouraged scholars to put more emphasis on local agency and regional variations in the material culture of the provinces, moving away from top-down, center-periphery models of cultural development (Hingley 2005; 39–40; Canepa 2014). Accordingly, there have been some attempts to analyze the built environment of Roman-period building in the Near East within the context of local traditions and agencies. Already in 1974, Lyttleton demonstrated that while builders in Rome and in the west made great strides in the use of concrete, it was builders in Syria and Arabia who were at the forefront of the development of trabeated (i.e., post-and-­lintel) stone architecture during the time of the Roman Empire (see also Ball 2016: 429–433). Dodge’s 1984 thesis remains the most comprehensive treatment of building materials techniques employed in the Near East in this period, but unfortunately it has not been updated. There is more and more recognition that the built environment of the eastern provinces presents a great deal of

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variation  compared to the rest of the empire, blending “classical” styles with designs based on local traditions (Butcher 2003: 289–307; Ball 2016; Friedland 2019). All of this work has established how the architecture of the Near East under Roman rule  owes as much to Mesopotamian, Levantine, Parthian trends, among others, as it does to Roman or globalizing Mediterranean influences from the west. The material impact of the colonial encounter between the Roman Empire and various people of the Near East was not just local, nor the transfer of style and technology unidirectional. Ball (2016) has shown how Syrian traditions in building had reciprocal influences in architecture elsewhere in the empire. Lancaster (2010) has demonstrated that pitched-brick vaulting, which became prevalent across the eastern empire starting in the second century CE, was a technology likely transferred through contact with the Parthians further East. And Iacobini (2004) has established the agency of craftsmen from the provinces in church architecture in Justinian’s Constantinople. As Lancaster observes in her study of brick architecture in the Roman Empire, “if one scratches the surface to see how the structures were put together, one finds that the provincial builders were not simply ‘borrowing,’ ‘superimposing,’ and ‘importing’ existing ideas, but were actively ‘inventing,’ ‘innovating,’ and ‘creating’ new ways of building” (Lancaster 2015: 7). The field is evolving, but progress remains slow. Despite the work surveyed above, there is still a tendency amongst archaeologists and historians alike to characterize the public architecture of cities in the Near East during the period of the Roman Empire as the products of Roman cultural ingenuity. For example, in a recent textbook for a popular open online course at Yale, the monumental structures of Baalbek in modern Lebanon are attributed to Roman agency: “While the Republic was the great epoch of Roman sanctuary building, a colossal sanctuary emerged in what is now Lebanon over two centuries. Even the Romans needed time to pull off an ambitious project like this one!” (Kleiner 2014: 229). This Eurocentric approach to the material culture of Syria under Roman rule is a legacy of the colonial shaping of the historical landscape of the region in the 18th and 19th centuries, which placed the modern Near East politically and culturally subordinate to Europe (Ward 2018; Gillot 2010; Vasunia 2003). European antiquarians of this era effectively separated the past of the Near East from its present inhabitants, appropriating whatever parts they found useful for shaping European identity and heritage. These writers ignored local interpretations of ancient monuments and places and asserted that the contemporary inhabitants of Ottoman lands were incapable of properly appreciating the antiquities found in their landscape; they then used this premise to justify designating themselves the guardians of this material (Anderson 2015). These attitudes can be seen in one of the earliest publications of Tadmor-Palmyra, Robert Wood’s The Ruins of Palmyra (1753), a lavishly illustrated monograph detailing an expedition of British antiquarians to the town. The work idealizes the perceived classical components of the ruins while at the same time denigrates the contemporary inhabitants (Baird and Kamash 2019: 10–11). Wood’s monographs on Tadmor-Palmyra and Baalbek in Lebanon had significant influence in the development of the neoclassical aesthetic in eighteenth century Britain (Browning 1979: 90–91; Bond 2016). As European

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culture was seen as descended from the classical civilizations of Greek and Rome, it was necessary to construct and maintain a classical identity for these ruins. As a result of the colonial framing of the ancient Mediterranean cultural landscape, the history of the Near East between the invasion of Alexander the Great in 330 BCE and the Arab invasions of the seventh century CE has long been regarded as belonging to the field of Classical Studies rather than Ancient Near Eastern Studies. This separation has created a deep disciplinary divide with unfortunate ramifications for frameworks of analysis and interpretation (Friedland 2019; Ward 2018; Porter 2010). The construction of the “classical Near East” as something fundamentally different from everything that came before distorts the historical and cultural context for interpreting archaeological material, in particular the preceding centuries of intense exchange between the various peoples in the eastern Mediterranean (Greeks included). It also privileges the agency and culture of Greeks and Romans at the expense of that of the indigenous peoples of the Near East. These problems in the discipline are well known. Given the postcolonial turn in archaeology, the recent spotlight on and worldwide sympathy for Syrian heritage provided an opportunity to correct public perceptions of the beloved monuments of Roman-period Syria and to explore the non-European origins of neoclassical architecture. But in the rush to “save” Tadmor-Palmyra, this is not what happened.

6.4  Tadmor-Palmyra: Destruction and Revival In the second half of 2015, in the midst of the still on-going Syrian civil war, military forces of the Islamic State (IS; also sometimes referred to as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS) used explosive devices to destroy several of the standing monuments of Tadmor-Palmyra, performative acts that were broadcast across social media and elicited world-wide outrage (Mulder 2017). Soon after these events, the IDA, based in Oxford, announced its intention to reproduce a monument from the site using digital technology (Burch 2017). The IDA was founded in 2012 by Roger Michel in order to promote digital tools for archaeology and cultural heritage preservation. The institute counts among its current advisors and collaborators a number of well-known classicists from top institutions in North America and the U.K. The core data for the reconstruction came from another of IDA’s initiatives, the Million Image Database, a collaboration with UNESCO and the UAE government begun in 2015 to distribute 3D cameras laypersons to document built heritage in conflict zones (Burch 2017: 67). The IDA project underwent a number of changes in terms of subject, method, and material before settling on the Monumental Arch (Burch 2017: 65). Although it was commonly reported in the media that the monument was to be 3D printed, in the end the arch was actually machine-carved at a facility in Italy using stone

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Fig. 6.6  Scale model (approx. 1:3) of part of the Monumental Arch of Tadmor-Palmyra, at the foot of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, made by the Institute of Digital Archaeology. (Photo by manateedugong (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0), lightly edited for distortion and noise. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/manateedugong/26572442605/)

sourced from Egypt, and was not a full-size replica but a “1/3 scale reproduction”.2 The finished work was initially set up for public display at the foot of the steps leading to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London in April 2016, the inaugural event hosted by then-Mayor Boris Johnson (Turner 2016; Fig.  6.6). Subsequently, the arch has been on an international tour that has included New York, Washington D.C., Florence, Geneva, Dubai, and most recently Luxembourg, where it is part of a program celebrating Luxembourg’s 25  years of UNESCO heritage (Reinertz 2020). Both the reconstruction and the circumstances of the replica arch’s display have come under attack for multiple reasons: the IDA’s questionable motives; faulty information and misleading press releases; lack of authenticity; lack of context; and that such a project supports Baathist propaganda (Kriss 2016; Voon 2016; Bevan 2016; Bond 2016; Taylor 2016; Burch 2017; Reinertz 2020). As documented by Factum Arte (2016), the new arch fails to live up to its claims of being a reproduction. The IDA arch comprises only a small portion of the original monument—a central bay on the west face. The side bays are entirely omitted, as are the opposite face and transverse walls. It also lacks some of the key surface  http://digitalarchaeology.org.uk/building-the-arch. Accessed 19 August 2019.

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decoration and detailing. In sum, the IDA arch is impressionistic, reflects less than 20% of the original structure, and lacks the key design and engineering features that made the original unique and remarkable. This application of digital technology seems only to have amplified—rather than provide insight into—what was lost. Consequently, the project has been dismissed by many as an expensive publicity stunt more concerned with extolling the IDA and UNESCO than either advancing digital heritage or preserving Tadmor-Palmyra (Burch 2017; Kamash 2017; Reinertz 2020). As for public reception, this has been ambivalent. A study entitled “Postcards to Palmyra”, in which visitors to Trafalgar Square were invited to write their reactions on postcards, revealed a variety of responses (Kamash 2017: 611–612). Although some visitors expressed approval for the attention that the project draws to the plight of Syria and appreciation of the technical sophistication of the reconstruction, many expressed bemusement as to the project’s purpose, frustration about the lack of written information to assist visitors, and concern about the colonial setting. From the standpoint of historical narrative and analysis, we can add further criticisms with regards to the IDA’s characterization of the original monument. The IDA website erroneously claims that “the arch . . . was built in the third century CE by Septimius Severus.”3 There is no written or physical evidence to suggest that the arch was sponsored in any way by the Roman state, and none of the scholarly literature suggests as much either (not that any was cited by the IDA). The confusion perhaps arises from those reading suggestions that the arch may have been built during the reign of Septimius Severus (193–211  CE). But this is no excuse; the IDA should be expected to at least get the basic facts straight. Also misleading is the IDA’s labeling of the monument as a “Triumphal Arch”, as the structure is normally referred to in scholarship as simply an arch or “Monumental Arch”. The label “Triumphal Arch” or “Arch of Triumph” has been repeated again and again in both media and scholar commentary on the project. While there were a number of arch monuments to be found in Rome and across the empire, the vast majority of these did not commemorate either a Roman triumphus (a military procession granted to select generals by the Roman senate) nor necessarily even a military victory; no triumphal arches were built in the Near East in any case (Ball 2016: 336). As has been pointed out in a well-known book by Mary Beard, who also serves as one of the IDA’s academic advisors, the term arcus triumphalis is not found in antiquity until the third century CE, and even then is used only sporadically and ambiguously (Beard 2007: 45). The term “triumphal arch” in modern discussions concerning Roman architecture is thus a misnomer, and is avoided by scholars when referring to arch monuments because it misleads about the purpose and nature of these structures (Cassibry 2018). Therefore, the IDA not only produced a “replica” that does not stand up to standard, but also willfully misled the public through erroneous historical information and lack of intellectual context. Neither the website nor the displays accompanying the replica have provided details about how the copied section fits 3  http://digitalarchaeology.org.uk/history-of-the-arch. Accessed 19 August 2019. As noted above, the arch only stands approximately 14.5 m at its highest point.

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with the rest of the original monument, how the original monument fit into the surrounding architecture, or how it fits into the history of the built environment of either Tadmor-­Palmyra or the Near East more broadly. Why this arch was built in the first place, why it looks the way it does, why it lasted this long, and why we care about it—this analysis and context is all missing. That the IDA got it so wrong suggests a lack of adequate scholarly research and input into the project—one wonders what role, if any, the academic consultants played. Rather than creating an intellectual narrative that justifies the existence of this replica, the IDA rested on problematic assumptions that the Monumental Arch represents a type of universal or globalizing heritage, and thus its replication needs no explanation. Yet the idea of universal heritage is a fallacy, since there is no single version of the past that is equally valued by everybody. Further, as noted by Mudie (2018: 141), “the very concept of World Heritage has always had Othering tendencies in the dialectical tension it generates between inclusion and exclusion.” We need to look no further than the modern history of archaeological interventions in Tadmor-Palmyra to see the truth in this. One subthread of the discussions surrounding whether and what to reconstruct with regard to Tadmor-Palmyra that has not received enough attention is that IS’s actions were not the first instance an outside group carried out destructive acts on the built environment of Tadmor-Palmyra in modern times (al-Manzali 2016). Tadmor-Palmyra has been continuously inhabited since antiquity, the ancient structures renovated and adapted by residents through the centuries. The famous sanctuary of Bel precinct was converted first into a church, and then later a mosque by Umayyad rulers in the seventh century, who chose to reuse the structure rather than tear it down (Jastrzębowska 2013; Durand et al. 2015). It is due to the reuse and continued occupation over the many centuries that the ancient structures of Tadmor-­ Palmyra survived as well as they did. The history of post-Roman Tadmor-Palmyra, however, was of little concern to French archaeologists in the 1930s working to “restore” the ancient site. They displaced the residents living in the precinct Temple of Bel, demolishing not only homes but also Christian and Islamic structures. (Mulder 2017; Schmidt-Colinet 2019). Therefore, what IS destroyed—and what the IDA has recreated—was a particular vision of Tadmor-Palmyra’s history at a certain point in time, romanticized in a semi-ruined state. Both the French actions and IS’s actions were ideological ones with the goal of “reviving an imagined and idealized past” (Mulder 2017: 229). So too are the IDA’s, which is clear not only in its effort to manufacture an imperial Roman identity for the Monumental Arch, but also in its decision to erect the new monument in Trafalgar Square in London—a location with deep colonial and imperial symbolic meaning. The IDA arch frames both the neoclassical facade of the National Gallery on the one side and the column of Lord Nelson on the other. The setting is a stark reminder of how Britain’s colonial power led to a thirst for antiquities hunting that was justified on presumptions of cultural superiority. That the IDA project breathed new life into this sentiment is revealed in a “postcard” written by a British MP for the aforementioned Postcards to Palmyra project: “Palmyra-the most beautiful site from antiquity I have been privileged to visit. Welcome back to the civilised world!”

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(Kamash 2017, 616). This reflects the overall tone of much of the public reaction of the 2015 destruction at Tadmor-Palmyra, which framed the actions of IS in terms of civilization vs. barbarism (Brusius 2016; Mulder 2017).

