Last week, I discussed time and how it relates to public sites, most especially churches. At churches, material memory takes the form of gravestones, architectural fabric, and the props of religious worship. To begin to think about these issues at St. Peter’s church let us consider the gravestones in the churchyard.

Figure One: Sinking Stone at St. Peter’s Church (Image: Author)

These range from the early 18th century through to the 1970s when the graveyard was officially closed (sadly no 17th century memorials survive). The reasons for constructing gravestones are numerous, in some cases they are monuments to the passing of individuals; others were created as an act of bereavement, as a part of the emotional state of surviving family and friends, and yet others are strictly symbols of power in the cities of the dead (see Mytum 1989 and Tarlow 1999). The stones themselves record the memories of the past, in this case a life that was lost.
While the graveyard, for a good number of reasons might be considered ‘dead’ or static, this is far from the case. Churchyards and graveyards are active spaces with myriad forces pushing and pulling on the landscape. Each stone’s placement within the churchyard can mean that the ground itself can literally swallow them up as their weight slowly making them disappear into the earth. This is most especially ironic for the larger more elaborate gravestones that are supposed to be an enduring testament to the individuals they memorialize. Their grand nature, and their heavy weight literally mean they can sink into the ground, being lost to the earth. Still too, stones can be knocked over, displaced, or discarded.
Furthermore stones can be thrown away as graveyards, due to space constraints, add new rows, sealing older graves. Even still, prior to the 18th century gravestones were often nothing more than wooden crosses that leave no material traces in the present (Mytum 1989) Even St. Peter’s itself has concealed some of its own material memory, as was discovered in 2008. While surveying under the current structure to locate the site’s 17th century architectural fragments it was determined that the growth of the building itself in the 18th and later 19th centuries destroyed and hid portions of the churchyard dating to the 17th century. Old tombs and grave markers have been sealed under the current building, with some being propped up later and memorialized in a small subterranean chamber under the structure’s southern wing.

Figure Two: Stones in the Southern Subterranean Chamber at St. Peter’s Church (Image: Author)
All of these aspects of gravestones, like the other fragments of material memory at churches, affects their persistence, their duration, and their ability to act as fleeting fragments of material memory.
Archaeology and social memory’s role in this process could be considered an intervention, making pieces of material memory durable, prolonging their existence. For archaeology’s part, the very act of going beneath the earth to reveal those pieces of material memory that no longer exist on the surface links in with Olivier’s notion that the past was never really gone, rather, that it lays in wait under the earth. Archaeology therefore is not only intervention but also re-discovery of the faint material memories that have been covered up through their duration.
One such example of a re-discovery took place in 2008 as a part of our work at St. Peter’s. Surveying under the church near the eastern altar, we uncovered the articulated skeleton of Governor George James Bruere, whose tenure coincided with the period of American Revolution (Fortenberry et al 2008; forthcoming). Bruere was placed just inches below the floorboards of the church’s main aisle, and yet no plaque or memorial to his life is present in the church. In effect there were no material memories of his life left visible. Archaeology then, made durable the material memory of his life by recording and studying his remains. In this case the material memory of the past that was literally embedded within the fabric of this site.
Acts of public and social memory through commemorative practices can also make fragments of material memory durable. Continuing with the case of Bruere, after researchers documented his remains, a public, 18th century-style funeral was performed by the local priest and Bruere, instead of being re-interred under the floorboards of the church, was place in a tomb in the churchyard. The current Governor of Bermuda as well as the local residents of St. George’s attended the public funeral, which was followed by a celebration of life in the churchyard. Underlining the temporary and shifting nature of material memory, Bruere was placed in an old tomb from the 18th century. This was deemed to be a suitable place because the inscription on the tomb had worn off, and the inside was revealed to be devoid of any visible signs of its inhabitants. As has been the case over many centuries in Bermuda and elsewhere, this tomb was appropriated for a new person, its material memory inscribed with a new memorial and occupant.

