The Work of Monuments: Reflections on Spatial, Temporal and Social Orientations in Mongolia and the Maya Lowlands

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The Work of Monuments: Reections on Spatial, Temporal and SocialOrientations in Mongolia and the Maya Lowlands

Sarah E. Jackson and Joshua Wright

Cambridge Archaeological Journal / Volume 24 / Issue 01 / February 2014, pp 117 - 140DOI: 10.1017/S0959774314000018, Published online: 06 March 2014

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0959774314000018

How to cite this article:Sarah E. Jackson and Joshua Wright (2014). The Work of Monuments: Reections on Spatial, Temporal and Social Orientationsin Mongolia and the Maya Lowlands . Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 24, pp 117-140 doi:10.1017/S0959774314000018

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The Work of Monuments

Cambridge Archaeological Journal 24:1, 117–40 © 2014 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Researchdoi:10.1017/S0959774314000018 Received 1 Oct 2012; Revised 17 May 2013; Accepted 21 Jun 2013

The Work of Monuments: Reflections on Spatial, Temporal and Social Orientations

in Mongolia and the Maya Lowlands


In this article, we look at two very different contexts of monument use – Bronze Age Inner Asia and the Classic period Maya lowlands – in order to explore the function and meanings of monuments and the variety of ways in which they worked to mark and differentiate ancient landscapes. Our goal in uniting such disparate contexts is to examine how power and social organization in these settings were translated into monumental material forms, and how such materializations were experienced by those who viewed and re-interpreted the monuments. In particular, we explore how monuments acted as orientational markers within specific cultural contexts. Our discussion finds common ground between the disparate settings through several common interpretive frameworks focused on spatial, temporal and social orientational work accomplished by active, agentive monuments through their relationships with humans, which we frame as a ‘technology of the monument’. Monuments are instrumental in situating groups within these different layers, or landscapes, of lived experience, yet even while physically

fixed, allow for movement through changing meanings and ideas.

social systems that surround them. They are dynamic (in form and interpretation), polysemic and even pos-sess some measure of agency of their own. Broadly defined, a monument is an enduring structure that embodies a set of practices, and serves as an ongo-ing reminder of the events, and perhaps individuals, that surrounded its construction (Bradley 1993, 3–6). Here we will discuss standing stones, mounds and alignments that are common enough in their cultural settings to have been physically approachable, and visually accessible to many people, but that are also monumental enough to embody larger experiences and social structures.

These investigations into monuments initially were inspired by DeMarrais et al.’s (1996) article on the materialization of ideology, and how, in their physical form, ideologies of power could be moved, experi-enced, negotiated with and interacted with. DeMarrais et al.’s work conceptualizes abstract forces as translated into concrete forms (including monumental ones) (see

Monuments and monument-punctuated landscapes are found in varying forms in many cultures of the ancient as well as the modern world. In this article, we look at two very different contexts of monument use — Bronze Age Inner Asia and the Classic period Maya lowlands — in order to explore the meanings of monuments and the variety of ways in which they served to mark and differentiate ancient landscapes. Our goal in uniting such disparate contexts is to examine closely how power and social organization in these settings were translated into monumental material forms, and how such materializations were experienced by those who viewed and re-interpreted such monuments. In particular, we explore how monuments act as orientational markers for individu-als within specific cultural contexts.

Monuments are one of the most enduring mate-rializations of social organization in the archaeological record. They are striking and notably powerful objects, operating as active participants in the landscapes and

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also Moore 1996). By studying local and individual interactions that would have been the constituent and enacted parts of larger institutions, these ideas fit well within both of our regions of study — Inner Asia and Mesoamerica. In looking at monuments as striking and notable materializations within our research loci, we recognize the importance of completing this interpretive cycle by similarly transforming these materialized objects, that are encountered archaeo-logically, back into the forces, processes and meanings that inspired their creation and subsequent use. While we see monuments as markers and as embodiments of a variety of substances (ideas, ideals, affiliation, prestige, etc.), we move beyond a simple conception of information transfer (or transformation) by exploring the possibility of monuments carrying out significant work, in part through their partnerships with humans.

The work and technology of monumentsMonuments and monument-punctuated landscapes have been the subject of inquiry for some time; writ-ings in the last decade of the twentieth century, as well as the beginning of the twenty-first century, developed a holistic, interpretative and actively structured approach to monuments, their settings, and their long-term roles in place-making, the evocation of memory and re-interpretation (see, for instance, Barrett 1994; Bradley 1993; 1998; 2002; Van Dyke 2004; Edmonds 1993; Jacobson-Tepfer et al. 2010; Parker Pearson & Ramilisonina 1998; Richards 1993; Thomas 1993; Tilley 1994). As we explore the work of monuments in our two settings, we find it necessary to consider several related ideas and associated scholarship. Here, we briefly discuss important concepts of agency (includ-ing object agency), active processes of place-making, and the role of change and social memory in under-standing constructed places. These discussions set the scene for the specific case studies that follow.

We are exploring monuments as embodiments of a variety of cultural ideas, but also as entities that actively carry out some types of cultural work (orientational work, specifically). In interpreting monuments as active in their ability to accomplish work and to engage in relationships with humans, we have to touch on the issue of agency, and the extent to which the concept of ‘agency’ can be extended to non-human actors or entities, a topic of ongoing interest in the fields of anthropology and archaeology (including recent publications such as Alberti & Bray 2009; Brown & Walker 2008; Dobres & Robb 2000; Gell 1998; Jones & Boivin 2010; Knappett & Malafouris 2008a; Latour 1993).

The topic of agency is intertwined with that of personhood (e.g. Bird-David 1999; Gillespie 2001;

Hendon 2010, 149–80; Houston & Stuart 1998; Knap-pett & Malafouris 2008b). If we consider ontologies other than our own modern, Western one, we confront the possibility of a world full of ‘persons’ and knit together by accompanying relationships (e.g. Boivin 2008; Harrison-Buck 2012; Hodder 2011; Olsen 2007); in the process, our assumptions about a binary organi-zation of objects and subjects, and a separation of the social and the material, are challenged (e.g. Gell 1998; Latour 1993; 2000). Considering non-humans as actors or agents — suggesting that they are not just shadowy reflections or embodiments but also, at least at times, affective entities — offers them the opportunity to act and do work (Latour 2000; Olsen 2007), a prospect that meshes with our proposals for the roles and power of monuments.

Ultimately, issues of agency and personhood are locally defined (Alberti & Bray 2009, 340); thus, larger pronouncements about the nature or location of agency are less useful than consideration of the possibility of non-human actors in specific cultural milieux. For our purposes, we acknowledge the cultur-ally rooted possibilities of non-human actors in both of our settings, based on traditions of animism, partible personhood and reciprocal relationships with the material world (ideas discussed at relative length in scholarship on Mesoamerica: see, for instance, Brown & Emery 2008; Gillespie 2001; Harrison-Buck 2012; Hendon 2010; 2012; Houston & Stuart 1996; 1998; Hut-son 2009; Looper 2003; Stuart 1996; less work has been done to date on these topics for Inner Asia: Jacobson 1993; Price 2001). Even more interesting to us than the question of whether or not monuments exhibit agency is their habit of demanding engagement (Brown 2001). In particular, their ability to interrupt flow relates directly to the work that we argue they carry out, as they influence movement, relationships and thoughts toward particular channels, and draw humans in the landscape into passing or ongoing relationships, in the process shifting from passive objects to co-subjects with humans (Brown 2001, 4).