6.5  Conclusion Poorly conceived and hastily executed, the IDA heritage project to reconstruct the Monumental Arch from Palmyra missed its mark. The IDA failed to provide accurate information about the monument or create a didactic narrative for the public, and in so doing effectively severed any connection between the monument, Palmyrene craftsmanship, and Near Eastern cultural history. The presentation of the Monumental Arch as an imperial relic of Roman rule perpetuates a characterization of the built environment of Near Eastern cities that is fundamentally neocolonial. This is compounded by the IDA’s problematic mixing of western technological triumphalism and heritage preservation; while the digital humanities is frequently presented as tool of empowerment, we see here how it can still be wielded in the same colonialist, western terms that it is meant to transgress. The IDA project, with its ample funding, high-profile backers, and ability to attract international media attention, was a missed opportunity in terms of educating the public on the rich cultural history of ancient Syrian building and correcting outdated views of European cultural hegemony over the East. The problem, however, is not that the IDA chose a to reconstruct a monument from TadmorPalmyra’s “classical” past as opposed to another period. The problem is that the Monumental Arch continues to be categorized and framed as “classical” at all. In this respect, the mistakes of the IDA cannot be separated from shortcomings in the fields of Classics and Near Eastern studies. Despite the postcolonial turn in Mediterranean archaeology and despite greater accessibility and dissemination of knowledge via digital technologies, perceptions of the built environment of Syria under Roman rule have not changed very much since colonial times. In repeating the mantra that the Monumental Arch and other public architecture of this region is Roman or classical, textbooks and reference works are celebrating these cityscapes in a way that gives credit for their achievement to Greek or Roman genius, and thus perpetuating the trope of the passive, culturally inferior, Oriental. While “Roman” and “classical” are labels often used loosely by archaeologists as a matter of convenience, they communicate “Westernness” in a way that would have been alien to the arch’s builders. The responsibility for this neocolonial representation of Syria’s past ultimately lies with historians and archaeologists. We are responsible for the impression our research makes and how that research is disseminated to the general public. If we want to give ancient built heritage the attention that it deserves, we need to do so not by poorly thought out vanity projects resting on the illusion of technological savvy, but through well-researched and conceptualized initiatives that provide adequate context for the audience; the public deserves good and accurate research. With more

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forethought, research, and collaboration with diverse specialists and stakeholders, the IDA project could have been a means of exploring not only the complicated history of Tadmor-Palmyra’s built structures, but also the non-Western origins of a visual culture—neoclassicism—that has long been associated with Western superiority. This would have gone much further in demonstrating exactly how the buildings of Tadmor-Palmyra, in Roger Michel’s own words, “speak powerfully to what unites the East and the West”.4

References Adam, J.-P. (2005). Roman building: Materials and techniques. London: Routledge. al-Manzali, M. (2016). Palmyra and the political history of archaeology in Syria: from colonialists to nationalists. Mangal Media. Available at: http://www.mangalmedia.net/english//palmyra. Accessed 10 Aug 2018. Amy, R. (1933). Premières restaurations a l’arc monumental de Palmyre. Syria, 14(4), 396–411. Anderson, B. (2015). “An alternative discourse”: Local interpretations off antiquities in the Ottoman Empire. Journal of Field Archaeology, 40(4), 450–460. Baird, J. A., & Kamash, Z. (2019). Remembering Roman Syria: Valuing Tadmor-Palmyra, from “discovery” to destruction. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 62, 1–29. Ball, W. (2016). Rome in the East: The transformation of an empire (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Barański, M. (1999). The adoption of the Arch structure in the architecture of the Arabian peninsula. ARAM Periodical, 11, 123–130. Barański, M. (2019). Arch construction in Palmyra (Syria). IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 741(7). Available at: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/ 10.1088/1757-­899X/471/8/082012. Accessed 2 Aug 2019. Beard, M. (2007). The Roman triumph. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Besenval, R. (1984). Technologie de la voûte dans l’Orient ancien. Paris: Editions Recherche sur les civilisations. Bevan, R. (2016). Should we celebrate a replica of the destroyed Palmyra Arch? London Evening Standard. Available at: http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/design/should-­we-­celebrate-­a-­ replica-­of-­the-­destroyed-­palmyra-­arch-­a3233496.html. Accessed 14 Mar 2019. Bond, S. (2016). The ethics of 3D-printing Syria’s cultural heritage. Forbes. https://www.forbes. c o m / s i t e s / d r s a r a h b o n d / 2 0 1 6 / 0 9 / 2 2 / d o e s -­ny c s -­n ew -­3 d -­p r i n t e d -­p a l m y r a -­a r c h -­ celebrate-­syria-­or-­just-­engage-­in-­digital-­colonialism/#59e799ea77db. Bounni, A. (1997). Palmyra. In E. M. Meyers (Ed.), The Oxford encyclopedia of archaeology in the Near East (Vol. 4, pp. 238–244). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Browning, I. (1979). Palmyra. Park Ridge: Noyes Press. Brusius, M. (2016). The Middle East heritage debate is becoming worryingly colonial. The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/the-­middle-­east-­heritage-­debate-­is-­ becoming-­worryingly-­colonial-­57679. Accessed 15 Mar 2019. Burch, S. (2017). A virtual oasis: Trafalgar Square’s arch of Palmyra. International Journal of Architectural Research: ArchNet-IJAR, 11(3), 58–77. Burns, R. (2017). Origins of the colonnaded streets in the cities of the Roman East. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Butcher, K. (2003). Roman Syria and the Near East. London: British Museum Press.

 http://digitalarchaeology.org.uk/people. Accessed 19 August 2019.

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Butcher, K. (2013). Continuity and change in Lebanese temples. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Supplement, 120, 195–211. Canepa, M. (2014). Seleukid sacred architecture, royal cult and the transformation of Iranian culture in the middle Iranian period. Iranian Studies, 48(1), 71–97. Cassibry, K. (2018). Reception of the Roman arch monument. American Journal of Archaeology, 122(2), 245–275. Dodge, H. (1984). Building materials and techniques in the Eastern Mediterranean from the Hellenistic period to the fourth century AD. PhD Thesis. Newcastle University. Durand, C., Furnet, T., & Piraud-Forunet, P. (2015). So long, Bel. In memoriam, Palmyra (6 April 32 – 28 August 2015), Les Carnets de l’Ifpo. La recherche en train de faire à l’Institut français du Proche-Orient (Hypotheses.org), November 16. [Online] Available at: http://ifpo. hypotheses.org/7101. Accessed 16 Jan 2020. Factum Arte. (2016). Factum foundation: IDA Palmyra Arch copy. Available at: http://www. factumfoundation.org/pag/236/. Accessed 15 June 2019. Friedland, E. (2019). “Classical” versus “Ancient” in the Near Eastern Canon. In A. R. Gansell & A.  Shafer (Eds.), Testing the canon of ancient Near Eastern archaeology (pp.  131–150). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gillot, L. (2010). Towards a socio-political history of archaeology in the Middle East: The development of archaeological practice and its impacts on local communities in Syria. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 20(1), 4–16. Hingley, R. (2005). Globalizing Roman culture: Unity diversity and empire. London: Routledge. Iacobini, A. (2004). Un modello architettonico bizantino tra centro e periferia: la chiesa cupolata ad ambulacro. Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di archeologia, 76, 135–174. Jastrzębowska, E. (2013). Christianisation of Palmyra: Early Byzantine Church in the temple of Bel. Studia Palmyreńskie, XII, 177–191. Kamash, Z. (2017). ‘Postcard to Palmyra’: Bringing the public into debates over post-conflict reconstruction in the Middle East. World Archaeology, 49(5), 608–622. Khunti, R. (2018). The problem with printing Palmyra: Exploring the ethics of using 3D printing technology to reconstruct heritage. Studies in Digital Heritage, 2(1), 1–12. Kleiner, D. E. E. (2014). Roman architecture: A visual guide. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kriss, S. (2016). Why recreating the Palmyra arch in London was smug, hypocritical and tacky. Vice. Available at: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/xd7ngw/palmyras-­arch-­trafalgar-­ square-­dubai-­new-­york. Accessed 18 Aug 2018. Lancaster, L.  C. (2010). Parthian influence on vaulting in Roman Greece? An inquiry into technological exchange under Hadrian. American Journal of Archaeology, 114(3), 447–472. Lancaster, L. C. (2015). Innovative vaulting in the architecture of the Roman Empire: 1st to 4th centuries CE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lyttleton, M. (1974). Baroque architecture in classical antiquity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. MacDonald, W.  L. (1986). The architecture of the Roman Empire (Vol. 2). New Haven: Yale University Press. Mudie, E. (2018). Palmyra and the radical other on the politics of monument destruction in Syria. Otherness: Essays and Studies, 6(2), 140–160. Mulder, S. (2017). Imagining localities of antiquity in Islamic societies. International Journal of Islamic Architecture, 6(2), 229–254. Munawar, N. A. (2019). Competing heritage: Curating the post-conflict heritage of Roman Syria. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 62(1), 142–165. Oates, D. (1990). Innovations in mud-brick: Decorative and structural techniques in ancient Mesopotamia. World Archaeology, 21(3), 388–406. Osborne, R., & Alcock, S. E. (2012). Introduction. In S. E. Alcock & R. Osborne (Eds.), Classical archaeology (2nd ed., pp. 1–10). Oxford: Blackwell. Pollard, N. (2000). Soldiers, cities, and civilians in Roman Syria. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

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Porter, B.  W. (2010). Near Eastern archaeology: Imperial pasts, postcolonial presents, and the possibilities of a decolonized future. In J.  Lydon & U.  Z. Rizvi (Eds.), Handbook of postcolonial archaeology (pp. 51–60). Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Reinertz, M. (2020). Celebrating 25 years of UNESCO heritage (but not much else…). Luxembourg Times. Available at: https://luxtimes.lu/culture-­life/39503-­celebrating-­25-­years-­of-­unesco-­ heritage-­but-­not-­much-­else. Accessed 13 Mar 2020. Schmidt-Colinet, A. (2019). No temple in Palmyra! Opposing the reconstruction of the Temple of Bel. Syria Studies, 11(2), 63–84. Segal, A. (1997). From function to monument: Urban landscapes of Roman Palestine, Syria, and Provincia Arabia. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Smith, A.  M. (2013). Roman Palmyra: Identity, community, and state formation. New  York: Oxford University Press. Sommer, M. (2017). Palmyra: A history. New York: Routledge. Stewart, A.  F. (2008). Classical Greece and the birth of western art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, A. (2016). The problem with rebuilding a Palmyra ruin destroyed by ISIS  – does it simply help Assad? The Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ worldviews/wp/2016/04/20/the-­p roblem-­w ith-­r ebuilding-­a -­r oman-­r uin-­d estroyed-­b y-­ isis-­does-­it-­simply-­help-­assad/. Accessed 5 Nov 2019. Thompson, E.  L. (2017). Legal and ethical considerations for digital recreations of cultural heritage. Chapman Law Review, 20, 153–176. Turner, L. (2016). Palmyra’s arch recreated in London. BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc. com/news/uk-­36070721. Accessed 10 Mar 2019. Vasunia, P. (2003). Hellenism and empire: Reading Edward said. Parallax, 9(4), 88–97. Voon, C. (2016). What’s the value of recreating the Palmyra arch with digital technology? Hyperallergic. Available at: https://hyperallergic.com/292006/whats-­the-­value-­of-­recreating-­ the-­palmyra-­arch-­with-­digital-­technology/. Accessed 20 Nov 2019. Ward, W. D. (2018). Orientalism and the study of the re-modern Middle East. Athens Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 4(1), 7–18. Ward-Perkins, J. B. (1981). Roman imperial architecture. New York: Penguin Books. Will, E. (1983). Le développement urbain de Palmyre: témoignages épigraphicques anciens et nouveaux. Syria, 60, 69–81. Wood, R. (1753). The ruins of Palmyra, otherwise Tedmor in the desart. London. Wright, G.  R. H. (2009). Ancient building technology (Construction. Part I: Text) (Vol. 3). Leiden: Brill.

Chapter 7

The Archaeology of Remembering: Colonial Specters and the Processes of Repackaging the Materiality of Violence, Displacement, and Disenfranchisement Vuyiswa Lupuwana and Navashni Naidoo

Abstract  The legacies of the Rhodes statue and other monuments around Cape Town and South Africa are deeply imbedded within colonial and apartheid legacies. Celebratory architecture and monuments of this colonial history continue to haunt society and are incongruously juxtaposed against the post-apartheid nation and values of reconciliation. There are other monuments which have attempted to represent a post-apartheid nation, one of which is the Prestwich Memorial which houses close to 3000 skeletal remains of the enslaved and the underclass. The remains were exhumed during an urban renewal project. These remains are a visceral record of the dispossessed and their lives. They have not been adequately curated and are housed in what has been named the Prestwich Memorial, which shares its roof with the popular coffee shop, Truth Coffee. The question this essay explores is how we deal with the living memory of a violent past. This paper discusses the process of memorialisation, through theories of space and place. The two case studies presented further explore the question of how archaeology can add to the process of postcolonial healing. Keywords  Memory · Space · Monuments · Affect · Postcolonial healing

V. Lupuwana (*) Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] N. Naidoo Department of GeoSciences/African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa © The Author(s) 2020 J. L. Nitschke, M. Lorenzon (eds.), Postcolonialism, Heritage, and the Built Environment, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60858-3_7

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7.1  Introduction The last 400 years of interaction, colonial rule, and industrialization in South Africa led to some of the most violent and grotesque acts of marginalization and injustice. The colonial administration of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) laid the foundation for a slave society as well as the institutionalization of the San genocide in the 1700s (Penn 2005). The period was characterized by mass movements, interactions, and contestation over land and social space (Gilomee 1981; Penn 1986, 2005). In the nineteenth century, the British administration focused on raising the profit margins of the colony through the commercialization of the landscape, further adding to feelings of alienation from the landscape on the part of indigenous groups. British control exacerbated racial differences, which persisted into the early-to-mid twentieth century when the country saw the introduction of official apartheid policies that entrenched institutional racism through the homelands and spatial policies (including forced removals), actively encouraging segregation, the legacies of which are still felt in contemporary South Africa (Ralphs 2008; Shepherd 2013). These policies sought to erase the presence of Black and Coloured1 histories through spatial delineations that pushed these communities into crowded homelands at the edges of industry and development (Mabin 1992; Herwitz 2012). While post-apartheid South Africa has reimagined itself under the banner of “the rainbow nation”, with corresponding calls for unification and social justice, the lived experience of Black and Coloured communities is still framed by apartheid housing policies and an experience of monumentality that continues to glorify the colonial past. Therefore, the rhetoric of the rainbow nation and healing as it relates to a nation re-founded on the values of social justice, equality, and unity stands at odds with the lived experience of its residents. This essay explores the complexity of memory, healing, space, and monumentality in contemporary South Africa by considering the responsibility of archaeology in the process of repackaging the past for contemporary society. In so doing we ask the following questions: What do we do with painful legacies? How do we navigate diverse experiences of the colonial past so as to build a cohesive experience of society in the present? Using the #RhodesMustFall protests as a reflection on the politics of heritage, space, and memory, together with the excavation of the Prestwich Street burial ground as a case study, this essay examines the role of archaeology in the process of navigating painful memories of the past represented by the built environment. Hamber and Wilson (2010) have argued for a strategy that provides a space for survivors to express their grief and their rage as they struggle to come to terms with their loss and trauma. We argue that archaeology has a role in collaboratively reimagining colonial monumentalities and the materiality of violence to address this need. Archaeological involvement can shed light on and raise the profile of muted histories while adding to the discourse of national healing through

 The term “Coloured” here refers to groups of mixed race in South Africa.

