Van Dyke R.M, Alcock S.E. (ред.) Archaeologies of Memory
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The Engraved Slate Plaques of Southwest Iberia 143
plaques with higher numbers of registers, suggestive of demic diffusion. Finally, perhaps
the strongest evidence for the plaques’ use as genealogical records are the continuous
sequences of plaques by each motif in tombs and tomb groups.
Other possible explanations for the register sequences can be offered, but none of
these explanations can account for the data. For example, one might posit that the
plaques recorded land holdings or economic transactions, as with early Mesopotamian
texts. However, if this were the case, it is difficult to imagine why such plaques
do not appear on settlements, where they would have been most useful, and why
sequences in tombs and a distributional spread occur. Another hypothesis is that the
plaques were records of the age at death of the deceased individual or the number
of children they had. Again, however, the data do not seem consistent with such
hypotheses; why would tombs have continuous sequences of registers and why the
distributional spread? One, therefore, must conclude that the best explanation for the
plaques’ distribution and iconography is that they recorded lineage histories.
Re-contextualizing the Iberian Slate Plaques
If the Iberian plaques indeed functioned as genealogical mnemonics, how does our
view of Iberian prehistory, and prehistory in general, change? First, if the Iberian
plaques were heraldic, they would be the oldest known examples of objects in Europe
– if not the world – used to record genealogical information, predating medieval
European heraldry by four millennia (Brooke-Little 1978:2).The point is not to claim
that the Iberian plaques were models for medieval heraldry. Rather, this suggests that
what we have in the Iberian plaques is the fortuitous preservation of heraldic arti-
facts, which are known ethnographically to have often been made on perishables, such
as textiles and wood, or inscribed on the body, such as with tattoos (Schuster and
Carpenter 1996; Simmons 1986; Weiner and Schneider 1989). The identification of
the Iberian plaques as mnemonics also points to the possibility that other objects
in the prehistoric record were similarly used, but have not yet been interpreted as
such.
Heraldic reckoning systems have been created to satisfy particular social and polit-
ical needs, for example, to identify individuals in times of conflict or competition or
to reinforce social or economic privilege (Davis 1985:152).The socio-economic land-
scape of southwestern Iberia in the fourth and third millennia bc – particularly the
Alentejo with its valued stone resources – could well have provided the conditions
which made it necessary for some groups and individuals to distinguish themselves
in order to legitimate access to territory or to amphibolite outcrops. By the middle
of the third millennium bc, however, those needs apparently disappeared, although
the decorative motifs of the plaques persisted (were remembered and recalled?) in the
representational vocabulary of Iberians, quite probably with new meanings. Indeed,
all the motifs on the Iberian plaques are found on later, Bell-Beaker pottery in Iberia
(Harrison 1974:185).
The plaques’ form and depositional context also suggest that new interpretations
of ancient prehistoric ritual in Iberia may be offered. The plaques, which appear to
144 Katina T. Lillios
Figure 7.4a–d Register continuity by motif and tomb and tomb group: (a) checkerboard, (b)
chevron, (c) zigzag, (d) triangle
represent both axes and human beings, reflect the ambiguous status of the dead, par-
ticularly the newly dead. Like the dead, the plaques are neither entirely person nor
thing, animate nor inanimate, subject nor object. Prehistoric Iberians may have even
believed that the dead person not only became an ancestor but perhaps even stone
– amphibolite? – itself. Similar beliefs are known among aboriginal groups in western
Arnhem Land, Australia (Taçon 1991). Thus, the plaques may have aided the dead to
The Engraved Slate Plaques of Southwest Iberia 145
146 Katina T. Lillios
proceed safely in completing the cycle of regeneration, a characteristic goal of burial
rituals (Bloch and Parry 1982).
On a more practical level, the slate plaques could have helped the living identify
deceased individuals in the collective tombs in which they were placed. This would
have been especially useful in those areas where acidic soils destroyed the skeleton,
such as in the Alentejo. Perhaps the identification of individuals made a difference in
determining the location of subsequent burials or in demonstrating continuity of use.
As signifiers, the plaques may have also been viewed to help the dead identify each
other and to reconstitute their social world in the afterlife.
Perhaps most importantly, by distinguishing particular individuals at death, by
recording their histories, and by memorializing their being, the plaques also created
and enhanced social differences. Some dead could be remembered through their
plaques, while others were forgotten.These inequalities are also evidenced in a variety
of other ways in the material record of late prehistoric Iberia, such as in the vari-
ability of grave good distributions and the concentration of long-distance trade items
at some settlements (Chapman 1997; Gilman 1987).