The work that we are attributing to monuments in our discussion is related to place-making of several types. Our interest is in considering the articulation and maintenance (as well as modification) of several cultural landscapes, specifically, ones characterized by spatial relationships, temporal relationships and expressed identities (see also Jackson 2013b). As such, our conception of place-making in this article is an active one, predicated on the concept of place as socially constructed, and as related to practice (Creswell 2004, 39; Smith 2011). This landscape is performed and enacted (Bachand et al. 2003; Moore 2005; Smith 2011, 423-4); in our case studies, we note

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how monuments both inspire place-producing prac-tices or reactions in humans (e.g. Houle 2009; Looper 2012; Smith 2006; Urcid 2011, 114–23; Wright 2012), and how monuments themselves contribute to the making of places (see, for example, Moore 1996, 17; 2004, 119; 2005, 4).

The construction of space and landscape in real time and in social contexts means that individuals, immediate interactions and active relationships come to the fore in imagining the settings in which monuments are situated and the processes in which they take part (Moore 1996; 2004; Smith 2003, 25). While our study is not primarily concerned with individuals in prehistory nor perceptional/experiential approaches (though these are productive avenues for studying place-making of the type we imagine), we are intrigued by monuments as relational, acting as partners and co-constructors with humans in processes of making places (imagine, for instance, Moore’s characterization of buildings as providing instructions on ‘how to enter and move’: 1992, 96). This relational aspect is particularly relevant for our discussions of the work that monuments do in relationship to identities. For example, because of their size and permanence, monuments become places of reference and citation (see, for instance, Bachand et al. 2003, 242; Jones 2007, 55), representing idealized ver-sions (of bodies [Bachand et al. 2003, 239; Joyce 1998], in some cases, but also of larger cultural concepts or aesthetics [Smith 2000]), with human interlocutors defining themselves through dialogue and engagement.

This process of construction of place and monu-mental orientation (as lived, social) also means that change — even instability (Creswell 2004, 39) — fig-ures in the place-making process (see, for instance, Jones 2007; Megged 2010; Moore 2005; 2010). That is, despite our emphasis on monuments carrying out orientational work, it does not mean that those land-scapes, or relationships with the monuments, are fixed or static (Jones 2007, 176). Given our emphasis on tem-poral as well as spatial planes, the processes of place-making discussed here take on special meaning as occurring over time — a ‘never-ending process’ (Urcid 2011, 122). The ongoing participation of monuments in place-making — both in a forward-looking sense of unfolding iterations, and in a backward-looking sense of remembering — is inherently marked by multiple versions (Moore 2005, 174), reinterpretation (Megged 2010, 184–5), changing degrees of legibility (Moore 1996, 120), and dynamism of both monuments them-selves and ideas or memories about them (Jones 2007). The relationships between people and monuments that we recognized above present here as a part of the co-construction of memory work (Jones 2007, 22), in which monuments do not serve as simple ‘external

storage’ for information or concepts, but rather take part in an mutual, at-times performative, process of remembering the past (Jones 2007; Joyce 2003, 105–9; Megged 2010, 149; Moore 2005, 172–3; Smith 2006, 112); Jones (with reference to Harris 1995) usefully characterizes this interpretive move as a contrast between transmission and production (2007, 164).

Treating production as a way of describing the active work carried out by monuments (both in tempo-ral planes, but also spatial and social ones, as we will discuss), we suggest that a ‘technology of the monu-ment’ structures and restructures how people and cul-tures think and interact, marking monuments as active and accomplishing particular types of work in tandem with human partners. More specifically, we explore this idea as representing the work that monuments accomplish in the differentiation of spatial, temporal and social landscapes. In this way, we move beyond a mirror-like ‘materialization’ on the part of monu-ments — the idea that DeMarrais et al.’s work initially indicated — to a material and tool-like technology that creates new things (places, relationships, ideas), and recreates old ones. This concept of monumental technology connects with two other sources in which similar terminology is used. In his work on orality and literacy, Ong (1982) argues that the technology of writing restructures consciousness, a process that may be parallel to the transformations effected by a technology of monuments. Ong suggests that meaning becomes fixed in materialized contexts (like written texts or, in our case, stone monuments), circumventing the negotiation inherent in oral communication; for our purposes, this means that the monument becomes a set interlocutor. But we will argue that interpretation and re-interpretation render monuments polysemic; indeed, Ong might label them (as he does texts) ‘con-tumacious’ (1982, 78) — reminding us of monuments’ ongoing and, at times, unpredictable, lives. Jones uses the term ‘technology’ in his more recent discussion of memory and material culture (which addresses one of the orientational axes we consider with regard to monuments) to discuss acts of memory inscribed on the landscape and/or in material forms in ways that actively involve artefacts ‘in intersubjective practices of remembrance’ (Jones 2007, 42); he emphasizes the social aspect of memory (2007, 43), as well as its adaptiveness as a process to different contexts or settings (2007, 159, 188). Our adoption of the same term — ‘technology’ — used in both of these sources reflects our interest in the extension of human action and work beyond individual (or groups of) bodies and into the material world, with monuments, in this case, partnering to act in efficacious ways in production of place, and orientation of people in landscapes.

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Thinking comparativelyBefore we broach specific examples from our two culture areas that intersect with the larger ideas dis-cussed above, we reflect for a moment on the impetus for our cross-cultural comparison, as well as what we hope this juxtaposition will reveal. Our choice to draw together two extremely different cultural contexts and natural environments arose from collegial conversa-tions about our respective research projects, and the realization that, despite many differences between the spaces in which we work, monuments and ideas of monumentality figured centrally in both contexts. We found ourselves curious about the roles monuments played, and how they impacted the landscapes on which they were located. As Smith and Peregrine have commented, ‘[a]rchaeology is inherently comparative’ (2012, 4) and, indeed, juxtaposition and evaluation lie at the heart of the fundamental archaeological enter-prise of comprehending ‘variation and change in past human societies’ (Drennan et al. 2012, 1). While many comparative approaches look specifically at particular variables that can be aligned and contrasted across diverse contexts (e.g. Ember & Ember 1995; 1998; 2001; Smith & Peregrine 2012; also seen in compara-tive studies that emphasize monuments, including Burger & Rosenswig 2012; Kolb 2012; Smith 2003), our emphasis in this article is on comparing broader outlines of multiple social processes (Smith 2012, 325)

that revolve around monuments located in several types of cultural landscapes.

Our comparisons are not intended to indicate absolute cultural universals nor particular cultural connections; rather, we hoped that an unexpected juxtaposition might cause us to understand monu-mentality and its significance in ways that differed from traditional interpretive frameworks in each of our geographical areas (Drennan et al. 2012, 2). To use Ember and Ember’s words, we do not ‘deny [the] uniqueness’ of each of our areas of study, yet we also aim to shed light on some things that are ‘generally true’ (1998, 647). More specifically, we can think of the monumental comparisons that follow as ways of explaining cultural variation, and associated human behaviour, across space and time (Ember & Ember 1998, 648, 682). We discovered intriguing parallels in the ways that monuments worked to construct multi-ple types of landscapes for the people who interacted with them, and the ways in which these monuments situated people spatially, temporally, and socially.

Settings: Mongolia and the Maya lowlands

MongoliaThe region that provides one of our two examples is located in the eastern reaches of the Eurasian steppe belt between the boreal forests of Siberia and the loess

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highlands that fringe the Yellow River drainage (Fig. 1). The modern nation of Mongolia encompasses most of this territory, along with portions of Russia, China and Kazakhstan. We will draw examples from the monumental landscapes of the lower Egiin Gol Valley in northern Mongolia (Turbat et al. 2003; Wright et al. forthcoming) and the dry steppe hills of Baga Gazaryn Chuluu in the northern Gobi Desert (Amartuvshin & Honeychurch 2010; Wright et al. 2007).