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remembrance. The aim of this discussion is to provoke thought on these issues and encourage more targeted efforts from the archaeological community.

7.2  Monuments and Their Socio-political Effect At a basic level, monuments encourage memory and remembrance. At a second level, they magnify certain values, beliefs, and perceptions. Monuments are powerful, as they are “a flash point around which group and national narratives get articulated, gaining power and claiming authority. The monument turns the past into a living symbol, a central predicate in the assertion of heritage” (Herwitz 2012: 94). This is important to acknowledge as it relates to the postcolonial city and the projects of postcolonial healing and unification, since the action of monuments contribute to the construction of national identity, segregation or unity. Monuments signal one’s power and position within the unspoken social imaginaries expressed through dominator and dominated social discourse. Given these characteristics, the question of whose heritage is reflected in monuments is of particular importance in a country such as South Africa where the memory and experiences of the colonial and apartheid era are split along diverse racial lines. While South Africa was collectively changed by the events of the colonial and apartheid era, the present society has a diversity of constituents who perceive these events differently. The majority are descendants of the victims of apartheid, while some are the descendants of the perpetrators and beneficiaries of apartheid violence. At the end of apartheid, during the transitional period, the people were given a “symbolic closure” facilitated by the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC). The focus of the TRC was on using testimony of both victims and perpetrators to achieve reconciliation, but it ultimately failed for several reasons. The problem with the TRC, as argued by Hamber and Wilson (2010), is that the violent and traumatic events of apartheid were assumed to have created a collective memory. However, a de facto collective memory or experience is a fallacy. Some families who had gone through egregious human rights abuses did not receive the justice they needed. A large number of apartheid criminals who did not apply for amnesty are yet to be convicted, such that 26 years after the end of apartheid, the families of the victims continue to wait for some form of justice (Mabuza 2015). For some, the hearings were perceived as having brushed under the carpet the hurt of many individuals. The TRC’s failure is in part because it was designed as a once-off action. Given the diverse material, social, and psychological effects of the apartheid era, a collective healed memory can only be achieved through a long, ongoing process of engagement and confrontation with the past. It is therefore important that we ask the question of what monuments do at the subliminal level to the psyche of those who identify with the victims of apartheid and colonial violence, and conversely, what monuments do to the psyche of those who benefitted from the atrocities of the colonial and apartheid eras. To approach this, we utilize the theory of representation and affect, particularly the idea that

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representation of identity through the physical and visual world has the ability to affect the psyche of an individual (Gregg et al. 2010; Knudsen and Andersen 2019). Therefore, objects which glorify a problematic colonial past have the effect of signaling problematic perceptions of self, perceptions of others, and feelings of being welcome or unwelcome, and thus continue to reproduce versions of the past that are partial and not contextualized. Monuments built in the 20th century were done so with a particular narrative of aggrandizing white supremacy, and their unchallenged presence in the postcolony is particularly troubling because they continue to affect and haunt postcolonial dreams of reconciliation. Affect in this instance is defined as the way in which monuments, together with the city structure (which functions as the space that houses monuments and delineates space), have the ability to influence the phenomenological experience of space and place and affect how an individual sees themselves and experiences the world. The built environment and monumental fabric of the city of Cape Town potentially could be a space that directly confronts problematic pasts and pain. Instead, the structural inequalities and spatial legacies that came about during colonial and apartheid periods still persist due to the structural design of the city of Cape Town and the survival of monuments from those eras (Mabin 1992; Rassool 2000; Huyssen 2003; Stoler 2013). The built environment of the city overall represents a visual and visceral fragmenting of the city that is pervasively structured around racial lines. The ill-resourced crowded townships in the outskirts serve as the location of the homes of the majority Black and Coloured residents while the pristine and wellserviced central areas are the homes of the White population.2 This reality is a direct result of the forced removals of the twentieth century, which in turn owe their success to the racialized policies of both the VOC and the British administration. In addition, numerous statues, architecture, and demarcated spaces remain which embody and/or inadvertently celebrate the colonial era. These monuments function as places which affect the subconscious and act as psychological strongholds that continue to aid structural racism (Hooks 1989). Since the fall of apartheid, few spaces of redress have been created that challenge structural inequality or encourage social cohesion. Thus, Black and Coloured persons struggle to locate within the cityscape either themselves or the trauma of their ancestors. This is not to dismiss certain post-apartheid efforts such as the District Six Museum, Robben Island, the Slave Lodge, or other monuments and initiatives; but there is a gaping disparity between the many statues and architecture that celebrate the colonial era and the very few that critique the past in any constructive way. Space serves as an active way of delineating who is welcome and who is not, whose history is seen and whose history remains silenced, invisible or in the background. Monumentality has agency in its ability to give social cues and to remind those from historically disenfranchised backgrounds of their place, their trauma and their misplacement. Accordingly, it has the potential to heal the wounds 2  In Cape Town, the collective Black and Coloured population makes up 81% of the population with 15.7% making up the White population and the 3.3% falling to the Asian and other categories. (http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/cape-town-population/)

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of the past or facilitate spaces that encourage this healing, if done thoughtfully. The two case studies below highlight both the successes and limits of two recent attempts to transform the monumental landscape in Cape Town.

7.3  #RhodesMustFall The student-led #RhodesMustFall movement at the University of Cape Town (UCT) best encapsulates the breadth of the psychological wounds inflicted by colonial materiality in the postcolonial period. Instigated by a single student’s forceful protest of the prominent statue of Cecil John Rhodes on UCT’s campus, the movement became a setting for the outpouring of pain in a South Africa whose legacy of injustices continues to haunt the public imagination. The #RhodesMustFall and related movements (such as #FeesMustFall) that swept through the universities in 2015 and 2016 were the clarion call for decolonization, including a collective re-imagining of the institutional structures of South Africa (Chikane 2018). The bronze statue of Rhodes at the center of the movement was erected in 1934 in acknowledgment of his donation of land for the university. The statue was located in a prominent space on the upper campus of UCT on the lower slopes of the east side of Table Mountain, framed by a backdrop of buildings featuring neoclassical facades, a visual reminder of the British colonial period (Fig. 7.1). The visual power

Fig. 7.1  Statue of Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town, prior to its removal in 2015. (Photograph by Jessica L. Nitschke)

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Fig. 7.2  Rhodes Memorial in Cape Town. At the front is Physical Energy, a bronze sculpture by George Frederic Watts (1874). (Photograph by Olga Ernst (CC BY-SA 4.0))

of the Rhodes statue was striking: gazing over the Cape Flats, it presented a foreboding image of dominance and power. This impression was reinforced by a larger public monument to Rhodes, the Rhodes Memorial, located further up the mountain above the University estate. Taking the form of a neoclassical shrine and featuring a bust of Rhodes and a statue of a horse rider surveying the Cape flats, the Rhodes memorial is an outright celebration of colonial power (Fig. 7.2). Both the statue and the memorial created an incongruous juxtaposition with the rhetoric of nation building: the architecture screams of the Empire and is imposing in its eminent position and pride of place. The #RhodesMustFall conversations circled around what many students were internally asking themselves, namely why the statue of an individual central to the construction of colonial South Africa was still being given such prominence in the University’s architecture. The meaning of the statue in the 1930s and its meaning in postcolonial South Africa remained largely unchanged. Students questioned why the redress promised by post-apartheid rhetoric of the rainbow nation had yet to appear. The word “suffocation” is one we think best describes some of the concerns and feelings of protesters (Holmes and Loehwing 2016; Ndlelu 2017). The Rhodes statue came not only to represent a problematic colonial legacy but an exclusion of people of color specifically given the university’s mission statement to create an inclusive university. With the #RhodesMustFall movement gaining both local and international support, the public likewise also began to voice their disapproval of

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other monuments to the South African colonial past: statues, buildings and language of instruction were all under scrutiny. The Rhodes statue did fall, removed by Heritage Western Cape at the university’s request and put into storage indefinitely (the Rhodes Memorial, however, remains unchanged). This was followed with an “Institutional Reconciliation and Transformation Commission” together with various initiatives focused on transforming the university away from a white/Anglo-dominated space to one that better reflects the ethno-cultural diversity of South Africa. (Holmes and Loehwing 2016; Ndlelu 2017). However, the removal of Rhodes—although significant—cannot be viewed as a singular victory because the statue did not exist as a singular artifact; it was imbued with a mythologizing and glorifying of the colonial period that had until this point gone unquestioned in the post-apartheid university. Therefore, a continuation of this conversation needs to address the problematic thinking that was mythologized by the statue. During the course of #RhodesMustFall debates (online and offline), some white South Africans objected that removing the statue signaled the erasure of British heritage, and people of different races expressed their concern about erasing parts of South African’s complex history. However, erasure of history does not occur through the removal of colonial monuments but through the continued existence  of memorials to problematic figures without the adequate context such as genocide, rape and other egregious acts. Embedded in this resistance to the statue’s removal is an inability to see the direct link and connection between the British colonial period, the atrocities of the apartheid period, and the issues of structural inequality that plague South African society today. One of the sources of this blindspot can be found in the education system. Not only is history not a compulsory part of the national curriculum, but also the teaching of history has been fragmented, both before and since the fall of apartheid (Robinson 2018; Ndlovu et  al. 2019). The result is a denialism of the causal link between events and policies of the colonial era and the injustices of the apartheid era. Teaching at this level is essential in order for there to be better mutual understanding of how the past is perceived by South Africa’s diverse community. The #RhodesMustFall movement highlights the importance of engaging with the past actively in order for people to heal. Now that the statue has been removed, the question that confronts us is, what critical heritage might look like? How do we interact with the past in order to encourage healing, teaching and social awareness and justice? The potential to engage the public and initiate a process of remembrance and adequate memorialization is ripe. The atmosphere created by the #RhodesMustFall movement represents new directions and possibilities for the archaeological discipline, especially for those who specialize as public archaeologists. The problem is we continue to live with and experience monuments that continue to perpetuate dominance over their constituents. While there have been efforts to create monuments which attempt to redress the legacy of the apartheid past, some still fail in their execution. One such example is the Prestwich Memorial, which offers valuable lessons as we move forward.

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7.4  The Prestwich Street Burial Ground and Memorial In early 2003, the remains from an eighteenth century informal burial ground were rediscovered at Prestwich Street in Green Point, Cape Town, during the early stages of a development project. The burial ground is located along the lower slopes of Signal Hill, situated at the borders of the old settlement where the city’s old burial grounds are known to have been located. People who had attended Prestwich Primary School had noted finding skeletal remains around the school grounds (Ernsten 2017; Malan et al. 2017; Weeder 2006). Furthermore, remains had been found along Corben Street in the late twentieth century and so there was an archaeological record of the site which had been reported to the city (Cox and Sealy 1997; Malan et al. 2017). Therefore, the rediscovery of these burials was not a surprise (Halkett et al. 2004; Malan et al. 2017). The Prestwich Street burial ground was an informal one, serving as the resting place for many of the Cape Colony’s “underclass” including slaves, Khoesan, Xhosa, as well as shipwrecked sailors and other constituents outside of the governance of a church (Prestwich Street 2014; Malan et al. 2017). The burial was eventually declared disused, and the Disused Cemeteries Appropriation Act of 1906 allowed disused cemeteries to be reused as part of building developments. In the early twentieth century the area became a “creolised working-class area” (Ernsten 2017: 577), and in the mid-late twentieth century, it became the site of forced removals of Black and Coloured residents under apartheid regulation, which declared the sector a “white area”. It was during a redevelopment of the area in the post-apartheid building boom in central Cape Town (still ongoing) that the informal burial ground was rediscovered. Eventually, three thousand individual skeletal remains in total would be exhumed between 2003 and 2005 (see Ernsten 2017 for a detailed timeline). Upon (re)discovery of the burial, the South African Heritage Resource agency and Heritage Western Cape were called in and archaeologists were then put in charge of rescuing the remains. A sixty-day hold on work at the site was put in place while the matter was taken to the public for the public participation process. However, the exhumation of the remains in fact started prior to the public participation process, and it was revealed that the city had given the developer rights to proceed with development of this piece of land even with the prior knowledge from the city records, maps, and neighboring burials (Halkett et al. 2004; Shepherd 2011; Malan et al. 2017). Thus, the public participation process resulted in mass outcry from community leaders as well as communities who were seeking justice for the individuals who had been greatly dishonored in their lifetime and who were now being dishonored in their death. Moreover, the events and discussion were heavily publicized in the press (Smith 2003). The responses from the public engagement meetings reflected feelings of being edged out and marginalized. These meetings became very emotional, and at times verbally violent and understandably so, given the 400-year history of marginalization and displacement people were still grappling with. Below is a selection of some

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of the most striking comments from the meetings, sourced from archival tape of the community engagement meeting (Prestwich Street 2014): Comment 1: Is this a public participation process or a rubber-stamping exercise? Cause I cannot understand how a permit was given to dig up these bodies and you are coming afterwards to say … what do you think? … So, my counter proposal is very simply this, put them back, put the bodies back! Do not pretend to consult me unless you respect our opinions. If you really want public participation, we need to have it in Mitchells Plain at two o’clock on a Saturday morning, so let me speak for all the people that don’t have cards, put the bodies back, let the government expropriate the land, and then let us then sit down and have a (audio unclear) democratic discussion about what we should do about this heritage of ours…

Comment 2: And I want to put African morals and African values into the mix. We keep talking about White Western science, let’s talk about African morality and African values, that should be our guiding principle here…

Comment 3: We are talking about this rainbow nation, uh uh, whatever, uh uh, this week’s line is about how to build South Africa and yet we fail to see that here is the perfect opportunity to stop the wheels of economic development in this place so that we can come to terms with who we are… When they put Sarah Baartman in the ground, it was an opportunity for the nation to reflect. Why is this not in the main agenda of parliament? To stop the development so that there can be a national reflection on what happened here? Is it just because Cape Town is Khoes and Slaves, that we don’t care? …And stop robbing graves! Stop robbing graves!

