Monument

A monument is any structure, statue, or place that has special significance to a particular people. It may be used to commemorate an event, person, or place that is perceived as being worthy of historical preservation. Monuments can range from a simple tombstone that remembers a single person and whose value is restricted to family members to a larger statue or building such as the Washington Monument or the Statue of Liberty that is regarded as a national treasure.

In a broader sense, monuments can include any object or place that may be regarded as having special symbolic or emotional value, such as a flag from a war, pieces of clothing associated with important figures, or a national park that has been given federal protection. Objects that are regarded as worth saving are usually collected and held in museums for preservation. Similarly, in the United States, many parks under federal jurisdiction have been preserved as national monuments, such as the African Burial Ground National Monument in New York City that contains the seventeenth-century remains of several hundred freed African slaves and Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, the first site to be designated as a US national monument.

Background

The word monument comes from the Latin word monere, which means "to remind." While many monuments, such as the Arch of Constantine in Rome, were built specifically to commemorate a war victory, others were built to remember soldiers who fought and died in wars. This latter category of monuments includes such sites as the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the Yasukuni Shrine in Japan, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, DC, and the al-Shaheed Monument in Baghdad. Still other monuments were built without the intention of creating an enduring national shrine, but they have assumed great historical status over time nonetheless. Ancient landmarks such as Stonehenge in England or the Great Wall of China have become important symbols of national pride and have assumed the status of monument.

Monuments often have two roles in modern society: first, as relics of the past, and second, as reflections of contemporary perceptions about the past. In their role as commemorations of the past, monuments often assumed a prominent role of honoring significant events or people. Past cultures would seek to record a history that might endure long past themselves. How people perceive this history is a function of the present. For instance, prehistoric and neolithic graves and steles have left valuable clues about the cultures and writing systems of ancient peoples. The ancient Egyptian pyramids continue to attract great academic interest from archaeologists due to their mammoth feats of engineering. Medieval churches and war monuments have left clues about the cultural perceptions and social institutions of these more recent peoples.

In the modern era, monuments can also become points of contention, depending on what values or history they are intended to remember. The Yasukuni Shrine in Japan is one example of the conflicting historical roles that monuments may come to embody. The Yasukuni Shrine is a monument that was built in 1869 to remember Japan's war dead. More than two million people are honored within its walls. However, it also honors more than one thousand people who were declared war criminals. By the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century in the United States, many monuments long considered controversial due to the history they commemorated had become more concrete points of contention. As protests, particularly those spearheaded by activists such as the group Black Lives Matter, erupted early in 2020 that centered once more around issues such as systemic racial inequality, many activists continued to call for the removal of various monuments considered to be representative of such inequality. A large number of the monuments in question were commemorative of figures or events involved with the Confederacy; many argued they were thereby symbolic of the support of the institution of slavery and racial oppression. While some monuments were graffitied or damaged during protests, others were soon officially removed in states such as Virginia. While monuments to controversial figures such as Christopher Columbus were also targeted, some defenders maintained arguments that these symbols of American history should be preserved.

Overview

Monuments may have any number of purposes, ranging from commemorating an important event to seeking to create a unifying cultural link for the community to rally around. The American roadways are filled with curious testaments to unusual hobbies and local eccentrics that have subsequently become important fixtures of tourism that bring attention and money to the local economy. For instance, at least four separate communities claim to have the world's largest ball of twine, while the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, serves as both a tourist stop and a local community center. Such monuments may come to embody the history and values of the small towns in which they are located.

However, monuments may also represent distorted views of history and can become sources of controversy. In Almo, Idaho, a marker erected in 1938 was built to honor the Almo Massacre of 1861, in which American Indians reputedly attacked a wagon train of settlers and killed almost three hundred people. However, there are no documented recordings of this massacre until 1927, leading to skepticism about the historicity of both this event and the need to remember it. Similarly, statues of Civil War soldiers have become sources of continuing conflict between those who view the Civil War era with nostalgia and opponents who suggest such statues are relics of a dark period in American history. Likewise, the creation of the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota that initially began in the 1940s has become a source of some controversy. When completed, this monument to the Oglala Sioux chief was expected to be 563 feet tall and 641 feet long—a size greater than the height of Niagara Falls and bigger than the Pyramid at Giza. However, the initial sculptor chose a pose that featured Crazy Horse pointing with his index finger, which is not an authentic Sioux pose. The mountain used for this massive statue is also one that many American Indians consider sacred, and they opposed its demolition to create a statue.

The veneration of monuments is not a recent phenomenon, but there has been greater care taken in the modern era to preserve them. The Roman Colosseum, for instance, was damaged in an earthquake in 1349. In the ensuing decades, the amphitheatre's stone was used for construction projects around the city, further ruining the ancient monument.

In 1882, the United Kingdom established the Ancient Monuments Protection Act, which provided extra protections for fifty monuments throughout the country. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, the registry established by this act had been expanded to include more than four thousand sites ranging in age from a quarter of a million years old to twentieth-century military forts. Similarly, the United States has a list of US National Historic Sites that are protected under the Antiquities Act of 1906. Under this provision, the federal government may designate any site that falls under the government's oversight as a national monument. On a global scale, the United Nations also maintains a list of World Heritage Sites, which have been deemed to be worthy of special protection.

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