The dominant way of life in this region has long been nomadic pastoralism (Barfield 1993; Barth 1961; Khazanov 1994), a complicated mix of mobility, flexible scales, distinctive human ecology and politi-cal organization based in vast spaces (Barfield 1989; Honeychurch & Amartuvshin 2006; Sneath 2007). In this region there is little evidence of settlements or agricultural infrastructure, so the architecture of the cultural landscape is mainly memorial monumental constructions.

Three types of monumental structure are central to our discussion: stelae, monumental burials and communal spatial monuments; these forms domi-nate the monumental corpus in north and central Mongolia during the Bronze and Early Iron Age (3500–2500 bp). Because they are the enduring and obvious remains of past human activity on the steppe, monuments have been the main focus of archaeologi-cal investigation in the eastern Eurasian steppe for more than a century. Typically, they are treated as the superstructure above a burial and, when no burial is present, as an empty cenotaph or a feature looted in antiquity (Radlov 1892; Nelson 1926; Trever 1932; Okladnikov 1965; Erdélyi et al. 1967; Khudiakov 1987; Kubarev 1991; Tsybiktarov 1995; Crubézy et al. 1996; Murail et al. 2000; Fitzhugh 2009; Frohlich et al. 2009; Kovalev & Erdenebaatar 2009). This approach has led to research focused on ethnogenesis, migration, population relationships and taxonomies of grave goods. Though there are exceptions to this heav-ily mortuary-centred research tradition (Hayashi 1996; Houle 2009; Humphrey 1995; Jacobson 1993; Jacobson-Tepfer 2001; Legrand 2006), studies focused on complete monumental zones, the structuring of space and place, and the social life of monuments are relatively rare.

First, we will consider a range of carved stelae from the eastern steppe, particularly focusing on ele-gantly decorated ‘deer stones’ (Fig. 2) (Jacobson 1993; Jacobson-Tepfer 2001; Volkov & Novgorodova 1975) and the earlier tradition of roughly human-shaped hungchuluu, ‘man stones’ or ‘guard stones’, associ-ated with Bronze Age burials (Volkov 1981 [2002]) (Fig. 3). Deer stones are the most spectacular form of monumental stelae in Inner Asia, elaborately carved

and finished art objects (Jacobson 1993; Okladnikov 1990; Volkov 1981 [2002]). These standing stones are found alone, in groups, and added to complexes of other monuments. The date range of deer stones spans the late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, 3200–2700 bp (Fitz hugh 2009; Jacobson-Tepfer 2001), with the majority and oldest examples in the Altai of western Mongolia.

Second, the Bronze Age of Mongolia is chrono-logically delineated by particular types of burials that are seen as memorials to members of elite line-ages. Generally, these include stones too large to move without a wagon or many people and shallow burial pits, and have a total surface area of c. 6–40 m2 (Erdenebaatar 1992; Frohlich et al. 2009; Kovalev & Erdenebaatar 2009; Kubarev 1991; Legrand 2006;

Figure 2. The human-faced deer stone at Ushkin Uver, Mongolia. The stone shows the figure’s face and ear, with an earring, its belt with a bronze pickaxe hanging from it. The rest of the stone is enwrapped with the iconic stylized deer. Most deer stones do not have faces, but still show earrings, belts, knives or axes and deer images.(Photograph: J. Wright.)

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McKenzie 2010). The particular type of burial that most concerns us here are slab burials (Erdenebaatar 1992; 2002; Tsybiktarov 1998; Turbat et al. 2003). These are shallow stone-covered graves with rectangular fences of standing-stone slabs around them (Fig. 3). When excavated they contain fragmentary human remains; horse furniture and bones; bronze ornaments, weapons and tools; and rarely other precious objects. Slab burials are occasionally found alone, but most examples are associated with other burials and other monuments.

The third type of monument that is central to our discussion here is a form of communal monument known as khirigsuurs; these are structures built to encompass active use by living communities. Their forms are widely variable, but in essence they consist of a central mound of stones and a surrounding array of ground-level stone alignments and sub-features (Fig. 4). Elaborate examples are highly spatially organ-ized places with multiple layers and enclosures made up of spaces outlined by ground-level curbs of stones. Typically, the central mounds of these structures are

Figure 3. An example of a slab burial from Baga Gazaryn Chuluu, Mongolia. The stones have partially collapsed. The long stone at the northeast corner of the burial (visible at the upper right of the monument in this image) is a hungchuluu standing stone. (Photograph: Baga Gazaryn Chuluu Project, used with permission.)

Figure 4. Two examples of the most common forms of khirigsuurs. Both plans depict a central mound of stones, a surrounding fence of stones and several satellite features arrayed around the structures. Someone moving into the monumental space of these khirigsuurs must locate themselves inside or outside the fence, pass the satellite features and may choose to approach the monument from its ‘front’ (east and southeast in these cases) or from another direction. (Drawing: J. Wright and W. Honeychurch, inked by C. Foster.)

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around 10 m in diameter and 1 m in height, and the extent of surface spaces is c. 30 m across, though there are occasional much larger examples (Wright 2014). Khirigsuurs can be interpreted as microcosms of a view of society and the universe and reflections of the natural world of hills, cliffs and horizons that surrounds them. Groups of khirigsuurs were built for visual impact, against cliff faces, at valley mouths or confluences of valleys, factors that combine to make them strongly theatrical places (cf. Inomata & Coben 2006).

These three types of monuments are found arranged in constellations of structures that magnify the complexity of their forms and interrelationships. Within a complex of monuments there are hierarchies; some monuments are more elaborately arranged or larger than others, and still others are built at the peripheries or in the interstices of larger groups. The experience of moving through a monumental complex would have been one of reading the vocabularies of the individual monumental components (Wright 2007) and placing one’s self in the spatial frame of the active monuments through recollected experience of those or similar structures.

Maya lowlandsThe second region we consider in our monumental comparison is that of ancient Mesoamerica, and, in particular, the world of the Classic-era Maya. During the period of the Classic Maya (approximately ad 250–850) in lowland Central America, monumentality was expressed both through impressive architecture (e.g. tall temple-pyramids) and through more con-ventional ‘monuments,’ specifically, carved stone sculpture in the shape of free-standing stelae as well as a variety of carved monuments embedded in architec-ture (e.g. panels, lintels, etc.). For the purposes of the present comparison, Maya architectural monuments are not included in the scope of this study because their multi-faceted roles as both monuments and as functional architectural components complicate our focus on monuments and their meanings. Thus, in the reflections that follow, within the Maya lowlands we focus mainly on freestanding large-scale sculpture. The Maya examples discussed here are drawn from the Classic period, widely considered the high point of Maya cultural development, and from sites across the Maya lowlands, which include parts of modern-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador (Fig. 5).