What is evident from each of these exchanges is the level of public invisibility experienced by Coloured and Black individuals at the public participation process, which had been promoted as an inclusive and democratic space. In interviews with Reverend Weeder of St George’s cathedral, who was a leader of the “Hands off Prestwich Street” Committee, similar sentiments were expressed about the silencing of the Cape experience of people who identified specifically as Coloured. Rev. Weeder drew attention to the lack of agency and representation of Coloured people from the national narrative, saying: “it’s your political weight and if your political… if we were SeSotho’s, Xhosa’s and …if Hinsa’s head was found at Prestwich, we would be having a different story and that is sad. That the people who produced a Basil February, … Cissie Gool… now have to stand and wait and see how the national story unfolds without a true inkling of our contribution” (Prestwich Street 2014). The comments from Reverend Weeder reveal the sense of exclusion felt by the Coloured community from the national politics of South Africa. Due to the growing public outcry, a moratorium on further study of the remains was granted. In order to reinter the dead in a place of remembrance and honor, the remains were moved to an ossuary—the future Prestwich Memorial—following a public procession within the city inner limits (Fig.  7.3). However, this memorial was an unsatisfactory compromise for all those involved. At the time of writing of this paper, the remains have received little to no curation. Close to 3000 individual

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Fig. 7.3  Ceremonial procession of the Prestwich dead as they were moved to Prestwich Memorial. (Photograph by Antonia Malan)

skeletal remains are housed in brown boxes in a back room of the memorial, which resembles more an archaeological storeroom than an ossuary (Fig. 7.4). Further, the memorial is not simply a memorial, but has a dual function as a coffee shop, Truth, a widely popular coffee brand in Cape Town (Fig.  7.5). For the majority of the people that frequent the space, the building is first and foremost a coffee shop with its original purpose playing second fiddle to mercantile pursuits. The memorial’s physical attachment to the coffee shop is a continued form of disrespect to the memory of the individuals interred here. Rev. Weeder describes it best in his interview for the documentary Prestwich Street (2014): “…and when that fellow that owns Truth, we sat down, we had lunch together and I said to him, as a person of Jewish descent, would you have a tea room at Auschwitz? And he couldn’t answer me. And I think maybe in his mind was how can I compare the, the incarcerated skeletal remains of the Prestwich uncovering to Auschwitz, of course it’s a diminutive scale but it speaks of the same truth, of history denied. Of, of, a holocaust of another type, a holocaust of memory. The denial of memory” (Prestwich Street 2014, Reverend Weeder Interview). The Prestwich Memorial is located in the high-end Waterkant district, where its low visibility is eclipsed by a development mandate that arguably has its roots in the forced removals of the twentieth century. The Prestwich Memorial team, comprised of City officials, the Cape Town Heritage Trust, the South African Heritage Resource Agency (SAHRA) and the Green Point City Improvement District, leased the ossuary to the Green Point City Improvement District. The “city improvement districts”

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Fig. 7.4  The human remains “vault” of the Prestwich Memorial. (Photograph by the author)

(CID) are non-profit organizations operating within specific defined areas in Cape Town, funded by property owners, and whose goals are, among other things, to strengthen “investor confidence”, “create a positive identity for the area” and “improvement of property values.”3 It is the Green Point CID who leased space in the Memorial to Truth (Ernsten 2017). Thus, as observed by Ernsten (2017: 583) “the Prestwich Ossuary, the Rockwell and Truth are in fact attempts (deliberate or unconscious) to convert the colonial wounds of District One into marketing opportunities.” The architect of the project, Julien Le Grange, noted in an interview with Ernsten his surprise that, in the run-up to the FIFA world cup in 2010, the memorial was marketed as a tourist attraction and its location on the fan walk emphasizing the monetization of pain and exclusion (Ernsten 2017). While the City of Cape Town has conceptually drawn on the “rainbow nation” rhetoric, it remains one of the most unequal cities in South Africa. Within the context of an aggressive development mandate, the city has essentially made zero to few provisions for low-income housing, which has resulted in a gentrification process that has seen many Black and Coloured communities continue to be edged out of the city and be further secreted away in the informal settlements of the city,  http://cityimprovement.co.za/wordpress/?page_id=38

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Fig. 7.5  Prestwich Memorial with Truth Coffee Cult signage. (Photograph by the author)

as was the case during the colonial and Apartheid eras. The area surrounding the memorial as well as the burial ground itself has become an upmarket gentrified space exclusively for the use of the affluent. Black and Coloured residents of Cape Town have little to no ownership to this area, their only visibility in this area being the Prestwich Memorial. The memorial’s superficiality and isolation means that it lacks the agency needed to further engage with the current discussions on race, class, and agency and the need to decolonize places, spaces and institutions. The memorial could be a memorial of “talking back” as an equal (Hooks 1989: 2); it could be a place of reflection, critique and nation building. However, it fails in that respect. Hooks notes that “there is a silence of the oppressed who have never learned to speak and there is the voice of those who have been forcefully silenced because they have dared to speak and in doing so resist” (Hooks 1989: 13). A continued silence will lead to continual socio-political issues and pain. The memorial in its current form is thus a missed opportunity for representation and initiating the healing process.

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7.5  M  emory, Healing, and the Role of Archaeology: Approaches to Redesigning the Empire’s Old Clothes Archaeologists and other scientists received the heaviest amount of criticism over the Prestwich Street debates as their interests were largely centered on the data that could be gained. This criticism has followed the archaeological discipline over the years even though the City of Cape Town was largely at fault as they had issued the development permit. Furthermore, the decision to continue the rescue of the remains was directed by the South African Heritage Resource Agency (SAHRA) and the final decision to move the remains was executed by the Minister of Arts and Culture (Finnegan et al. 2011; Jonker 2014). While archaeologists ultimately were not the cause of the tragedy of the Prestwich burials, there is an argument to be made that they nonetheless still have a special responsibility in such situations as custodians of heritage. Shepherd (2002, 2011) has been a vocal critic of the role of archaeology in contemporary South African society, and key among his critiques is the problematic positionality archaeologists have in contemporary South African socio-politics. The archaeological community very rarely raised issue with the apartheid state as it benefitted from the policies put in place by the apartheid government (Shepherd 2019). In addition, the history of unethical human remains collections is remembered in popular memory (Gareth-­ Jones and Harris 1998; Shepherd 2002, 2003, 2019). Given the poor relationship archaeologists have traditionally had with the communities of Cape Town, it is therefore paramount that archaeologists lead the charge in creating spaces of meaningful engagement. The task is one of confronting the monuments and spaces constructed by nineteenth- and twentieth-century discriminatory policies and the apartheid era so that they are reimagined—or better yet repackaged—as more inclusive spaces that allow for critical engagement with the past—the act of “talking back” to the past. This is not a simple task and it requires the involvement of a diverse range of stakeholders. Nonetheless, such an endeavor must be taken up so as to give “alternate groups access to a past that is locked up both intellectually and institutionally”, as “a reflexive consideration of the production of archaeological knowledge will lead to critical engagement with the voicing of other interests” (Hodder 1991: 9 & 11). The involvement of archaeologists and historians is therefore paramount as the verified facts can go a long way in bringing visibility while still protecting the legitimacy of stakeholders. Archaeology offers a myriad of possibilities to facilitate the process of healing, as archaeological narratives have the ability to represent the multiple viewpoints. Therefore, there is a need for archaeologists together with historians and government to be part of this disinfecting process. As researchers and scientists, we must commit to allow our work to contribute to the continued process of healing, to the process of engaging and re-engaging. Furthermore, given the negative image of archaeology as a result of the colonial era and the Prestwich street engagements, there is a need for more directed public archaeology with a community focus. A community-driven archaeology can be a powerful means of engaging with

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communities who have been historically kept out of the academic space. Building this relationship based on multivocality, transparency and engaged scholarship is likely to ensure the survival of the discipline and raise its importance with the public. It is important to shift the field’s perception from a “grave digging” pursuit into a field for, by, and with indigenous and local communities (Atalay 2006; Atalay and Hastorf 2006; Atalay 2008). The first step is in opening up academic spaces as spaces willing to engage with these pieces of dialogue and by inviting the community into the academic space through exhibitions and discussions, as a means of confronting the uncomfortable remnants of colonialism and empire. In terms of the city’s collective built environment and creating more inclusive spaces, a simple start at dealing with painful histories can be accomplished through the creation of spaces that allow for people to freely voice out their pain or the injustice they feel. This could be achieved through the process of creative exhibitions around problematic sites of memory. One such site that achieves this act of “talking back” is Freedom Park in Pretoria. Opening society up to the pain and trauma of the past can be the first steps in dealing with it (Kiriama 2018). Open spaces of grieving have been attempted elsewhere; examples are the Budapest model, the Berlin model, and the Romanian model (Herwitz 2012), which have been hailed as critical moments for national identity. A model that embraces the concept of counter-monuments might also be effective (Stevens et al. 2012), similar to the Stolpersteine or “stumbling stones” in Europe.4 There is a need for there to be places of critical reflection—critical heritage—that comes face to face with people in the mundane experience of everyday life. This is one of many ways to encourage critical selfreflection, which could be effective in confronting problematic narratives on race, the past and the contemporary. One way in which archaeology can begin to raise its public profile and deal with issues of representation is through creative collaborations with artists, architects and filmmakers, which could filter into the everyday spaces such as street corners, areas of public transit and other spaces within which people interact. Archaeologists need to be active in arranging collaborations with local artists so as to create art and monuments that reflect and address the past while offering critical spaces that are inclusive and give voice to the voiceless. Collaborations with architects and city planners can bring about the active reimagining of the inequalities of representation in the built environment of the city. An engaged archaeology involves “looking beyond the discipline itself for ways in which archaeology can contribute to society” (Rockman and Flatman 2012: 280). Moreover, this can allow for meaningful construction of monuments that reference the past while creating spaces of discussion and engagement in which the whole public can feel welcome (Matsuda 2004; Habermas 1989). Further to this, the role of film and television cannot be overemphasized, as video content (whether broadcast or distributed on social media) is the most common way that the public receives scientific communication. Archaeologists in Southern Africa

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traditionally have not utilized such channels, but archaeologists will need to actively develop projects in coordination with video producers to create content that represents missing histories and to present it effectively to the broad public (Clark 2004: 282; Snyman 2007: 12). Finally, creative collaborations with first people’s groups (such as descendants of the Khoekhoe and the San) is key, as it will allow for these communities to be part of the knowledge creation process. It is in creating these places of representation and critiques of the past that marginalized people can feel that they are part of South Africa and that their histories matter.

7.6  Conclusion This essay has argued for a reimagining of monumentality, spaces, and places within the current dialogue of decolonization. In particular we have argued that the materiality of the past has affective possibilities. There is a phenomenological experience of cities, monuments, sites, and places. Therefore, objects can have the effect of reinforcing social hierarchies of dominant and subservient and consequently have the negative effect of not aiding in the healing process that post-colonial societies require. Archaeology can become part of the healing process through its access to diverse and multiple histories, by creating spaces that confront the past head on, confront the injustices and initiate the healing process. For this to happen, the discipline will need to operate through a self-determined mindset. The likelihood is that government and the other stakeholders we have mentioned will not raise these issues, therefore, the task is on the individual archaeologists. The case of Prestwich shows that heritage can and will be sacrificed for the sake of corporate business. Therefore, as archaeologists we need to figure out ways that protect heritage of this particular scale. In addition, archaeologists need to be more proactive in the curation and presentation of the past. Creating heritage spaces and transforming monumentality within the built environment can be the first steps in which archaeologists facilitate postcolonial healing. More academic and contract archaeologists need to be proactive in including these types of initiatives into their research proposals as well as more visible in the different councils that affect development across the city. As observed by Ndlovu, it is up to archaeologists to reshape the manner by which archaeology is practiced in South Africa (Ndlovu 2018; Merriman 2004). The call, therefore, is for archaeologists to become even more active in society by looking for ways to be part of nation building and protecting the interests of the public, because as the Prestwich case shows, the support of the public is necessary in achieving anything worthwhile.