Figure Three: Reburial of Bruere (Image: Author)
While the focus on the material brings us away from easy abstraction both in terms of our approach to time and archaeology, for archaeologies of the recent past one of the biggest limitations, and shortcomings of the material memory approach is that it favors those materials that endure into the present. At churches like St. Peters this often results in the focus on those materials that are prominent in the landscape or those that are constructed of the most robust material, such as elite burial monuments. The use of archaeology as an intervention to offset such realities is hindered (and it should be) by the fact that churchyards should be respected except in the case of danger.
Material memory, taken to an extreme, ignores the intangible and immaterial things of the past that we know existed, because of other sources. While Olivier might argue that they do exist just not in any material form at particular places, for public sites this argument falls short when considering subaltern groups and the commemoration of their history. This is where issues of social memory and commemoration need to create material memory in order to make durable an immaterial past. Such was the case at St. Peter’s in 1989 with the commemoration of the Slave and Free black section of the churchyard. The St. George’s cricket club erected a plaque to commemorate the section of the graveyard that was used as the burying ground for persons of African descent for nearly three hundred years where no records were made of those who were laid to rest in this area. The simple gravestones that do survive are fragile, illegible, and in many cases have been cast aside, lying helplessly on the churchyard walls because careless visitors have knocked them over.

Figure Four: Damaged Stones at St. Peter’s (Image: Author)
The height of this section of the graveyard in relation to the street below and the rest of the church’s landscape means that many thousands of graves have been sealed by later internments, and yet no archival or material record survive of their lives. Acts of commemoration, like this modest plaque, are not trying to recast the past in stone; rather they are an effort to construct contemporary material that is discernable to multiple interest groups to make the material memory of the immaterial past durable for the future.
If we acknowledge that the material memory at our sites is temporary and shifting, and that it can be created, then how do we move from these abstract ideas to a practical way forward for both archaeological and public conceptualizations of time? Timelines by their very nature sever the visitor from the space of the site, instead inscribing it in a linear framework. It is crucial that the spatial and landscape aspects of these locales are highlighted. To accomplish this, we should move individual pieces of material memory off of the linear timelines and onto the landscape of the site. Archaeologists can facilitate in this cause by completing surveys and spatial analyses. At St. Peter’s in 2008 we completed a mapping project of existing gravestones in the churchyard, as well as the site’s landscape, we then digitized this information and created a 3-D map using Google’s Sketch-UP software (a free program from Google). This data was then made available for public consumption. From maps such as these we can still retain a chronological aspect of presentation by using creation dates, but at the same time, reinforce both the duration as well as the co-existence of various pieces of material memory of the site while embedding the visitor in the contemporary landscape.
For archaeologists, if we acknowledge the fleeting characteristics of material memory as well as efforts by ourselves to make certain aspects of it more durable, then we also have to acknowledge the temporary nature of representations of that material memory to the public. This means we must take into account the dynamic nature of public sites as well as the shifting and contingent nature of commemoration and the role that archaeology plays in its construction. So timelines, and any other representations of the past, are temporary gatherings of material memory that are assembled and then distributed to the public. While some aspects of these representations are made durable through practice, they are contingent on their reproduction and the durability of the material memory directly associated with them. It is this close relationship among material, representation, and durability that allows for an open-ended perspective on time at public sites. Narratives change, materials ebb and flow, surviving and disappearing. These are a part of the dynamic process of placemaking that is forever in motion, never static or fixed (Aldred 2010).
Works Cited
Aldred, Oscar. 2010. A review of ‘Archaeologies of placemaking: monuments: memories and engagement in native North America’ by Patricia Rubertone. Archaeolog, www.archaeolog.org accessed 1 March 2010.
Fortenberry, Brent. Forthcoming. “A lost Bermudian Governor: George James Bruere’s death in context. In Brent Fortenberry and Marley Brown III (eds), Bermuda Edition, Post Medieval Archaeology 45:1
Fortenberry, Brent, Richard Lowry, Travis Parno, & Sara Ayers-Rigsby, 2008. 2008 Excavations at St. Peter’s Church Bermuda. St. George’s. Bermuda National Trust. Report on file at Waterville, Hamilton, Bermuda.
Mytum, Harold. 1989. “Public health and private sentiment: the development of cemetery architecture and funerary monuments from the eighteenth century onwards”. World Archaeology 21:2, 283–297.
Tarlow, Sarah. 1999. Bereavement and commemoration: an archaeology of mortality. London, Blackwell.