During the Classic period, the Maya political landscape was organized into a series of independent city-states, each ruled by a charismatic politico-reli-gious ruler, titled a k’uhul ajaw (holy lord) (Houston

& Stuart 1996, 295; Schele & Freidel 1990, 58, 419). The use of upright stelae as an integral part of this divided landscape of central places is a hallmark of the Classic period (Stuart 1996) (Fig. 6). As with many other manifestations of Classic culture (such as architecture, orthography of hieroglyphic writing, organization of local political hierarchies, etc.), the styles and usage of stelae vary quite a bit across the Maya lowlands, providing indications of the local nature of identity in this period and the heterogene-ous character of Classic-era polities. Stuart notes that stelae vary at different sites according to local styles that governed shape and size, as well as the use of carved versus plain stelae (Stuart 1996, 149). Despite such variation, a typical monument might be described as a large upright slab featuring a com-bination of imagery and hieroglyphic text. Rather

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than showing scenes, such stelae typically depict a single individual or, sometimes, a highlighted individual flanked by a small number of smaller figures. The experience of strolling through a Maya city would have been one in which imagery, text (whether comprehensible to the viewer, or not), and large-scale stone monuments figured large in the definition of the environment, although the visual state of the stelae (e.g. if it was wrapped or covered: Stuart 1996) at times could have impacted how direct the connection between person and monument was.

The use of hieroglyphic texts, written in the complex logosyllabic writing system of the Maya (see overview in Coe & Van Stone 2001), on carved sculptures means that the communicative mediums of monuments and texts were frequently conflated, and have to be considered in tandem for this cultural context. The formal skill of textual literacy would have been limited to certain, upper-class sections of the population (Houston 1994, 35–9); however, visual interpretation of imagery as well as the monuments as

a whole would have been possible by a much broader segment of the Maya, suggesting the possibility of a variety of types of engagement with, and understand-ing of, text and image (Houston 1994). Production of the texts and monuments would also have occurred within circumscribed social spaces: archaeological evidence from sites like the rapidly abandoned site of Aguateca (Inomata et al. 2002), for instance, indicate that stone carving occurred in close proximity to the palace, likely by high-status individuals who were well-versed in the specialized knowledge of text and image. The subsequent placement of many such monuments in public spaces, however, means that they were consumed more broadly and likely with a range of interpretations, depending on the knowledge and experience of the viewer.

Previous research on Maya monuments has adopted both archaeological and art-historical approaches, that is, interpreting them from visual or aesthetic and from material/cultural perspectives (e.g. Newsome 2001; O’Neil 2012). Some scholars have emphasized the textual and iconographic information preserved on monuments, focusing on historical interpretations without a specific engage-ment with the materiality of the monument (for example, Zender 2002), while others have considered Maya monuments as significant forms in their own right (such as Stuart 1996). Monuments at Maya sites have long been recog nized as important parts of the built environment, and thus critical to be read as part of interpreting ancient sites. Nonetheless, our examination of Maya monuments is distinctive for its emphasis on the work that such monuments carry out in their relationships with human viewers and interpreters.

Our settings differ significantly in many of their important details; nonetheless, in what follows we identify three central themes that describe the roles that monuments play, and that impact both ancient and modern experiences of these features: spatial ori-entation, temporal orientation and social orientation.

Marking the landscape: spatial and geographical orientations

As we explore the various roles that monuments play in both of our research areas, we begin from a common starting point that monuments serve to mark and alter the landscape in which they stood in multiple ways. In terms of the roles that monuments uniformly play, the structuring theme for this article is that of orientation. In the sections that follow, we will discuss multiple types of orientation. We begin with the most concrete

Figure 6. Example of a Classic Maya upright stela, a commonly used monument type of that era. Stela 10, Copán. (Photograph: S. Jackson.)

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one: the work that monuments do in marking the landscape, providing spatial and geographic orienta-tion and locating people in physical space.

MongoliaIn the case of Bronze Age Mongolia, spatial orientation was a particularly powerful function for nomadic peo-ple living within landscapes of mobility made up not of defined regions, but of nodes, networks, central places, shifting resources and routes. Monuments allowed key places to be marked — and in a sense, perpetually inhabited — when their nomadic inhabitants moved on. In this way, and because of their durability, monuments provide identifiable and meaningful anchors over time within an otherwise dynamic human landscape. Examples of these ‘landscapes of communication’ can be seen on the stream terraces and bluffs of countless summer aggregation areas of modern pastoral nomads, where ancient monuments would have been a constant reminder to out-of-season visitors that many people resided there in the summer and that they should make

decisions about their own movements taking this into account.

The distribution of monumental complexes transforms inhabited spaces through their constant visible presence in those spaces. For example, for an observer, a khirigsuur line in the centre of a valley is both ‘monumental’ (large, impressive and demonstra-tive of an ability to shift stone) and ‘memorial’ (evoca-tive of the construction and use of the structures). Additionally, the observer’s choices of movement, inhabitation or herding routes are structured by the khirigsuurs, an effect that cannot have been lost on the individuals who built the structures (Fig. 7).

Finally, approaching the individual khirigsuurs themselves, their ground-level alignments spatially and socially orient anyone who can ‘read’ the direc-tions written in their layouts (Fig. 4; Wright 2007)

— where to stand, how to approach the monument, whom to stand alongside and so on. The monumen-tally literate are able both to act properly from within its space (see also Brown 2001; Moore 1992), and to

Figure 7. A portion of the Bayan Gol, a tributary of the Egiin Gol. The two views show a complex of khirigsuurs along the valley. The monuments stretch from an inhabitation area at the southern end across a choice grazing area. Any northward movements from the inhabitation areas would pass among the monuments. (Photographs: J. Wright, aerial basemap image courtesy of MonMap Engineering Services.)

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be oriented by the position of the monument among other people and within the natural world. The monuments of the steppe work to communicate dif-ferentiation in otherwise apparently undifferentiated spaces such as rich confluence valleys, key visible terraces and hill slopes or burial grounds. As a result, the nature of inhabitation on and movement across the landscape is choreographed and directed by the monuments and their builders.

Maya lowlandsThe complex landscapes of city-states and associated elaborate architecture in the Maya lowlands differ profoundly from the relatively un-peopled landscape seen in Inner Asia. The specific types of orientation necessary or relevant in these two contexts likewise differ, but also indicate some thematic similarities.

In the Maya world, monuments such as upright carved stelae served to orient individuals within immediate and historical political realms, making real both present and distant terrestrial spaces through monumental marking. This marking of the politi-cal landscape was accomplished in Maya contexts

through several types of boundary maintenance — a form of ‘interruption of flow’ (Brown 2001, 4), as discussed earlier — by making explicit the uneven and differentiated nature of space. For the literate or semi-literate elite, the use of specific polity referents in the form of emblem glyphs would have provided an immediately recognizable marker of political

Figure 8. Detail of the hieroglyphic text on Stela A from Copán, showing the use of multiple-emblem glyphs on the same monument. (From Fash 2011, 58; photograph: W. Fash.)

Figure 9. Piedras Negras Stela 12, depicting in text and image the dominance of Piedras Negras over Pomona, while also acknowledging the existence of competing polities. (Drawing: Linda Schele; © David Schele, courtesy Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., www.famsi.org.)

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bat image that would have referred to ‘home’ for them. Significantly, the recording of emblem glyphs

on stone monuments involves not only the assertion of local identity but also, at times, the acknowledge-ment of other collaborating or competing polities, widening the circle of relationships that become relevant in considering monuments as partners in construction of place. For example, Piedras Negras Stela 12 (Fig. 9), which records a victory of Piedras Negras against the neighbouring site of Pomona, clearly emphasizes the dominance of Piegras Negras over Pomona in text and image. At the same time, in recording the emblem glyphs of both polities, this monument served to legitimate competing cities and governments, and to define the spatial and political units that characterized the surrounding landscape. A similar phenomenon is apparent in the Copán stela discussed in the previous paragraph.