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Mabuza, E. (2015). NPA must prosecute apartheid era crimes. The Times Live. Available at: https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-­africa/2019-­06-­03-­npa-­must-­prosecute-­apartheid-­era-­ crimes-­urges-­trc-­commissioner/. Accessed 20 Mar 2020. Malan, A., Halkett, D., Hart, T., & Schietecatte, L. (2017). Grave encounters. Archaeology of the burial grounds, Green Point, South Africa. Cape Town: ACO Associates cc. Matsuda, A. (2004). The concept of “the public” and the aims of public archaeology. Papers from the Institute of Archaeology, 15, 66–76. Merriman, N. (Ed.). (2004). Public archaeology. London: Routledge. Ndlelu, S. (2017). Liberation is a Falsehood: Fallism at the University of Cape Town. In M. Langa (Ed.), Hashtag-analysis of the #FeesMustFall movement at South African universities (pp. 58–82). Johannesburg: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. Ndlovu, N. (2018). Heritage management at a crossroads: The role of contract archaeology in South Africa. In W. Ndoro, S. Chirikure, & J. Deacon (Eds.), Managing heritage in Africa: Who cares? (pp. 80–96). New York: Routledge. Ndlovu, S. M., Malinga, M., & Bailey, M. (2019). Teaching history in schools: Captured curriculum/political pedagogy? South African Historical Journal, 71(2), 335–345. Penn, N. (1986). Pastoralists and pastoralism in the northern Cape frontier zone during the eighteenth century. Goodwin Series, 5, 62–68. Penn, N. (2005). The forgotten frontier. Columbus: Ohio University Press. Prestwich Street. (2014). Produced & directed by V.T. Lupuwana on behalf of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Available: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=2-­bheIHwGFg Ralphs, G. (2008). Green Point, globalization and the remains of the Prestwich Street dead. Archaeological Journal of the World Archaeological Congress, 4(2), 344–352. Rassool, C. (2000). The rise of heritage and the reconstitution of history in South Africa. Kronos, 26, 1–21. Robinson, N. (2018). The way history is taught in South Africa is ahistorical – and that’s a problem. The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/the-­way-­history-­is-­taught-­in-­ south-­africa-­is-­ahistorical-­and-­thats-­a-­problem-­97869. Accessed 8 May 2020. Rockman, M., & Flatman, J. (Eds.). (2012). Archaeology in society: Its relevance in the modern world. New York: Springer. Shepherd, N. (2002). The politics of archaeology in Africa. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31, 189–209. Shepherd, N. (2003). State of the discipline: Science, culture and identity in South African archaeology, 1870–2003. Journal of Southern African Studies, 29(4), 823–844. Shepherd, N. (2011). Archaeology dreaming: Postapartheid urban imaginaries and the remains of the Prestwich Street dead. In New perspectives in global public archaeology (pp. 155–166). New York: Springer. Shepherd, N. (2013). Ruin memory: A hauntology of Cape Town. In A. G. Ruibal (Ed.), Reclaiming archaeology: Beyond the tropes of modernity (pp. 233–243). London: Routledge. Shepherd, N. (2019). Archaeology in the shadow of apartheid: Race, science and prehistory. South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series, 12, 13–21. Smith, T. (2003). Bones that stick in the throat of development. Cape Argus, November 5, p. 14. Snyman, A. (2007). Producing documentaries: A practical guide. Pretoria: Van Schaik. Stevens, Q., Franck, K. A., & Fazakerley, R. (2012). Counter-monuments: The anti-monumental and the dialogic. The Journal of Architecture, 17(6), 951–972. Stoler, A. L. (2013). Imperial debris: On ruins and ruination. Durham: Duke University Press. Weeder, M. (2006). The palaces of memory: A reconstruction of District One, Cape Town, before and after the Group Areas Act. Master’s thesis submitted to University of the Western Cape.

Chapter 8

Multicultural Burial Spaces and Cities: Constructing Identity and Memory with Postcolonial Kuala Lumpur Chinese Cemeteries Yat Ming Loo

Abstract  This chapter examines the historical Kuala Lumpur Chinese Cemeteries founded in 1895, consisting of the burial sites of many prominent Chinese pioneers of the city. In the 1990s, these Chinese Cemeteries, which are part of the Malaysian Chinese community and cultural heritage, faced eviction for urban development. Situated in the studies of postcolonial cities, this chapter engages with local and specific material practices and politics of postcolonial spaces. The discussion aims to reinterpret Kuala Lumpur by providing a view from the bottom-up through grass-­ roots action and to contribute to a conception of the multicultural city by inclusion of decolonization and ethnic minority spaces. Hence, the chapter focuses on how the Chinese community has appropriated the KL Chinese Cemeteries as modern multi-cultural cemeteries and as a Heritage Park, through the reconstruction of ancestral monuments and burials, in order to negotiate their own cultural memories and the state’s nationalism towards a celebration of diversity. Keyword  Postcolonial cities · Chinese cemeteries · Multicultural cities · Kuala Lumpur · Urban memories · Cultural identity

8.1  Introduction Chinese cemeteries in Malaysia offer good records and traces of colonial history as well as of Chinese history. In the postcolonial era, new urban developments in various cities have often threatened the preservation of Chinese cemeteries, which became targets for urban re-development, relocation and acquisition. This chapter Y. M. Loo (*) University of Nottingham Ningbo, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. L. Nitschke, M. Lorenzon (eds.), Postcolonialism, Heritage, and the Built Environment, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60858-3_8

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examines the historical Kuala Lumpur Chinese Cemeteries at the heart of the capital city of Malaysia. More than 60 years after independence from British colonialism in 1957, a key predicament of postcolonial nation-building in Malaysia is marked by the non-recognition and exclusion of the large Chinese ethnic minority culture from the Malay-Muslim-dominated national culture. During the peak of Malaysian nation-building urban development in the 1990s, the Kuala Lumpur (KL) Chinese Cemeteries were threatened by the risk of being evicted to give way to urban development. This was perceived by the Chinese community as a form of erasing the history of the city and as an erasure of collective national memory. Malaysia is a multiracial and multicultural country with a very diverse population, which numbered ~31 million in 2016. The Malays and several indigenous groups make up approximately 68% of the population. All Malays are Muslims by constitutional definition, and are denoted the privileged indigenous status, or “bumiputras” in Malay language. Ethnic Chinese are the second-largest ethnic group, making up 23% of the population, while Indians make up 7% of the population. In 1969, following the riots between the Chinese and Malays, the government of Malaysia implemented a policy aimed at restructuring society and alleviating poverty. Since then, the state—dominated by the Malay ruling elite—introduced race-based affirmation action favoring ethnic Malays in education, jobs, and business, which has, accordingly, further enhanced the dominance of the Malays. The site of cultural contentions is centered on the status and place of different ethnic groups and cultures in the public sphere. The promotion of the Malay culture in Malaysian cultural policy means that urban Chinese heritage and history is consciously downplayed. The KL Chinese Cemeteries are one of the best examples. This study of Kuala Lumpur’s Chinese cemeteries situates itself in the contested intellectual terrains and debates of postcolonialism in general, and (post)colonial architecture and cities in particular. It responds to a particular form of postcolonial scholarship concerned with the actual situations and political dimensions of specific postcolonial spaces (King 2003; Sidaway 2000). It is in line with Anthony King’s calls for postcolonial academic works to engage with specific material practices, actual spaces and real politics, in order to contest metanarratives by offering alternatives on the basis of a more intimate local knowledge (King 2003: 169–170). Hence, this chapter describes the on-the-ground negotiation of a minority group (in this case, the Malaysian Chinese) in contesting the national project and their subjectivity. The discussion aims to reinterpret postcolonial architecture and urban space of Kuala Lumpur by including the contestations by the Chinese ethnic minority and by providing a view from the bottom-up through grass-roots action. Therefore, the key concern of the chapter is to relate the city and its urban spaces to the process of decolonization (Loo 2016). It is about questioning, replacing, dismantling, and transgressing the previous containments and hierarchies of space, power and knowledge that divided ethnic groups. At the same time, the goal is to contribute to a conception of intercultural city by inclusion of decolonization and ethnic minority spaces in the construction of identity for cities. This approach has been lacking in the existing dominant notions of intercultural city (such as Wood and Landry 2008).

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In view of the above, the chapter focuses on the appropriation of the KL Chinese Cemeteries as modern multi-cultural cemeteries. Namely, I will explore how the Chinese community appropriated this historical cemetery into a Heritage Park in order to negotiate their own cultural identity, to contest the state’s version of nationalism and multiculturalism, and to restore the Chinese memory. I will show how the multicultural inscription of these Chinese sacred spaces provides a lens through which to examine an alternative interpretation of Malaysian national identity and postcolonial desires, and how the preservation of this historic park of KL Chinese Cemeteries has retained the landscapes of old KL and at the same time poses questions of new identities for the Chinese community. The new and old physical environment that exists in the cemeteries serves as a Chinese cultural archive and open space museum for the Chinese to unlock their history and to construct their urban memory for the future generations. By re-presenting Chinese history through the reconstruction of ancestral monuments and heritage trails, the Chinese community has turned the KL Chinese Cemeteries into a site of contestation directed against the postcolonial state’s national ideology and retranslated their subjugated position within the national culture to a celebration of diversity. I contend that the seemingly banal forms of urban spaces and architecture discussed in this chapter, which are shaped by non-professionals and community-based agencies, not only represent some of the repressed subaltern voices, but also offer a more progressive and inclusive interpretation of Kuala Lumpur and cities in Malaysia.

8.2  C  onstructing the Kuala Lumpur Chinese Cemeteries as a Heritage Park The KL Chinese Cemeteries as a collective consist of three cemeteries—Kwong Tong Cemetery, Hokkien Cemetery and Kwang Xi Cemetery—containing approximately 200,000 burials of primarily Chinese and Chinese descendants, located in the middle of the capital city (Fig. 8.1). First established in 1895 and continuing in use until today, these cemeteries carry rich historical and cultural meanings for the Chinese community. First, the cemeteries reveal the history of Kuala Lumpur, as many graves belong to the city’s pioneers; they are a testimony of the Chinese contribution to the city and nation. The Chinese cemeteries were the sites at which to remember the founding and spirit of entrepreneurship of the ancestors. Second, the cemeteries serve as a record of the history of the Chinese community and as a site to educate the people about their history and community, which include early histories of Chinese organizations and the social networks of various Chinese communities. Last, the cemeteries are sites through which one can trace the roots of ancestors and build a sense of belonging to this land (Huang 2002). At least once per year, typically during the Ching Ming festival (which falls on the 5th day of May of the Chinese lunar calendar), Chinese families visit the graveyards to pay respect to their ancestors according to traditional Confucian practice. In addition, new burial

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Fig. 8.1  View from above the KL Chinese cemeteries in relation to Chinatown and KLCC (Twin Towers). (Photograph by The Association of Kwong Tong Cemetery Management Kuala Lumpur 2007)

grounds have been opened. Feng Shui was important in determining the location, the arrangement, and the construction of the existing cemeteries. Detailed study of these cemeteries by experts of Feng Shui (Feng Shui masters) and Chinese cemeteries can reveal stories about the subaltern Chinese and other communities once involved in developing the city of Kuala Lumpur. The KL Chinese Cemeteries are thus a living museum of Chinese history. Among all the cemeteries, Kwong Tong Cemetery is the largest in area, containing more than 63,000 burials. It was opened during the colonial period in 1895 witnessing the development of the city of Kuala Lumpur and continue to be used today. It was during the British colonial administration that the land of the burial grounds was granted, although at the time, the population of the Chinese community was small. As there was no public cemetery prior to the establishment of the Kwong Tong Cemetery, the dead were buried around what are now the Merdeka stadium, Jalan Maharajalela, and Pudu Jail areas, and there was no management to maintain them. For those dead with family members, the ashes were sent back to China after the cremation, which was normally carried out 3–4 years after collecting the bones from the burial ground. For those who died in this foreign land and had no family members, the graveyards were scattered and abandoned. In view of that,

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several Chinese leaders at that time, including Yap Ah Loy, Yap Kwan Seng, Zhao Yu, Loke Yew and Yap Chee Ying, initiated the setting up of Kwong Tong Cemetery and obtained approval from the colonial office. In 1895, the colonial office allocated a 215-acre piece of land near the Old Airport Road for that purpose. And in 1920, the Kwong Tong Chinese cemetery site was expanded to 263 acres. Today, all the KL Chinesse cemeteries in total cover 439 acres consisting approximately 200,000 graves. Despite being cherished by the Chinese community as a place of cultural significance, the KL Chinese Cemeteries have at times been under threat for removal. There have been at least three major attempts by the state to relocate the KL Chinese Cemeteries, in 1994, 1998, and most significantly in 2000. On 21 June 2000, the developer Pribena Construction announced a removal plan of cemeteries and proposed a mixed development. The development proposal was condemned by the Chinese community, which led to a politically inflamed debate that quickly escalated into a major national political issue. A committee of community groups initiated by the Chinese community called the “Committee to Save and Beautify the Cemeteries” was formed to gather public support, including support of some politicians and ministers from both the ruling and opposition regime. On 19 July 2000, under the pressure of the public protest, a Cabinet Meeting reversed the decision and confirmed that all the KL Chinese Cemeteries would not be removed.1 In view of the danger of future development, the Chinese community took the initiative to preserve, transform and enhance the cemeteries into a Heritage park called KL Kwong Tong Cemetery Heritage Park (KT Heritage Park), essentially a historical open space with some heritage-themed beautification projects. Learning from a landscaping and beautification project initiated in 1998 to save the cemetery, the management of Kwong Tong Cemetery combined various new and old buildings and monuments together into this cultural and heritage park in 2007.2 It serves as an open space cultural archive. Due to the limitation of money available for the construction of this Heritage Park, the committee strategically improved the existing buildings and monuments with some cleaning and beautification work, while at the same time enhancing it by mainly landscape works (including street furniture) and a couple of new monuments such as the new tomb of Lin Lian Yu and small Chinese pavilion. In contrast to the repression of Chineseness in the urban landscape under the state’s national project, here Chineseness is expressed freely in all forms and scales. The Chinese elements were present in planning, street-names/place-names, architecture, street-furniture, inscriptions, signage, memorials and monuments, which were constructed according to the practice of Feng Shui. KT Heritage Park subdivided the burials and tombs into four main zones and named the new zones mainly according to key Chinese pioneers’ names as indicated with different color in the map, i.e. Chiew Yoke (Zone B-Pink), Kapitan Yap Ah Loy (Zone C-Green)

1  For details of the development controversies of the removal of cemeteries, please refer to Loo 2013, pp.147–152. 2  https://ktc.org.my/category/资料库/美化义山计划 (accessed on 20.Y0).