Conclusion
Memory is an important ingredient in the constitution of power, whether this power
is based on economic control of important resources, social or political alliances, or
military might (Connerton 1989). But memories are also highly ephemeral and, thus,
vulnerable to loss. Humans regularly seek to objectify memories that are critical to
political identity (Lillios 1999; Joyce, this volume). Of course, in the process of objec-
tifying memory, and indeed in the construction of something that can be called
a “memory,” selective processes are at work. Memories are not primarily about
revisiting the past, but are about defining the present and managing the future of
individuals and groups within meaningful, yet shifting, contexts. Thus, the control of
memory and objects of memory is an important component of power. The need to
control individual and collective memory might partially explain why the plaques
were deposited in tombs with the dead – out of sight and inaccessible to acquisitive
hands.Their primary role may have been in relation to the burial rituals of subsequent
individuals. Ironically, the plaques’ vulnerability was also greatest at this time, when
tombs were reopened. It is interesting to speculate about the heightened tensions
associated with the performance of these funerary rites, as collective tombs were
reopened, the previous dead revisited and remembered, and their emblems of
identity and power made visible once again.
If memory is a basis for power, evidence of challenges or resistance to it should
also be expected. While this is difficult to detect with assurance in the case of the
plaques, we might be able to view the eccentric plaques – those plaques that with-
stand and, indeed, defy classification (figure 7.2e) – as possible evidence for the rejec-
tion of normative mnemonic behaviors. In a perhaps less provocative way, the reuse
of old plaque fragments (scavenged from tombs?) as pendants may also be evidence
The Engraved Slate Plaques of Southwest Iberia 147
for the challenging of elite memory, or at least the transformation of ancestral objects
of memory into more personal and private domains (figure 7.2f). Finally, the frag-
mentation of so many of the plaques may be partially explained by the intentional
destruction of plaques, in acts designed to wipe out the memory of individuals or
groups (Hoffman 1999).
Central to memory studies, of course, is the question of agency (Gell 1998). How
can we be certain that people were actively working to remember or to record some-
thing or were simply passively or unconsciously copying a model master or teacher?
These are not easy questions to answer, and indeed, one could argue that these two
behaviors represent two kinds of remembering – one more conscious (or declarative)
and one more embedded in the unconscious (or non-declarative) (Joyce, this volume).
However, I would argue that with creative thinking, careful observation of chaînes
opératoires, and a bit of preservational good fortune, as we have in the Iberian plaques,
some glimpse into the intentionalities and conscious remembering of individuals can
be detected.
The future of Iberian slate plaque studies – and archaeological studies of material
mnemonics in general – lies in our taking seriously the need for human groups to
remember their past and ancestry. Of course, the precise nature of these memories
and of these acts of remembrance are situated in and constrained by particular social,
political, and historical conditions (Hoskins 1998; Küchler 1988; Kwint et al. 1999;
Marshack 1991; Weiner 1992). In the Hawaiian chiefdoms, for example, the ability to
recall lineage histories was a key component in the legitimation of chiefly status and
power, and memory specialists were enlisted to keep track of chiefly genealogies.
Commoners did not have access to these specialists (Earle 1997:36).
If the Iberian plaques are ever fully “decoded,” archaeologists could justifiably
entertain the possibility of reconstructing lineage histories, marriage patterns, and
kinship structures of ancient Iberian societies. Indeed, we may be able to learn some-
thing about the fine-grained history, however constructed and however remembered,
of a prehistoric people. To paraphrase Eric Wolf, some of Europe’s own “people
without history” may some day have histories of their own.
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8
Mounds, Memory, and Contested
Mississippian History
Timothy R. Pauketat and Susan M. Alt
The National Science Foundation (SBR 99-96169), the National Geographic Society (6319-
98), the Cahokia Mounds Museum Society, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign supported the upland Mississippian research cited in this paper. We would like to
thank Ruth Van Dyke and Susan Alcock for inviting us to contribute to this volume even
though we were not participants in the original symposia.Their critical comments on an earlier
draft of this paper were greatly appreciated. All problems of thought or fact are our own.