More widely accessible would have been stylis-tic boundary markers — that is, monumental styles that were visually distinctive to different sites and regions. Even without formal literacy, Maya people would have been able to recognize distinctions in monument shape, style of depiction or patterns of monument usage that marked the identities of particular polities. For example, monuments from the site of Cancuén exhibit a distinctive notch at the

affiliation, one that would have contrasted within the analogous glyph used by a different polity. Emblem glyphs are formulaic signs that refer to particular poli-ties, and the leadership thereof (Berlin 1958; Marcus 1976b). Their general form is ‘holy lord of [X place]’; visually, emblem glyphs appear very similar to each other, with the exception of the part of the sign that refers to the particular polity. While, as noted above, literacy was limited among the general Maya popula-tion, we should also recall that the ability to read was not a binary skill (Houston 1994), and that multiple types of visual or knowledge-based relationships were possible between people and monuments (see, for example, discussions in Moore 1996; 2004). For example, visual details of imagery and also some glyphs would have been legible to a larger section of the population; formulaic glyphs that were often used on public monuments — such as emblem glyphs

— would have been prime candidates for recogni-tion and engagement, even by those who were not able to access other details of the hieroglyphic texts. Stela A from Copán (Fig. 8), for example, uses not only Copán’s emblem glyph, but also three others, representing other important polities within Copán’s sphere; the contrast between the four glyphs is immediately evident, and viewers might have prided themselves on picking out the distinctive leaf-nosed

Figure 10. Examples of stelae from various Maya sites (left to right: Copán, Tikal, Quiriguá), showing the distinctive local styles used by different polities. (Photographs: S. Jackson.)

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top of stelae; Palenque, with its elaborate texts and imagery, nonetheless tended not to use stelae-shaped monuments at all, focusing instead on panels; sites in Yucatan are likely to exhibit apparently ‘blank’ stela (which may have been painted or stuccoed with decoration in the past). Figure 10 shows examples of monuments from several other Maya sites that even those without the ability to access the writing would have been able to associate with locally determined styles of representation. In this way, style becomes a communicative aspect of monumental presence, delineating space and corresponding affiliations. Let us emphasize that we see this work of monuments as mutually constructed. The stylistic (and thus affilia-tive) assertions of monuments are not merely a form of external storage of information, but rather a per-ceived version of the world that depends on human agents’ ability to process different version of monu-ments (e.g. see Jones 2007). The style-based work of monuments suggested here also intersects with the dynamic nature of place-making, since visual and artistic styles invite variation and can accommodate change over time in place-based identities.

In both of these geographical examples, monumental forms actively articulate a particular ‘language’ to be interpreted through interaction with their human interlocutors. The shape and style of Maya stelae can be understood as providing instructions for orient-ing oneself in physical and social space — even if one cannot read the writing on the monuments; they emphasize borders and hierarchies of spaces. The distinctively constructed locative monuments of Inner Asia work to order the space around them and inform observers how to move through and within a space and in doing so maintain and order society.

Temporal positioning: referring to past landscapes

We began with the idea of monuments marking and ordering the terrestrial landscape — providing orien-tation in a spatial plane. Another axis of orientation that is important to consider is the chronological one, in which monuments serve to materialize memory, providing a way of connecting present experience of the world with past versions and practices.

MongoliaThe enduring nature of the monuments of Mongolia, where there are few examples of older structures being erased from the landscape, makes monumen-tal constellations in this region indelible records of past practices that would have required observers to address as the social orders that gave rise to them

changed. This incorporation, integration and transfor-mation of monumental spaces happens throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages of Mongolia. For this reason, place-making is rarely the creation of something new, but instead the creation of multiple versions (Moore 2005; Jones 2007) of a place that already exists.

Elaborately carved ‘deer stones’ are one of the last elements to be added to the monumental complexes of the eastern steppe. They depict figures, perhaps individuals or perhaps idealized types or supernatural entities (Jacobson 1993; Okladnikov 1990; Volkov 1981 [2002]), represent important events that occurred at the places where they stand, or simply evoke the smoke of sacrificial fires. The deer stone tradition moved Mongolian standing stones away from individual burials, where they had been in the Bronze Age hungchuluu tradition, and firmly to the front and centre — literally, as most deer stones stand in front of arrays or khirigsuurs, or form avenues that lead up to or away from them (Jacobson 1993; Takahama & Hayashi 2003). The same elite who were memorialized by special, rich, burials may have been commemorated in standing images that depict their tools and ideology of power as well as their control of fine craft production.

These stelae, however, are not the founding structures of these monumental complexes. In many cases khirigsuurs and burials occupied the ground before the deer stones were erected (Fitzhugh 2009; Jacobson-Tepfer et al. 2010; Wright et al. forthcoming). The new monuments would have changed the experi-ence of visiting these sites. Previously, you could enter a khirigsuur group from any direction — the primary monuments being round or arranged in haphazard groups, and once inside look out from any point at the landscape around; though there were occasional linear features, they never dominated the orientation of the sites. Deer stones created a clearly oriented front to the monuments (Fitzhugh & Bayarsaikhan 2008; Jacobson-Tepfer 2001) and a major axis for any site to which they were added. Even after deer stones joined a monumental group, other arrays of ground-level fea-tures and burials remained as reminders of the older memorial orientations of the monuments. These new additions made a clear change in the orientation of a site in the landscape, but the continued presence of the older monumental forms and orientations left open the possibility of readings and uses of the monumental groups contrary to the prevailing ordering of space and the newly emerged macro-regional identities (see below) that deer stones represent (Fig. 11).

On the eastern steppe, khirigsuurs and burials had not existed in a static relationship before deer stones were added to those groups of monuments.

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Though examples of both types of monuments are found alone, changes in the way that they occur together in monumental complexes can be seen as structuring and recording the major changes that took place in Inner Asian Bronze Age society (Honeychurch & Amartuvshin 2006; Honeychurch et al. 2009). An example of new forms of monuments overtaking old ones can be seen in the ways in which slab burials join khirigsuur groups (Wright 2012). Much like the way that deer stones later altered groups of monuments, the addition of slab burials altered khirigsuur monu-ments and complexes.

The transition from khirigsuurs to slab burials is the central narrative of the monuments of the forested steppe of Mongolia. In this transition we see many of the themes which we are highlighting here, the mate-rialization of political action (DeMarrais et al. 1996), engagement and dialogue between human and non-human agents (Brown 2001; Latour 2000) and multiple versions of places being illustrated. The relationship

between slab burials and khirigsuurs changes through a chronological sequence that documents a shift in the relationship of individuals to the monuments they build and use. Slab burials are the first recognized burials of Bronze Age nomadic herders in this region. As they appear, they are at first added to complex khirigsuur groups — an already existing monumental tradition. They are found at the peripheries of the sites or wedged unevenly in between khirigsuurs. This sug-gests that these burials were a later addition to those khirigsuur sites (Fig. 12a).

The turning point of this brief narrative — and the second pattern of these sites — is found in the construction of mixed slab burial and khirigsuur sites (Fig. 12b). In these cases slab burials are integrated into the structures of khirigsuurs, taking the place of various ground-level features that would formerly be mounds or pavements of stone containing faunal deposits and defining access to the centre of the monument. All of these replacements suggest that

Figure 11. A portion of the Sandaohaizi site area, Qinghe Country, Xinjiang, China. Here an example of a deer stone (designated with an arrow), a group of burials (designated with dashed lines) and the edge of the terrace on which all the monuments stand (designated with a dotted line). The deer stone creates a clear marker orienting the group of monuments and setting the choice orientation to approach the site. (Photograph: J. Wright.)