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and Kapitan Yap Kwan Seng (Zone D-Yellow), whereas Guang Yi (Zone A-Blue) is named after the Kwang Tong Cemetery itself. All the roads at the heritage park were renamed after Chinese pioneers. The memorials were used to invent a Chinese tradition by inscribing the Chinese pioneers as the pioneers for the city and the nation. The architecture and landscape of KT Heritage Park is an intriguing and unique “Chinese” world and offers an alternative to the dominant urban landscape in KL. Rarely seen in the modern urban spaces of Malaysia, KT Heritage Park features an ensemble of Chinese architecture which includes funerary architecture and various buildings supporting the function of cemetery. Some building types and prototypes are, in the first place, different from those of other building traditions and distinctively “Chinese” such as the pagoda-like buildings, pavilions, temples, entrance gates, and monuments (Figs.  8.2, 8.3, and 8.4). Most of the naming of buildings and pavilions includes Chinese cultural references to China. The street furniture is Chinese in style, such as the stone lions, Chinese gates, signage stones, and the color used throughout the cemetery, such as green, red and gold, are characteristic of traditional Chinese spaces. The most prominent building structure of all is the pagoda for the storage of ancestors’ ashes built in 1985 (Fig. 8.4). The eight-­ story pagoda is an unusual type of architecture to be built for this purpose. At the time, such a building was unimaginable in the modern urban landscape of KL, as

Fig. 8.2  Monument at the entrance to Kwong Tong Heritage Park. (Photograph by the author 2020)

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Fig. 8.3 Chinese-style Pavilion, Kwong Tong Heritage Park. (Photograph by the author 2006)

there have been almost no new pieces of public architecture to be constructed in this Chinese style. The architectural styles represented in the above are an eclectic form of “Chinese” style. In the cemeteries, these Chinese-style buildings and monuments were originally modest in scale and simple with respect to form due to the lack of funding. The Chinese architectural style employed here lacks coherence with reference to particular Chinese styles in certain periods or places. The structures reflect an eclectic style: a hybrid of Malaysian Chinese modifications with direct and indirect references to China and Chinese settlements elsewhere, for example Southeast Asian Chinese settlements. The Chinese inscriptions that appear on these monuments and tombstones are one of the most important cultural artifacts in the cemetery (Fig. 8.5). A thorough study of the Chinese inscriptions has helped to understand both the foundation and development of Kuala Lumpur as well as the history of the Chinese community. As the cemetery was related to most of the important Chinese organizations and temples through the past 100 years, the inscriptions tell the past and present stories of the Chinese community organizations; they are invaluable material culture of the history of KL. The artistic value of these Chinese inscriptions has been the subject

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Fig. 8.4 Chinese-style Pagoda, Kwong Tong Heritage Park. (Photograph by the author 2020)

of a few serious scholarly studies (Franke and Chen 1982, 1985, 1987). As most of the signage and inscriptions in the cemeteries are in Chinese, this free use of the Chinese language and script contrasts strongly with absence of Chinese writing and signage in the city, which is due to restrictions imposed by the state. The graveyards, tombs, and monuments, together with the Chinese inscriptions, built in different scales and with complexity, are Chinese records of history (Fig. 8.6). Most of them carry a memory of the Chinese motherland and bring with them Chinese cultural practices and contemporary value systems. They are also records of the everyday lives of the local peoples. The graves and tomb stones are diverse in terms of prototype and design and reflect different Chinese organizations and individuals, such as group graves for occupational trades (such as construction, commerce, laundry, hairdresser, and butcher, among others), clan associations, individuals, various Chinese organizations, and non-profit organizations.

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Fig. 8.5  Example of a tombstone with Chinese inscription, Kwong Tong Heritage Park. (Photograph by the author 2003)

Fig. 8.6  Example of an elaborate grave, Kwong Tong Heritage Park. (Photograph by the author 2006)

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8.3  Memorials and the Invention of Tradition In view of the absence of memorials erected by the State for the commemoration of Chinese leaders, the Chinese community themselves initiated the building of memorials. This was in itself an alternative interpretation of national heroes. KT Heritage Park was designed in a way to highlight some significant existing memorials and provide space for the construction of new memorials. For example, some existing burials and tombs was appropriated to construct memorials for Chinese leaders for the consumption of the Chinese community themselves. At the same time, this project posed a question about national identity. I categorize three sets of memorials important for our discussion. First, there are the “memorials for contribution” that represent past Chinese leaders as the pioneers of the nation. One of the main reasons to claim the KL Chinese Cemeteries (including Kwong Tong Cemetery) as a cultural and heritage site was that it was the place where many prominent Chinese leaders were buried. Among them are the graves for the Chinese kapitans, who were leaders of the Chinese community during the colonial period, including Yap Ah Loy, Yap Ah San, among others (Fig.  8.7). The Chinese community has traditionally viewed these Chinese figures, particularly Yap Ah Loy, as pioneers of Kuala Lumpur who were responsible for the early development and success of the city. A controversial dispute in the 1980s between the Kuala

Fig. 8.7  Grave of Yap Ah Loy (1837–1885), third Kapitan China of Kuala Lumpur, Kwong Tong Heritage Park. (Photograph by the author 2020)

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Lumpur government and the Chinese community over the founding status of Kuala Lumpur by Yap Ah Loy sparked renewed interest in the cemeteries containing graves of the Chinese kapitans.3 The second set comprises the “memorials for loyalty”, which are monuments to Chinese heroes who sacrificed their lives for the sake of Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia. In the years between 1942 and 1945, the Japanese invaded and occupied Malaya and Singapore. In this period of 3 years and 8 months, the Japanese army killed thousands of Chinese who opposed their occupation. The Chinese community collected the bodies and buried them at Hokkien Cemetery and later erected a memorial monument to commemorate them, named “The Memorial of the Overseas Chinese People” (Pan 2002) (Fig. 8.8). This memorial now stands as a historical record of the sacrifice made by the Chinese people to this land. Finally, the third set of memorials are the “memorials for identity”, which commemorate Chinese educators, heroes, and fighters for Chinese language, cultural

Fig. 8.8  The Memorial of the Overseas Chinese People, dedicated in honor of ethnic Chinese who died during the Japanese occupation of Malay during World War II, Hokkien Cemetery. (Photograph by the author 2020)

3  For details of the controversies surrounding the founding of the Kuala Lumpur and its impact to the urban landscape of Kuala Lumpur, please refer to Loo 2013, pp. 109-44.

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rights, and identity. The Chinese community perceives education and language as the root of their soul and cultural identity. Thus, one of the most important tombs and monuments in the KL Chinese Cemeteries is the tomb for the Chinese educationist and social activist Lin Lian Yu (Fig. 8.9), who is generally regarded as the most respected Chinese leader by the Chinese community of Kuala Lumpur. To many, his leadership helped to secure the foundation of Chinese education, and his resistance to the state still gives inspiration to the Chinese community in fighting for their cultural rights today. Lin died on 18 December 1985 and his body was kept inside the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall for public mourning for 3 days. During this ceremony, Lin was presented as Zhu Hun (“the soul of the nation”)—a representative of the heart and soul of the Chinese. It is the highest recognition given by the Chinese community to a Chinese individual ever in Malaysia, and is reflected in his tomb monument. This monument was constructed in a formal manner with a representation of his face carved in relief in the center of the monument. The small roof over the relief was constructed using the green tiles and a form typical of

Fig. 8.9  The grave of Chinese educationist and social activist Lin Lian Yu (1901–1985), Kwong Tong Heritage Park. (Photograph by the author 2020)

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Chinese style. In between this roof and the image of Lin are two Chinese character inscriptions are Zhu Hun.4 The landscape and buildings of KL Chinese Cemeteries are uniquely “Chinese”, but they are also more than that. They defy simple racialized categorization. Indeed, the excavation and unearthing of memories through the cemeteries has helped in uncovering the suppressed or hidden histories and cultural experiences to construct an alternative landscape and narrative of the nation. The next section investigates how the Chinese community re-presented the KL Chinese Cemeteries beyond the racial containment of merely a Chinese place.

8.4  Multicultural Inscription of Cemeteries and City In contrast to the Malay-centric view and Islamization of Kuala Lumpur’s urban landscape, which is based on the idea of a single race and culture (Loo 2013; Kua 1985), one of the most important strategies used in the preservation of the KL Chinese Cemeteries was their reframing within the larger context of multicultural cemeteries. The co-existence of cemeteries, tombs and burial grounds of different ethnicities and nationalities was used by the committee of Kwong Tong Chinese Cemetery to demonstrate that KL was in essence a multicultural city from the early days of the founding of the city. The cemeteries in the centre of KL in total consist of eight different cemeteries, which are located next to each other (Fig. 8.10 and Table 8.1). The close proximity of multicultural and multi-religious cemeteries is rare in other parts of the world. Though the Chinese burial grounds and tombs constitute the major part of this group of multi-racial cemeteries, i.e. about 96 percentage in term of area, the close proximity of multicultural cemeteries nevertheless reflects the coexistence of multi-racial community and their spaces in the formative years of this city. As Table 8.1 shows, the cemeteries have cast in stone the importance and contribution of a multicultural society to the development of the city since the end of the nineteenth century. The Chinese community works beyond the boundary of Kwong Tong Chinese Cemetery and indeed all Chinese cemeteries to creatively reframe the various burial places and cemeteries of different ethnic groups in the area into a heritage site of multicultural cemeteries broke the pattern on racial containment of existing funerary architecture and urban spaces of different ethnicities. To promote this, tours have been developed that link up the different cemeteries disseminating the history of these multi-racial cemeteries. The strategy used by the Chinese community in saving the cemeteries was carefully crafted in a non-racial tone and the notion of multiculturalism was 4  For more information about the Chinese and their struggle for cultural rights in Malaysia, see Kua 1985, 1987; for more on Lin Lian Yu and Chinese education, see Secretariat of Perak Federation of Chinese Schools Governors (ed.), “Minzhu Jiaoyu Doushi: Lin Lian Yu De Yisheng” (The Life of Lin Lian Yu: A Fighter for Community Education), (Perak Federation of Chinese Schools Governors, 1986).

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Fig. 8.10  Map of cemeteries of different ethnic and religious groups in central Kuala Lumpur: 1. Sikh Crematorium 2. Hindu Crematorium 3. Ceylon Buddhist Cemetery 4. Roman Catholic Cemetery 5. Japanese Cemetery 6. Kwang Xi Cemetery 7. Kwong Tong Cemetery 8. Hok Kien Cemetery. (Drawing by Uine Kailamäki)

emphasized. The Chinese leaders were very careful to avoid creating racial sentiment and resentment against other ethnic groups, particularly the Malays. A crosscultural and cross-religion approach was used, in which the Saving the Cemeteries Movement initiated by the Chinese community organizations and the Chinese Cemeteries Committee managed to gather support from different ethnic groups and races. The representatives of the different cemeteries were coordinated, and solidarity was shown in signing a joint memorandum of agreement to the state against the relocation of the cemeteries. The management of the cemeteries also stressed that the cemeteries are open for burial purposes for all races and not limited to the Chinese. These ethnic minority communities were encouraged to work beyond their own boundaries of ethnic consciousness, and to stress a common Malaysian identity. This movement was initiated mainly by the local and grassroots communities rather than the political parties, and has brought a different understanding of the

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Table 8.1  Group of KL cemeteries consisting of various ethnic minority burials and cemeteries Year Name built Kwong Tong Cemetery 1895 (Chinese)

Area (Acres) 261

Hok Kien Cemetery (Chinese) Kwang Xi Cemetery (Chinese) Roman Catholic Cemetery Japanese Cemetery

1895

141

1899

19

Important sites/Memorials Kwang Yi Pagoda Yap Ah Loy Cemeteries Chow Chiow Cemetery Memorial Yap Chi Yin Cemetery National Memorial of Loyalty Lin Lian Yi Kwang Yi Chinese Gate

12.5

Sculptures

T. Mori

2

W.E. Perers, Thamboo Pillay

0.8

T. Mori Cemetery Japanese Temple 2nd World War Memorial Japanese Grave Inscriptions

1.4 0.38

Crematorium Crematorium

Ceylon Buddhist Cemetery Hindu Crematorium Sikh Crematorium

1899

Historical figure(s) Yap Ah Loy Yap Kwan Seng Chow Shium

Lin Lian Yu

spatial politics and political subjectivities of different races from the bottom up. The place in making (i.e. the cemeteries and the heritage park) is therefore a communitybased civil space. One useful way of understanding the multicultural inscription of the Chinese cemeteries is to view it as a contestation of the state’s dominant Malay-centric nationalism. In terms of identity formation, Shamsul offers a useful distinction between “authority-defined” notions of ethnic identity and the actual lived experiences, cultural tendencies, and identifications of Malaysian ethnic communities (Shamsul 1998). Shamsul observed that there are two different social entities which provide two different interpretations of identity: the authority-defined identity gears towards monoculture whereas the everyday-defined identity propagates difference and multiculturalism (Xu 2004). The difference rests on two different conceptions of nationalism. On the one hand is the state’s ideology and version of nationalism, which is based on the idea of a single race, religion and nation, which is in turn based on a dominant Malay culture and Islam religion. On the other hand, the Chinese community imagined a multicultural society based on equal rights and cultural autonomy in a secular and democratic modern nation state. Within the above context, the KL Chinese Cemeteries represent an alternative symbol of multicultural Malaysian nationalism in comparison to the state’s ideology. The cemeteries act as a living cultural archive for Chinese history, and at the same time represent Malaysian history. Therefore, the Chinese-styled cemeteries environment cannot be read as an enclosed Chinese world, but a contestation of the

