What is a “monument”? The image evoked by a term so frequently used in archaeology depends very much on the individual reader or researcher. To a prehistorian, “monument” may instantly bring to mind impressive earthworks such as Poverty Point or megalithic stone circles such as Stonehenge. To the student of early states, the pyramids of Egypt provide a visually stunning example. For those working in the early historic period, whether in Europe or North America, the monuments in question might be simple grave markers in a church or municipal cemetery. That very diversity raises issues about the term itself. Is the concept of a monument one thing or several? Is there any overarching narrative or theory that can successfully encapsulate these different types of monument in all their forms?
Michael J. Kolb sets out to address those questions in this book, and he makes a persuasive case that a shared principle or set of principles does indeed underlie all the different kinds of monuments that we encounter in archaeology. He begins with in-depth discussion of the conceptual and theoretical background, drawing on the work of historians, architects, linguists, philosophers, and cognitive psychologists, as well as archaeologists and cultural anthropologists. Kolb emphasizes that monuments are in essence material metaphors that translate features of physical space into mental space. He discusses how monuments do so, and how they change the way we think about the world around us. The more detailed analysis that follows is separated into three components: time (how monuments commemorate but may also manipulate the past), movement (how they prescribe and channel different kinds of physical activity, how monuments track movements of the heavens), and scale (how they exceed the dimensions of ordinary everyday experience).
Each of the three themes—time, movement, and scale—is presented through the medium of widely drawn case studies. Hence, “Time” (Chapter 2) begins with death markers of various kinds (including church monuments and tombstones), then moves to Nan Madol in Micronesia (the “reef of heaven”), through early medieval churches, Egyptian pyramids, and Machu Picchu, to Stone Mountain in Virginia. Time itself is subdivided into “ancestral time” (tombstones, Nan Madol tombs), contrasted with “sacred time” (pyramids and churches) and “god time” (Machu Picchu, Stone Mountain): “ancestral time” is commemorative, “sacred time” is engaged in rituals and experiences, and “god time” evokes mythical events and the movements or actions of the gods.
“Movement” (Chapter 3) and “Scale” (Chapter 4) are approached in a similar way, with case studies ranging from Stonehenge in the third millennium BC to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant currently in operation in the New Mexico desert. Once again, there are distinctions and subdivisions: between monuments that encode movement (the National Mall in Washington, DC; the Forum Romanum), those that act as performance spaces (Gothic cathedrals, Minoan palaces), and those designed for wayfinding: in the case of Stonehenge, the relationship to the path of the rising sun, which placed the structure within the Neolithic universe.
The outcome is an intriguing narrative, not least for the details of the individual case studies themselves, which offer instructive summaries and interpretations of the sites they describe. If we are indeed to comprehend monuments as a single cultural category, a broad approach such as this is a very good place to begin. At the same time, a glance down the list of case studies may still leave us wondering what precisely and exclusively defines a monument. For instance, the entire site of Machu Picchu is here considered a monument: “a monumental space that facilitated a spiritual journey not easily obtained in Cuzco” (p. 80), as is the whole of the Roman Forum and the National Mall in Washington, DC. Yet, these places are also clearly composites or repositories of individual monuments. The themes and subthemes are cross-cutting, and in one case—the pyramids of ancient Egypt—the same monuments appear more than once. Even where that is not the case, it could easily have been so: religious processions feature at Gothic cathedrals in Chapter 2 and at Stonehenge and Karnak in Chapter 3. There is no harm in that, and it does not detract from the central argument, but it illustrates the difficulty of codifying such a wide range of monuments in pursuit of their fundamental meaning.
This is, nonetheless, a fascinating analysis, especially intriguing for the broad range of examples that it employs. The challenges are clear, and some of the case studies map more readily than others onto the key themes. But the thoughtful and considered approach offered here is to be welcomed and applauded. It draws us more closely into considering exactly why such diverse sites and structures so readily feature as monuments in the archaeological and the nonarchaeological literature.