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the actions that had previously gone into build-ing specialized satellite features gave way to the activities of burial. This represents a tremendous shift in practice from khirigsuurs, group-oriented monuments, to the memorializing of individuals. The general arrangement of these sites is also a more balanced one; both types of monuments are evenly arranged and respect the local terrain.

The final form of mixed sites are those in which slab burials dominate the monumental arrangement; although khirigsuurs may still be present, they lack elaborate ground-level features and serve mainly as foci for organized slab burial groups (Fig. 12c). If we see khirigsuurs primarily as stages for social action, in this final configuration the memorial-ized dead have replaced the living as the primary audience, and perhaps the primary actors in the monumental landscape. With the transformation of khirigsuur complexes into mortuary landscapes the relationship of the monuments to individuals and groups has been flipped completely around as dead memorialized individuals replaced active groups of people. This transformation also shifted the ways in which monuments engaged people at the sites;

the original elaborate khirigsuur groups, which had been the frameworks for complex instructions on how to move in social space, were superseded by spatially simpler foci on particular graves or on the axes between graves and khirigsuurs.

The appearance of slab burials in any one local region is a rapid one (played out at any one site over a few generations). It is likely, then, that these changes in the use and configuration of monumental constellations were within the shared memory of the communities involved in their construction and re-configuration. This is a fundamental shift in the experi-ence of individuals: as burials were incorporated into khirigsuur sites there would have been a change from cyclic time to linear, event-based time. Khirigsuur complexes, with their repetitions of forms, repeated visits, and requirements for social interaction around them would have been monuments to that repetition and those cycles of activity (cf. Bradley 1993; 1998). The addition of individuals’ graves, and memories of them, to a monument would have destroyed the ano-nymity of the structure and the cyclic permanence of the places and tied them to the fortunes of individuals and their lineages.

Figure 12. Examples of the process of slab burials being added to khirigsuur sites. a) Here at EGS 016 a single slab burial has been added to a large khirigsuur site. The burial is at the edge of the site, in sandy ground close to a stream. b) At EGS 153 two slab burials (2, 3) have been built in the open space between a khirigsuur (1) and a pavement structure to its south (4). They occupy the open area in front of the khirigsuur, breaking up its previous spatial arrangement and filling space that could have been occupied by people using the khirigsuur. c) The final phase example shows a khirigsuur at BGC 217, which now has no space and almost no features, serving only as the focus of lines of slab burials. (Aerial basemap image: MonMap Engineering Services; drawings: J. Wright, inked by C. Foster.)

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Maya lowlandsIn the Maya lowlands, monuments served to material-ize memory and mark change in several ways. Explicit statements of dates were not necessary for Classic Maya individuals to experience a materialization of memory through monuments. Relative positioning of monuments (analogous to our Inner Asian example) could evoke the passage of time and the concept of precedent, as well as a reminder of previous versions of the landscape (e.g. Moore 2005, 174). The connec-tion of monuments to a consciousness of time and an activation of tradition suggests an increased aware-ness of change with the development of monument usage in the Maya world. Such was the case for the large-scale sculptural installation of the Hieroglyphic Stairway at the site of Copán (Fash 2001, 43). The enormous and imposing hieroglyphic stairway, which tells the history of one segment of Copán’s dynasty, is punctuated with seated three-dimensional figures of the rulers of the site; post-construction, an additional stela, representing the most recent ruler, was erected in front of the stairway (Fash 2001, 142–50) (Fig. 13). Even the physical relationship of monuments serves to express change and history (as well as the important concept of lineage), both in terms of a visual percep-tion of placement, and — in a more limited sense

— through individual memories of subsequent con-struction episodes and placement of monuments. In this way, multiple iterations of Copán’s political space were simultaneously accessible. Stuart’s argument for

the role of such sculpture as stand-ins for rulers (1996, 159–60), rendering them ever-present, only serves to increase the power of such a monumental assemblage.

The monuments at Copán — and stelae arrange-ments in many other open plazas of Maya sites — thus provide a historical and chronologically grounded landscape, with the relationships among monuments as important as individual monuments themselves. The use of spatial relationships to record memories and highlight change may lack the specificity of calendri-cal dates, but does indicate an anchoring in particular charismatic leaders, suggesting a social version of the marking of time. The physical experience for human beings of moving in and among multiple monuments renders memory as an embodied, performative process (e.g. Jones 2007; Joyce 2003; Moore 2005).

In a more explicit sense, the textual passages exhibited on many public monuments provided a way of simultaneously accessing the experienced present and the recalled past. Ong has argued for the distinc-tive contextualization that results from a temporal orientation (that is, knowing one’s place within a calendrical scheme) (Ong 1982, 96–7). As was the case with many Mayan texts, public monuments almost always began with statements of dates, locating Maya individuals within the linear Long Count calendar as well as the cyclical Calendar Round. The Long Count recorded numbers of days elapsed since a mythical creation date in 3114 bc, while the Calendar Round positioned the reader within a 52-year cycle, drawing

Figure 13. Hieroglyphic stairway at Copán. Note the sculpted individuals who are part of the staircase itself, as well as the one positioned in front of the stairway. (From Fash 2011, 100; photograph: W. Fash.

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upon simultaneously circling solar and ritual cycles (summaries of the structure of the Maya calendar may be found in sources including: Coe & Van Stone 2001, 37–48; Houston 1989, 48–50; Marcus 1976a, 39–41; Rice 2008, 282–4). These temporal locations would have been most accessible to the literate, but an awareness of the historical nature of texts may also have been in the minds of casual viewers as well, given the presence of calendrical meanings in many arenas of Maya life, including in prognostication and naming practices (Tedlock 1982, 107–8).

Processes of remembering can be triggered explicitly by texts, such as those found on many Maya monuments: as noted, texts on stelae often had historical components and recorded specific dates. The interrelationship of text and image on Maya monuments means that multiple levels of interpre-tive engagement would have been possible, however. Carved stelae would have been evocative, and served as memory-joggers (as well as temporal beacons), on multiple levels — speaking to place in the landscape, iconographic associations, selective textual engage-ment — for individuals beyond the privileged few who were fluent readers of hieroglyphic texts. A key contrast here between our two study areas is the explicit use of textual statements about time, state-ments that allow an ordering of their messages into deep time and beyond the memory, and orality, of particular individuals.

The examples explored here indicate that writing transforms the durability and specificity of that mes-sage, but that the arrangement of monuments within space alone also inspires multifaceted narratives and the possibility of manipulating these narratives over time. We see that monuments become loci in the landscape that ground ways of thinking and acting through the evocation of memory and past individu-als and events. This suggests, then, that monuments cannot be read in isolation but rather must be seen as nodes within a larger system of marking that sug-gests how individuals of multiple eras moved within, and comprehended, the spaces that they inhabited.

Both types of monuments, to borrow Bradley’s phrase, ‘alter the earth’ (1993, 1). A natural landscape becomes a temporal one through the enduring materialization of individuals and groups over time. Human space is not only created in this way, but so are externalized conceptions of memory and precedent that may be read and experienced (and reinterpreted). This material stability creates a con-sciousness of past versions of the world, and makes change explicit through the possibility of simulta-neously accessing an experiential ‘now’ as well as

the invisible landscape of the past, evoked by these monuments’ ability to orient people within time.