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state cultural hegemony. It contributes in opening-up a different interpretation of Malaysian nationalism and identity and landscape. In interpreting the KL Chinese Cemeteries as an alternative symbol of nationalism, it has three main characteristics as a site of resistance. First, whereas Chinese cultural practice and architecture were marginalized from the dominant Malay-­ centered cultural policies, Chinese funerary architecture, graves, and other built elements in the Chinese cemeteries ironically have been allowed to flourish, as they are freed from state cultural rules. In the context of the cemeteries, the Chinese are free to express their ethnic identity. Second, as the audience and users are primarily Chinese, the design and layout followed the Chinese way. The above two characteristics led the planning, design and cultural practice to construct a “Chinese world” and a Chinese-styled built environment. The third characteristic is that the cemeteries and its architecture were not intended to replace state-defined architecture. They exist outside and alongside the dominant state’s building projects. They do not challenge directly the state’s canon, but at the same time they refuse to be incorporated into the racialized state-defined nation project. The cemeteries carve out an in-between space around the two options: the state-­ defined nationality and Chinese-contained nationality. The multicultural reinscription of the cemeteries does not mean an easy integration of Chinese culture with Malaysian nationalism. Homi Bhabha cautions us that “the representation of difference must not be hastily read as the reflection of pre-given ethnic or cultural traits set in the fixed tablet of tradition” (Bhabha 2004: 2). Hence, a stereotyping and essentialization of the Chinese culture and “fixed” community can endorse the racial politics of the state. The key challenge in the spatial struggle of the KL Chinese Cemeteries, therefore, is how to engage with the national culture and at the same time preserve cultural identity. The tension is between two different desires: to integrate into the national identity, which means seeking state recognition; and to preserve one’s own cultural identity, which means to construct certain forms of Chinese culture and identity. The successful integration of these two challenges will help create a sense of belonging to the nation and resolving the anxiety of rootlessness. The sense of belonging and rootlessness are related to the notion of homeland. The question of the homeland posed a challenge to the loyalty of the Chinese to this nation and this land. Thus, the localization of Chinese culture into this land has been viewed as key to resolving that conflict. For many, to localize a (Chinese) culture, it has to, on one hand, be rooted in a long tradition of Chinese civilization; and on the other hand, it needs to build a sense of belonging to this land (Tang 2000). The contestation of KL Chinese Cemeteries also suggests that the Chinese community is now ready to come to terms with and be at peace with their Chinese past and history. This history of the immigrant society need not be concealed and erased. The identity associated in the past with China can be a part of their existing cultural identity. In other words, this new mindset and imagining on the one hand emphasizes the integration into this land; on the other hand, it stresses the preservation and expansion of the community’s ever-changing cultural identity. The identification, direction, and content of this “Chinese cultural identity” are ambivalent and fluid. This newly invented Chinese cultural characteristic was not just based on the sense

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of urgency to protect the “erosion of the cultural roots” of Chinese culture. But, this newly invented cultural root of the Chinese has the potential to achieve both aspirations: to maintain the link with the long history of Chinese civilization and at the same time to recognize its domestication of Chinese culture into the new nation of Malaysia. Both aspirations were crucial factors from which to build a sense of belonging to the nation and for the Chinese community itself. In terms of treating the KL Chinese Cemeteries as a shared place and heritage for all ethnic groups and races, there is still much room for improvement, in particular with regards to fostering an in-between space among the different cultural and ethnic groups where new identities might be imagined. For example, the notion of “third space” proposed by Homi Bhabha could be used to assess some limitations of these Chinese cemeteries. Bhabha warns us that the “third space” should be continuously hybridized and be constructed in a process of negotiation and contestation.5 Though there are efforts of architectural mappings and social activities designed to link-up the histories and cemeteries of different ethnic and cultural groups, there are arguably not enough considerations in terms of architectural design and planning to integrate these different cemeteries together creatively in order to deform or blur the boundaries of these different cemeteries and to destabilize of all spaces and forms of discrimination and domination between different minorities. The cemeteries are still physically set apart and the Chinese cemeteries are still clinging to a form of Chineseness. If KL Chinese Cemeteries aim at creating future shared memories for the city, a more creative design and interpretation of hybridized cemeteries in term of their architecture and representation is needed. Perhaps with a more detailed study about the architecture, history, and material culture of different cemeteries and their urban contexts, the perceived image of Chinese cemeteries will further evolve a much richer interpretation of KL and its cemeteries will emerge. And only then, a third space might be created.

8.5  Conclusion This chapter has examined how the Chinese community has transformed the KL Chinese Cemeteries to create a Heritage Park, and in turn made the cemeteries a site of resistance to the state’s dominant Malay-centric cultural hegemony. The KL Chinese Cemeteries became an alternative landscape for a vision of Malaysian nationalism, which yearns for a more inclusive multicultural identity. While reclaiming the past, the cemeteries also reclaim the present, and in the process, mapping new ways of knowing and living in the land (of Malaysia). It is not only that the KL Chinese Cemeteries have preserved a valuable urban landscape and memory; they are also participating in rewriting and remapping a national memory by creating a

5  For discussion of Third Space and Hybridity, see Hernandez (2010), 58–98 and Bhabha (2004), 199–244.

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shared history and shared heritage. The multicultural inscription of the KL Chinese Cemeteries resists the forgetting of Chinese history and memory from the Kuala Lumpur landscape, and, more importantly, reclaims the place of Chinese memory in the national identity. As a postcolonial space, the KL Chinese Cemeteries reveal, construct and question Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian identity and landscape yet to be. What I have suggested is that the contestation, contradiction and conflict are themselves the site of (spatial) struggle and evolution of cultural identities. Much of the research materials and spaces I have analyzed are mainly associated with the racial politics dominated by a ruling regime installed since independence in 1957. Though there are efforts and willingness of different ethnic groups in appreciating the heritage of KL Chinese cemeteries, there is room for improvement in using architecture and urban landscape to integrate the different cemeteries creatively to present them as a truly intercultural and multi-cultural cemeteries and heritage. Malaysia has seen a change in government for the first time after the independence in May 2018. Whether the new government which has proclaimed to be the truly multi-racial political entity will embrace a post-racial approach and hence further develop and protect the KL Chinese Cemeteries to create a shared and hybridized heritage and place for all races is yet to be seen.

References Bhabha, H. (2004). The location of culture. London\New York: Routledge. Franke, W. (1982–1987). In T. F. Chen (Ed.), Chinese epigraphic materials in Malaysia (Vol. 1–3). Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press. Hernandez, F. (2010). Bhabha for architects. Oxon\New York: Routledge. Huang, W. B. (Ed.). (2002). Hungui yu zhagen: Jilongbo huaren yishan yu shequ lishi zhi yanjiu (Where Souls Will Return and Roots Will Grow: A Study on Kuala Lumpur Chinese Cemeteries and Community History). Kuala Lumpur: Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies Archives, research report. King, A. (2003). Actually existing postcolonialisms: Colonial urbanism and architecture after the postcolonial turn. In R. Bishop, J. Phillips, & W. W. Yeo (Eds.), Postcolonial urbanism: Southeast Asian cities and global processes (pp. 167–183). London\New York: Routledge. Kua, K. S. (1985). National culture and democracy. Petaling Jaya: Kersani Penerbit. Kua, K. S. (1987). Polarisation in Malaysia: The root causes. Kuala Lumpur: K. Das Ink. Loo, Y. M. (2013). Architecture and urban form in Kuala Lumpur: Race and Chinese spaces in a postcolonial city. London: Ashgate Publishing (now Routledge). Loo, Y.  M. (2016). Intercultural city and minority place: The lost history of London’s first Chinatown. In Beyond the market: Building Sino-Latin American cultural relations (pp. 241–256). Auckland: University of Nottingham Ningbo China & New Zealand Centre for Latin American Studies. Pan, Q.-S. (Ed.). (2002). Qian Ren Yishan Xing (Thousand People’s Cemeteries Jogathon). Kuala Lumpur: Qian Ren Yishan Xing Working Committee. Shamsul, A. B. (1998). Debating about identity in Malaysia: A discourse analysis. In Z. Ibrahim (Ed.), Cultural contestations: Mediating identities in a changing Malaysian society. London: Asean Academic Press.

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Sidaway, J. (2000). Postcolonial geographies: An exploratory essay. Progress in Human Geography, 24(4), 591–612. Tang, A. C. (Ed.). (2000). Liu Gen Yu Yi Hen: Wenhua Guji Yu Huaren Yishan (Preserving roots or passing down regrets: Cultural heritage and Chinese cemeteries). Kuala Lumpur: Mentor Publishing. Wood, P., & Landry, C. (2008). The intercultural city: Planning for diversity advantage. London\ Sterling: Earthscan. Xu, W.  R. (2004). The study of political resistance poetics of Malaysian literature in Chinese. Singapore: Global Publishing & Southern College.

Chapter 9

Conserve the Sacred: The Profound Needs of the Indigenous Communities of Arica y Parinacota, Chile Magdalena Pereira Campos and Cristian Heinsen Planella

Abstract  Arica y Parinacota is the northernmost region of Chile, in the so-called “curve of America”, in the pacific desert (which starts south of Lima, Peru and goes until Atacama, Chile), and on the border with Peru and Bolivia. It has been a strategic point throughout history, serving as the natural corridor between the highland plateau and the coast. Even before the Inca period, the development of the “Arican Culture” during the Late Intermediate period (1100–1400 CE) unified and interconnected the three ecological levels, valleys, lowlands and highlands, that linked the hinterland to the coastal areas. These close relations and co-dependency are even more visible during the subsequent colonial periods, first Incan and then Spanish domination. Reclaiming this connection and decolonizing the architectural landscape of the region is the key aim of the Fundación Altiplano, which strives to integrate heritage preservation and cultural tourism alongside economic development. Keywords  Rural churches · Public outreach · Architectural landscape · Heritage preservation

9.1  C  olonialism and Postcolonial Renaissance: The Historical Development of the Region Within the context of the southern Andes, the territory of Arica y Parinacota is a unique cultural landscape due to its natural and cultural diversity and its strategic placement in the continent—it is the meeting point of the Pacific Ocean, the Atacama Desert and the high Andean plateau. The extreme desert climate has shaped its natural landscape, positioning the concept of mobility as a key aspect of cultural development in the region. Historically, communities have had to continually search in

M. Pereira Campos (*) · C. Heinsen Planella Fundación Altiplano, Arica, Chile © The Author(s) 2020 J. L. Nitschke, M. Lorenzon (eds.), Postcolonialism, Heritage, and the Built Environment, SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60858-3_9

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order to complement the limited available resources in their environment with those that could be obtained in the neighboring ecological regions. The territory, encompassing an area of approximately 16,800 km2, can be divided into three ecological zones that were created by the formation of the Andes Mountains in the Mesozoic period. First are the coast and lower valleys, a desert climate with waterways originating in the Andean highlands that permit the development of agriculture. Second are the foothills, with elevations of between 2000 and 3500 meters, consisting of a high desert climate, diverse biology and conditions for the cultivation of livestock and agriculture. Third is the Puna or High Plateau, with elevations of between 3600 and 4700 meters and rains between December and March. The Puna Plateau enjoys great biological diversity of native species with an abundance of pastures that have allowed for the domestication and raising of Camelid livestock, namely llamas and alpacas. In each of these regions there is extensive evidence of the close relationship between the communities and the natural world in both the past and the present, together with archaeological sites that have preserved traditional sustainable building practices, namely the use of local natural resources such as earth, local vegetation (e.g. Peruvian feather grass), and local stone (Moreno and Pereria 2011; Pereira and Maino 2012) (Fig. 9.1). The precolonial settlement history of Arica y Parinacota can be broken down in roughly five phases. The earliest is the Archaic Period (ca. 8000–1500 BCE), when groups of hunter-gatherers inhabited the High Plateau and the Foothills in search of sustenance. Along the coast, groups of fishermen formed what archaeologists refer to as the “Chinchorro culture”, whose techniques of mummification are now considered one of the heritage treasures of Chile (Arriaza et al. 2008; Sanz et al. 2015). Later, during the Formative Period (ca. 1500 BCE–500 CE), the High Plateau communities succeeded in domesticating llamas and alpacas, providing sustenance, shelter and an essential means of transport for the caravans that connected the highlands to the coast. In the Middle Period (500–1000  AD), the Tiwanaku empire, based in the southern Lake Titicaca Basin in western Bolivia, expanded to the coast, bringing with them a language and worldview that still characterizes the cultural landscape of Arica y Parinacota in the present day (Gisbert 1977: 131; Pereira and Maino 2012: 34–39). In the Late Intermediate Period, ca. 1100–1400 CE, the disintegration of Tiwanaku order was followed by the so-called Regional Developments, among them the “Arican culture”. This group occupied the three ecological regions previously mentioned and marked its caravan roots with geoglyphs in the valleys of Lluta and Azapa. In the Incan Period (until 1470  CE), the expansion of the Tawantinsuyo Empire managed to integrate the region of the vast southern Andes using the road network known as Camino Inca or Qhapac Ñan, also known as the Sacred Inca Trail (Bray 2004; Pereira and Maino 2012: 40–44; Ugalde et  al. 2017: 57–58). With the arrival of the Spanish in 1536, the Camino Inca was crucial to the development of one of the most significant chapters of the history of the Spanish Crown in South America, as it formed the basis of the camino real network and the Silver Route of Potosí (López Beltrán 2016). Trains of mules and llamas traversed the old camino real roads and pastoral paths, using the Andean villages as their posts and

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Fig. 9.1  Church of Aico, Arica y Parinacota. (Credit: Fundación Altiplano)

supply stores. Starting in 1574, Arica became the official port of embarkation for the silver trade, which constituted the principle income of the Spanish Empire between the end of the sixteenth century and the middle of the eighteenth century. The Silver Route was an economic and cultural phenomenon which greatly shaped the territory, creating new infrastructure along the Inca-trail and leading to Spanish acculturation in the region. Chilean and international scholars are still working to understand the full impact of the Silver Route on the development of the landscape and the cultural traditions of the people (Bouysse-Cassagne and Chacama 2012; Choque Mariño and Muñoz Ovalle 2016; Guzmán et al. 2014; Pereira and Maino 2012: 50). An example of how the creation of the Silver Route shaped the region can be seen in establishment in 1570 by the Viceroy Francisco de Toledo of a series of settlements within the Viceroyalty of Peru, aiming at the submission and evangelization of the indigenous communities that inhabited this territory (Fig. 9.2). This