The Indian tradition[s] give an acc[oun]t of those works they say ...[were]
the works of their forefathers...formerly as numerous as the Trees in the
woods . . . on the Mississippi . . . (George Rogers Clark 1928 [1778])
Overgrown earthen mounds in the wooded valleys and hilltops of eastern North
America urge us to remember the past. In the shadows of these tumuli we see the
myths, beliefs, and rituals of native people.We recognize mound-building “traditions”
in the upper Midwest, the Midsouth, and the Gulf Coast (Bense 1994; Squier and
Davis 1998; Thomas 1985[1894]). We sense deep roots to these ancient traditions,
perpetuated in the precolumbian era by the building of mounds themselves. And we
ask ourselves, what did these mounds mean? For what purposes were they used?
Typically, they are said to have signified fundamental Native American beliefs
concerning sacred and secular, past and present, and earth and sky (see Buikstra et al.
1998; Hall 1997; Knight 1989). They are thought to have embodied the fundamen-
tal cultural “structures,” or traditions, of entire ethnic groups, if not all native North
Americans (in the sense of Levi-Strauss 1967[1958]).Archaeologists often suspect that
these traditions arose owing to the social, economic, or political pressures of specific
time periods. Mounds are said to have marked territory, reinforced ideologies, and
elevated native aristocrats above commoners (see Dillehay 1990; Knight 1989;
Lindauer and Blitz 1997; Smith 1978).
However, there are severe theoretical drawbacks to these structuralist and func-
tionalist explanations. Those drawbacks stem from the weak conceptual devices that
152 Timothy R. Pauketat and Susan M. Alt
underlie the business of interpreting meanings and inferring functions. On the one
hand, merely identifying a “cultural structure” or tradition does not address the ques-
tion of how such standardized and shared knowledge would have been transmitted
uniformly across space and through time. Appeals to this kind of reasoning simply
assume that structures, traditions, or cultures are widely shared and change at a glacial
pace. On the other hand, ascribing functions to mounds relies on even weaker con-
ceptual devices. Functionalist explanations assume that society was an organic whole
such that knowing the constituent elements allows us to analyze the system without
worrying much about the history of people. Archaeologists who analyze functions in
this manner believe that mounds were constructed with an intent revealed in the
mound’s form. From this point of view, it may seem that the need to delineate the
potential complexities of mound-construction history is obviated. But was it the
mound that was the goal of the builders, or the act of construction itself? Following
Knight (1986, 1989), Pauketat (1993, 2000b) has argued that annual mound building
would have regularly integrated those who took part in the construction. If so, then
what about those social situations where the interests or beliefs of laborers who built
a mound were at odds with those of a ritual overseer? Would not the laborers’
interests or beliefs get “built-into” the tumulus somehow, perhaps even affecting its
size, shape, use-life, or construction history?
In this chapter, we argue that appeals to cultural structures or mound functions
obscure the processes whereby Native Americans constructed both mounds and
traditions. We suggest that the patterns of mound building in the Mississippi valley
and beyond necessitate a more nuanced view of how people “lived culture” at local
sites through the active and contested recollection of the past (Van Dyke and Alcock,
this volume). Those same processes of living culture or, better, “culture making” or
“tradition building” are yet ongoing today (consider Appadurai 1996;Wolf 1982:387).
Here, we juxtapose the evidence of “microscale” cultural practices (see Shennan 1993)
from the Greater Cahokia region and the “macroscale” patterns of spatial and
temporal disjunctures across the Mississippi valley. We pay particular attention to the
Coles Creek, Plum Bayou, and American Bottom (a.k.a. Greater Cahokia) cultural
regions along the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers (map 8.1; see Phillips et al. 1951;
Rolingson 1982, 1998). The point, of course, is to understand how cultural regions,
as macroscale phenomena, were continuously constructed by people through their
microscale practices (see Pauketat in press).
Our purpose is to promote an appreciation of memory in the cultural interstices
between supposed macroscale traditions and the everyday practices involved in
localized negotiations of identity, power, and meaning. Our focus is on a series
of flat-topped pyramidal mounds built over a several century span (ca. 700–1500 ad)
in the Midwest and Midsouth, rather than on the sepulcher or animal effigy mounds
of other parts of the Eastern Woodlands. We begin by outlining a commonly ac-
cepted Mississippi-valley culture history. Following this, we explore the implications
of this culture history in terms of the construction of social memory. We then turn
to consider the evidence for mound construction at Cahokia, ca. 1050 ad, and
how that may have involved contestation over meanings and memories by a diverse
group of actors. Finally, we reassess the potential importance of disjunctures in