Social contexts: orienting groups and individuals

A final type of orientation that occurs through the monuments we discuss in this article is a social orien-tation that situates both individuals and groups within certain identities, and within accompanying types of cultural knowledge.

MongoliaIn the Mongolian setting, the narratives of the addi-tion of slab burials to khirigsuur groups and the deer stones to monumental complexes are also narra-tives of the emergence of hierarchy and individual lineages as political forces — though at present we can say nothing more specific about the political structures within Bronze Age Inner Asia. Enduring monuments situated people both in physical and social space. To those for whom a monumental group was a familiar marker, as they arrived in its viewshed it engaged them (Brown 2001) not only in a physical sense, but also as a reminder of their place and past experiences; monumental groups also communicated to their viewers their responsibilities as a member of the group who built it. For others, they could see a measure of past and future inhabitants of a place and their group size and organization (Wright 2014).

Khirigsuur complexes were elaborate com-munal monuments that served to memorialize and structure group activities. Slab burials are quite the opposite; they memorialize individuals and do not provide a visible structure for interaction among the living. Khirigsuur monuments offer a plan for a social organization that is anonymous — there are few human burials within these structures, and those that are present are without elaboration (Frohlich et al. 2009) — and also group-oriented. The basic construction of the mounds and alignments out of relatively portable stones, to the divisions of space offered by surrounding alignments, and the repeti-tion of similar monuments and sub-features in larger complexes, all suggest that no particular individu-als were the focus of the monument. This makes it easy to envision them as inclusive and organizing structures for group activities at which surround-ing fences, access routes or satellite mound features could have highlighted specialists, lineages or other groups and given concrete form to the social actions of any group.

To this monumental system is added the individ-ual or small group, perhaps lineage-oriented, burial monuments such as slab burials. As the burials of

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Bronze Age lineages come to dominate monumental constellations, we can imagine that places created and anchored in time by monumental groups became places associated with the individuals buried there and their deeds, origins and futures. We can see this control of the theatrical arena of the khirigsuurs in the succession of khirigsuur and burial complex forms dis-cussed above, recognizing the dead who dominate the space around khirigsuurs as an elite stratum of society. It is in the monumental record that discontinuities and challenges of the social transformation accompa-nying the original adoption to nomadic pastoralism emerge. The confrontation was not, however, one in which the old order was overthrown, but one in which the new order joins with and eventually totally transforms that which came before. Khirigsuur sites were not slighted, but transformed to incorporate and nourish the new ideology.

Deer stones close our discussion of monumental identities because the carved deer themselves are the iconic image of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age and a representation of a syncretic iconographic horizon across the eastern Eurasian steppe. The widespread stone stelae formed their own monument groups or were added to existing ones (Jacobson-Tepfer et al. 2010). The deer designs themselves that occur on many of the stelae are almost identical in most cases, and the same imagery is found chipped out over existing older rock-art panels (Jacobson-Tepfer 2001) (Fig. 14) offering, in effect, an ‘emblem glyph’ for the people of the early Iron Age that tied together a wide region of the eastern steppe into a larger landscape of identity.

Maya lowlandsTurning to Maya contexts, the carved stone monu-ments highlight several types of privileged individu-als, and accompanying specialized knowledge. Rulers

— k’uhul ajaws, or holy lords — are featured on many of the publicly displayed stelae at Maya sites: these apical individuals embodied ultimate political and religious authority, and as mentioned earlier, stone monuments served as stand-ins for their physical beings. The many monuments that featured hiero-glyphic writing acted to separate elite individuals with the knowledge and training to read the complex passages, even while a more general understanding was available through imagery to others. These monu-ments also distinguished those with the particular skill to produce them — craftsmen who were likely elites and members of the royal court as well — an act with not only overtones of technical accomplishment, but also religious action (Inomata 2001). The signa-tures, consisting of personal names and titles which are found on many monuments, indicate that these scribes, carvers and artists claimed their work to some degree (Stuart 1989). Thus, multiple elements of the Classic-era social order were identified through the production and visual consumption of these stones.

While some stelae record primarily hieroglyphic texts, and others include representations of multiple individuals, by and large the most common and domi-nant trope depicted on stelae is a representation of the ruler of a given site. Such figures are typically scaled to the size of the monument, yielding grandiose human figures that would have towered over real-life viewers, emphasizing the importance and perpetual presence

Figure 14. The ‘syncretic deer’ (Jacobsen-Tepfer et al. 2010) emblem of the Early Iron Age with its long snout and waving antlers from the Upper Tsagaan Gol, Bayan Olgi, Mongolia. (Image © Gary Tepfer used with permission from the Mongolian Altai Inventory.)

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of an omniscient ruler, as well as providing a template of idealized bodies and — more broadly — cultural aesthetics (Bachand et al. 2003; Joyce 1998; Smith 2000). Stelae at the site of Quiriguá, for example, take this idea of imposing, physically monumental rulers to an extreme (and indicate the at-times non-literal aspect of such idealized forms), with the tallest stelae measur-ing upward of 7 m (Fig. 15), asserting a clear message about the power, visibility and scale of these leaders.

In recognizing the connections between elites, expressions of power and monuments, one can also examine how changes in local political systems or organizations were represented by monuments and monument usage. In the Maya lowlands, clear changes were afoot throughout the Classic period, and especially during the Late Classic era. The focus of the Classic period on a single charismatic politico-religious leader later gave way to a diversified political hierarchy with the emergence of a developed institu-tion of the royal court, and the increased importance of

titled courtiers who were assistants to the ruler himself (Houston & Stuart 2001; Jackson 2005; 2013a). This power-sharing, which is recorded in the hieroglyphic record through an explosion in the use of titled offices held by elites (Houston & Stuart 2001, 74–5; Jackson 2005), also involves increased ‘air time’ for elites — both textually and iconographically — during this period, changing the physical and social surfaces of the monuments, and the meaning of the hierarchy portrayed thereon (Fig. 16), as well as modifying the nature of dialogue or interaction that would have occurred between monuments (and the individuals represented) and human partners. In this way, Maya monuments become heralds of changing power struc-tures, at the level of individuals and of institutions. The agentive nature of monuments becomes delegated, in these Late Classic versions, through increasing numbers of depicted human representatives who are demanding engagement (Brown 2001), indicating not only on-the-ground political shifts but also shifts in

Figure 15. Monument 4 from Quiriguá: an extreme example of a physically imposing monument, representing a ruler of the site. (Photograph: Alfred Percival Maudslay. Quiriguá. Stela F, North Face, 1890. Brooklyn Museum Libraries. Special Collections. Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum.)

Figure 16. Randel Stela. Example of the depiction of a non-royal, non-ruling individual on a public monument, representative of increased ‘air time’ for elite individuals on monuments in the Late Classic period. (From Miller & Martin 2004, 167. Drawing: S. Martin. Courtesy of S. Martin.)

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the nature of human–monument relationships and interactions. Shifting social arrangements are com-municated and given legitimacy through their ability to ‘fit’ onto the surface of monuments, and to engage with an on going trope of monumental representation, while also representing change.

Public monuments in both of these contexts, then, become sources of power, controlled by a select few. However, such a narrative of the growth of authority is not clearly evolutionary in nature with an inexorable march from egalitarianism to hierarchy. Rather, these monumental expressions provide a stage on which dominant cultural themes, trends and even conflicts are worked out, together with their human counter-parts. The placement of monuments in shared spaces indicates their intended power in the maintenance of hierarchy, yet ultimately also invites contestation and change. The public nature of these spaces is essential for the functioning of political monuments, but far from the ‘fixing in stone’ of social and political identities, it makes possible multiple readings and experiences of these monumental messages. Thus, even as monuments in both of our cultural contexts provide social orientation, they may also serve to spawn new identities and the assertion of unofficial statuses. Fixity and polysemy are simultaneously at work, and require personal responses to monuments in order for individuals to assert their social place in a complex cultural environment.