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Fig. 9.2  Map of the Arica region with the location of the churches and the Silver Route from the Potosi mines, as indicated by an orange line. (Credit: Fundación Altiplano)

colonial intervention transformed the landscape as well as local culture, but did not entirely subvert traditional building or beliefs. The affected people constructed rural churches of adobe, rocks, and paja brava (a local type of grass) that housed the missions. This continuation of local architectural tradition allowed for the survival of central elements of the indigenous ancestral worldview, such as the relationship between natural and built environment and the offerings to the Pachamama, or Mother Earth, within the liturgical celebrations. Towards the second half of the eighteenth century, the production of silver declined and the route was diverted to the Atlantic, prompting the creation of the Viceroyalty of La Plata in 1777, which marginalized the region of Arica within the Spanish dominions in favor of Argentina and the harbor of Buenos Aires (Pereira and Maino 2012: 67; Benavides et  al. 1977). After Peru gained independence in 1821, Arica became part of the Department of Arequipa within that country. Bolivia, meanwhile, achieving its own independence in 1825, led the development of its own port at Cobija, located further south in what is now the Antofagasta region, providing its only direct access to the sea and serving as the capital of the Bolivian department of the Litoral. In 1868 a strong earthquake and tsunami left the city of Arica and the surrounding region in ruins; another earthquake and tsunami in 1877 had a further devastating effect on the region. Then, between 1879 and 1882, the War of the Pacific pit Chile against Peru and Bolivia. As the victor in the conflict, Chile annexed the Arican region, beginning a new process of colonization that affected the

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historical and cultural links of Arica and Parinacota with the southern Andes. The construction of the Arica-La Paz railway revived the Arica as a natural port for the highlands, and finally in 1929 the Treaty of Lima formally gave the ownership of Arica to Chile (Pereira and Maino 2012: 53). This new stage of colonization was visible in the new urbanization of Arica and the progressive change in the socioeconomical structure of the region with a policy of enforced assimilation between indigenous and non-indigenous elements (Gonzalez Carrasco 2016). Twenty-four years later, president Carlos Ibánez del Campo implemented a development plan designating Arica a “Free Port” (1953) and created the Advancement Board of Arica (195–1976) to increase economic and social development of the region. The Advancement Board created the “Andean Plan”, which worked to improve road connectivity and basic services in the villages towards the interior of the state. Yet the Andean communities still continued to migrate to the port of Arica in search of stable work and better education for their children. During the dictator and military regime (1973–1990), Arica lost its designation as Free Port and the region began a long period of economic depression. To reverse this situation various promotion plans were implemented, culminating in the creation of Region XV of Arica and Parinacota in 2007 (Guillén y Pereira 2017: 26–27). The creation of this new administrative district has provided the opportunity to critically think about and plan the sustainable development of the region, including heritage preservation within this new socio-economic landscape. The possibility to decolonize the built environment, while enabling the local communities to define and control the narrative, has highlighted Arica and the Andean Churches as a poignant case study for addressing the need for sustainable development, heritage preservation and cultural tourism (Guillén and Pereira 2017; Heinsen 2018; Lorenzon 2015).

9.2  The Spirit of the Territories A diverse perspective towards raw sources and natural environment is deeply linked to the indigenous perceptions of the natural landscape. Revalorization and conservation offer a possibility to connect indigenous communities, landscape, and sustainable heritage development. In Latin America one encounters many comparable and relevant cases of conservation and sustainable development: The Coffee Cultural Landscape in Colombia; Quebrada de Humahuaca in Argentina; Colca Valley in Peru; The Missions of Chiquitanía in Bolivia; and the Churches of Chiloé in Chile (Martínez 2016; Castro and Zusman 2007; Higueras 2008; Roca 2017; Sahady Villanueva et al. 2009). Each of these heritage territories and cultural landscapes, both with and without UNESCO recognition, have communities that identify with the value of the protected heritage and is integrated in endogenous development planning that in turn generates shared value and economic development from conservation. The above-mentioned examples stand as paradigms for a new, socially-focused way of valuing and managing heritage landscapes. In these paradigms, local communities focus on the conserved heritage’s value and spirit by

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relying on the ancestral knowledge of their communities, while at the same time designing solutions that address the challenges that they face in defining and leading their own sustainable development. These examples of integration between conservation and sustainable development in South America are comparable to what Fundación Altiplano (see below) is striving to achieve in the Arica region, and offer a theoretical and methodological base to improve the coordination and implementation between sustainable development and heritage. While confronted with the looming risk of disappearance or assimilation, rural, indigenous, and farming communities of Latin America can employ new adaptive strategies to face the challenge of global economic transformation, building on the preservation of their heritage and identities. This is why heritage conservation is necessary in small communities, which continue the traditions of their ancestral cultures, as well as in the most advanced centers of knowledge around the world.

9.3  A Conservation Plan for Andean Churches Since 2008, Fundación Altiplano, a non-profit entity which promotes sustainable development in rural and Andean communities, has worked in alliance with the Regional Government of Arica and Parinacota, the Bishopric of Arica, and the Andean community to develop and execute “the Restoration Plan of the Andean Churches of Arica and Parinacota, Model of Sustainable Development” (hereafter Andean Church Plan). Started in 2002 under the guidance of a farmer-missionary responding to the needs of Andean communities to preserve their ancestral churches, Fundación Altiplano gained strength and structure as a strategic initiative of the Undersecretary of Regional Development for the Ministry of the Interior (SUBDERE). SUBDERE in turn has succeeded in mobilizing investments and developing skills for heritage conservation all over Chile through the Heritage Value Program, which was created in 2008 using a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank. Between the years of 2009 and 2017, under the guidance of the Andean Church Plan, Fundación Altiplano carried out nearly fifty sustainable conservation initiatives: base studies, restoration designs, partial and full conservation of churches and heritage houses, and training workshops (Fig.  9.3). The restoration plan of the churches located in the three ecological levels (valleys, lowlands and highlands) was developed following consultations between communities and government on four main activities: architectural analysis and restoration; educational and preservation training workshop for the local indigenous communities; cultural tourism and sustainable heritage development; and public outreach activities (Lorenzon 2015: 93–94) (Fig. 9.4). Furthermore, Fundación Altiplano has implemented complementary projects and programs that seek to broaden the scope of Conservation and Sustainable Development, complementing the technical efforts of the heritage restoration with initiatives of learning, communication, and value sharing. Examples of these programs include the Responsible Tourism Circuit: Route of Missions/

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Fig. 9.3  Adobe masons restoring the roof of San Francisco church, Socoroma. (Credit: Fundación Altiplano)

Saraña; the Festival of South Andean Art: Arica Barroca; the Festival of Rural + Indigenous Film: Arica Nativa; the Codpa School of Wine; and The Workshop School on Sustainable Conservation Saraña (more on this particular initiative further below).1 In order to continue and build on the conservation and development efforts already started, Fundació Altiplano recently published Arica y Parinacota, Paisaje Cultural de América, a compendium of the implemented activities and a progressive postcolonial analysis of the built, natural, and human environment of the region. The book presents a simple model for approaching the conservation of natural and cultural resources as a sustainable development alternative for communities and territories, aligned with the purposes of heritage conservation and sustainable economic growth. This model integrates five core principles: 1. The territories are Cultural Landscapes. They are the combination of natural and cultural treasures, cared for by communities which value them, manage them, and conserve them as heritage and inheritance. There are no longer resources, there are only treasures. 2. Heritage conservation is a basic human need. The need to conserve the available resources for the coming generations is closely linked to the basic needs of

 See http://www.fundacionaltiplano.cl for more details.

1

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Fig. 9.4  Restored historical façade on the main avenue towards the church in Tacora. Most houses have been occupied by activities related to heritage tourism. (Credit: Fundación Altiplano)

subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, identity, leisure, creation and liberty. 3. Sustainable economic intervention. Heritage intervention teaches us to first discover the existing value of a treasure, by which we mean the significance that the communities or custodians give to it. In searching for a conservation solution, one must consider first the social and economic needs of the community. In Latin America, a very technical process for cultural heritage restoration has traditionally been used that does not always involve communities. Such processes might have high budgets but they have little consideration for giving work to locals. From the perspective of conscientious heritage conservation, we propose an alternative formula for developing conservation solutions: Value + Community Needs + Risk = Sustainable development initiative. 4. Responsible demand. The group or community which maintains a heritage asset can strategically take advantage of the economic demands of industries that also value those critical resources, generating a business or contract with real shared value. The relevant global economic sectors that are on the rise and that are capable of finding value in cultural territories and countries include: education research, responsible tourism, health food & biomedicine, cultural industry or creative economy, technology, waste management and renewable energy. 5. Heritage conservation as an adaptive challenge. In accordance with the model of adaptive leadership taught by professor Ronald Heifetz, the challenge of heritage conservation will not be a technical one, but instead a long and uncertain lesson

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with losses, warring factions and high risk of failure prior to overcoming the challenge of moving from the current unsustainable economy to a sustainable economy. These five principles are at the core of Fundación Altiplano’s projects.

9.4  Saraña: A Workshop School in Sustainable Conservation The conservation of heritage religious structures in the region of Arica and Parinacota, Chile, has resulted in valuable lessons for nonprofit organizations working in alliance with public and private sectors. The primary lesson relates to the purpose of conservation. The discussion of heritage conservation often seems to focus around the what (objectives) and the how (strategies, techniques), arriving at complexities which only serve academic and scientific circles. Yet the larger purpose or the why of the effort, especially with regard to the community, seems outside of the discussion. From the journey to find the answer emerges various profound needs of the community, the soul of the heritage conservation effort. Ever relevant are the themes of inhabiting the planet as a cultural or sacred landscape; de-­ colonization; conservation as a human necessity in the face of the depletion of resources; and the connection of conservation and sustainability in a common purpose, which looks to preserve the treasures of the planet for future generations (Heinsen 2018: 247–248). The lessons and knowledge gained from restoring churches and Andean towns has been organized in a simple model of unpretentious conservation and sustainable development, which proposes a new meaning and purpose for the conservation (Fig.  9.5). For example, in the Workshop School of Saraña (saraña, “walk” in aymara), housed in a vulnerable neighborhood in the city of Arica, this knowledge is shared in honor of the ancestors and for the good of those to come. Specifically, the workshop school focuses on developing restoration skills among the local and Indigenous communities in Tacora (municipality of General Lagos) for the conservation and restoration of the historical facades, which are listed as cultural heritage constructions, and developing similar architectural conservation skills in the town of Sahuara to restore the historical church and collaborate in future restoration projects. Additionally, the workshop aims are not only to ensure the preservation of the historical buildings, but to strengthen the skills of the Sahuara community in vernacular architectural conservation and develop managerial and tourists capabilities around the church of Sahuara, which is a key example of historical Baroque architecture in the Route of the Missions-Saraña (Fig. 9.6).2 The restoration of churches and Andean houses completed in Arica and Parinacota has always incorporated the community in the learning process. The design and 2   More details on the current project can be found at http://www.fundacionaltiplano.cl/ restauracion.

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Fig. 9.5  Woman trained in the restoration of the wooden statuary in the Workshop School of Saraña. (Credit: Fundación Altiplano)

management structure follow a planning of initiatives or actions that are derived from contributive objectives. The planning includes three levels of action, which are led by a professional or experienced monitor and supported by the master restorers. They guide members of the affected communities, who form an essential part of the project because of their role as guardians of affected heritage treasures: 1. Technical Level: This includes  the various and complex technical challenges which are involved in restoring adobe dwellings in Andean towns in accordance with international standards, heritage value and damages. Here, the fundamental treasure of Fundación Altiplano, its master restorers, and specialists in adobe, stonework, carpentry, are put to work on a complex project in remote and isolated conditions. 2. Learning Level: Each technical challenge should be accomplished using the general knowledge of the restoration as well as the local ancestral knowledge. This makes it necessary to create a process of re-discovery and re-valorization, which is as much personal as it is collective. In this way, the technical learning in the work is complemented with the adaptive challenges of self-knowledge, leadership, entrepreneurship and community organization. 3. Transformation Level: Of the set of dwellings that the workshop school team will restore, two will be chosen to receive sustainable development initiatives.

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Fig. 9.6  Inauguration of the church after restoration, Saraña. (Credit: Fundación Altiplano)

Selection criteria include the need or economic situation of the owners and the suitability of the houses as representatives of crafts and local architecture. An example might be a house that can produce and sell charqui or alpaca textiles, with a viable business model to generate income, according to local and national economic realities. Furthermore, a group of beneficiaries will be tasked with drafting and formalizing a municipal ordinance which protects and guards the heritage value of the dwellings and towns (Heinsen 2018: 249).

9.5  Conclusion Currently, the villages in the Chilean region of Arica y Parinacota have limited facilities such as connectivity and basic governmental services (for example, schools), and they suffer from a progressive population decline. The traditional inhabitants of the Andean towns of Arica y Parinacota have migrated to Arica, as the main economic hub, but they dream of returning to the ancestral homes if the economic and

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social opportunities arise. As members of an exceptional cultural landscape, the communities possess a great potential to develop at their base the responsible conservation and management of the valuable heritage treasures that they guard, with clear applications in health foods, responsible tourism, education, creative industry and recycling, among others. The people that have been employed in restoration and trained in distinct traditional crafts, such as adobe builder, carpenter, and stonemason, between 2009 and 2017 add up to 915 people. Thus, the initiatives managed by Fundación Altiplano have been successful in creating interest in these crafts and increasing the available jobs in activities related to restoration and heritage conservation. Such initiatives can finally generate economic development in the rural Andean zone of the extreme north of Chile and prompt an eventual repopulation that can reactivate and connect the historic link between Arica and the central south Andean region of Peru and Bolivia. The key to success is the central role of the community in the development of heritage activities. This is why, in Fundación Altiplano’s initiative to revitalize the Andean churches of Arica and Parinacota,3 the communities that care for these churches have organized the Committee of the Route of the Missions, in order to advance community management of this circuit for the sake of responsible tourism and development. Moving forward, the most important factor is that the local communities understand the need to show their openness and traditional skills at a moment when Chile and the world need to recover indigenous ways of dialogue with nature and cultural landscapes.

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