Conclusions

In conclusion, we draw together our discussion of these two territories and unite some seemingly dif-ferent aspects of monuments in Eurasia and the Maya lowlands by exploring the deeper commonalities that we have emphasized in this article, commonalities that we hope may prove relevant to those working on monumental landscapes in other contexts, as well.

At first glance, it seems reasonable to treat Eurasian and Maya monument sites as quite separate archaeological contexts. The differences between these two settings might seem insurmountable: what com-mon ground can there be between urban and tropical city-states and the largely empty, windswept grass-land of the steppe, inhabited by nomadic collectives? Despite these clear differences, we found that the juxtaposition of these two regions revealed important similarities related to the work that monuments car-ried out in each cultural setting. In both the tropical lowlands and grassy steppe, monuments created special nodes in inhabited space. This place-making occurred in both regions through human-monument

relationships. These ‘face-to-face’ relationships between people and their constructions are the most telling parallel in our discussions; that common focus on particular encounters serves to attenuate the contrast of settings between the densely populated and seemingly blank landscapes found beyond the immediate visual reach of the monuments we study.

Another potential contrast between our two areas of study is the role of monuments as enduring, emblematic canvases — especially for records of text, though also of images. In the Maya lowlands, the writ-ing that covers the skin of a monument is a distinctive characteristic of many, though not all, monuments, and seems to have the potential to amplify their com-municative abilities. In the Eurasian setting the same is true: those monuments that carry designs upon their surface — here explicitly equated with the markings on skin (Volkov 1981 [2002]; Jacobson 1993) — are of a different class from unadorned stones. We would like to replace these dichotomies of blank versus ‘decorated’ (or literally readable) monuments, how-ever, with a continuous polysemy of symbolic literacy (cf. Houston 1994), in which an observer might ‘read’ through a variety of communicative avenues, ranging from the words on a stela, to the shapes of the glyphs, to widespread emblems, or even the shape of the stone itself. To push this idea even further, this familiar idea of ‘text on a surface’ itself can be discarded completely and the form and the setting of monument be seen as the emblematic canvas (we can think here of examples such as the hieroglyphic stairway at Copán or the countless khirigsuurs of the eastern Eurasian steppe).

We have detailed a set of circumstances in which monuments and monumental groups worked with human partners to structure experience, memory, temporality, sense of place and social standing of the groups who lived with and interacted with them, regardless of specific cultural setting. This active dialogue creates a productive tension between fixity and polysemy in both our analysis and in the past, as the solidity of stone is mobilized as an actor in events. Monuments are involved in the dynamics of a locale through their creation, modification, communication and interaction. We see these monuments acting as critical anchors for sequences of events and landscapes, but like ships’ anchors, they also allow for an amount of drift away from their original locations. It is through these active interactions, and shifting meanings, that these places and the surrounding landscapes become inhabited and multi-temporal in the fullest sense (Bakhtin 1981; Creswell 2004; Ingold 1993).

Our initial goal in this paper was to take up DeMarrais et al.’s (1996) model of materialized power and work backwards from the material to the power

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structures involved. To some degree we accomplished this, but it is the structural practice of that power — the interactions between people and their societies and their pasts that are made concrete in monumental loci — where we found the greatest cross-cultural resonance. In both of our settings, we uncovered monumental narratives of immediate political land-scapes, as well as residues of the translation (Law 2009) of the ephemeral, momentary actions of agents into the long term.

The active engagement (Brown 2001) of monu-ments in the social world can be deeply theorized, but it can also be brought down to a more mundane world of daily engagement — drawing the eye and bending the path of movement. This is why we have chosen the word ‘work’ to describe the basic effects of the monuments we have discussed. The more elaborate inscribed or temporally inter-digitated structures demand more complex passage and engagement; they do more work. Fundamentally, monuments do not build themselves. They are a technology used by humans, and the purposeful creation and structuring of their ability to work on other actors around them returns us to the basic theme of materialization that we drew from DeMarrais and colleagues: the work of monuments in providing orientation in a social world.

It is orientation in the social world that is the most important aspect of the three axes that we highlighted here; ultimately the examples of spatial and temporal orientation that we have offered are elements of the work of social orientation done by the monuments we describe. Monumental sites are small worlds, both in the sense of microcosms but also of key territories within social networks (Newman 2003). We have described a range of these intense, hot-house contexts in which the signposts of social orientation are inscribed repeatedly in the same monumental spaces. These social microcosms are populated with figures of rulers, or less personal reminders of the presence of organized groups. Individuals, both those made of stone and living ones, are positioned in time and experience the overlapping of the present space, the past remembered, and the past outside of direct memory, all at once in a special locale, a place created by events. This makes these places inherently attractive to new events, as the precedent of monuments engages the participants.

The roles we have described monuments as playing in communicating, creating, articulating and reinforcing types of spatial, chronological and social organization demonstrate their place as agents in their own rights. By suggesting this, we do not intend to imply that they acted independently, but rather, in the vein of Gell’s secondary agents (1998, 20–21; see also Robb 2005) that they carry out human inten-

tions and meanings even when their creators are not present, or are long gone. We argue that the work that monuments carry out might be usefully framed as a ‘technology of the monument’. Monuments, in our studies, can be seen as carrying out multiple tasks and roles. They extend the work of people by directing interaction, thought and experiences of the landscapes they inhabit, while also being quasi-independent monumental agents themselves, working as elements of the social landscape by providing complementary or contrasting instruction on how people should occupy temporal and social spaces in relationship to entities both present and invisible.

The technology of the monument locates people and cultures along multiple axes, and fundamentally transforms their experience of the landscape they inhabit. Understanding monuments in this way changes our perspective on past landscapes and the processes of place-making to a view in which monu-ments become shockingly dynamic and expressive

— their technological implications are based on how stones, both elaborate and plain, can mark and locate shifting maps of the chronological, spatial and social surroundings of the people who lived with them.

Acknowledgements

Our sincere thanks to three anonymous reviewers, who made thoughtful and specific suggestions that helped to strengthen this article, and especially its theoretical foundation. However, all oversights remain our own.

Sarah E. JacksonDepartment of Anthropology

University of CincinnatiP.O. Box 210380

Cincinnati, OH 45221-0380USA

Email: [email protected]

Joshua WrightDepartment of Anthropology & East Asian Studies Program

Oberlin CollegeKing Building 305

10 N. Professor StreetOberlin, OH 44074-1019

USAEmail: [email protected]

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Author biographies

Sarah Jackson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Cincinnati (PhD, Harvard University). An anthropological archaeologist, she focuses on Classic Maya culture. Research interests include: politi-cal hierarchy, identity production, materiality, and cultural responses to change. Her first book is published with the University of Oklahoma Press (2013).

Joshua Wright is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Depart-ment of Anthropology and the East Asian Studies Program at Oberlin College. His research focuses on landscape archaeology, cultural landscapes in transition, the impact of mobility, mobile pastoralism and monumental landscapes. His current research is in Mongolia, China and Greece.

The Work of Monuments: Reflections on Spatial, Temporal and Social Orientations in Mongolia and the Maya Lowlands

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