Money and Metonymy: Coins and the construction of identity

in contemporary British ritual

Ceri Houlbrook, University of Manchester

British Currency

The Homogeneity of Coins

British Coin-Trees

Bolton Abbey coin-tree, Yorkshire

Tarn Hows coin-tree, Cumbria

Snowdon coin-tree, Gwynedd Saint Nectan’s Glen coin-tree, Cornwall

Active coin- tree site

Inactive coin- tree site

Isle Maree, Scotland

Isle Maree, Highlands of Scotland

Queen Victoria’s visit to Isle Maree

‘The boat was pushed onshore, and we scrambled out and walked through the tangled underwood and thicket of oak, holly, beech, etc., which covers the islet, to the well, now nearly dry which is said to be celebrated for the cure of insanity. An old tree stands close to it, and into the bark of this it is the custom, from time immemorial, for everyone who goes there to insert with a hammer a copper coin, as a sort of offering to the saint...We hammered some pennies into the tree, to the branches of which there are also rags and ribbons tied.’

Queen Victoria, 17th September 1877; Duff (ed.) 1968: 332-333

Early coin- tree site

Modern coin- tree site

Sketch of a boy hammering a coin into the Ardboe coin-tree, Northern Ireland, with a rock (Simon 2000: Fig. 5)

A man hammers a coin into the Ingleton coin-tree, Yorkshire, with a rock, 2013

A woman uses a stone as a hammer at Dovedale,

Derbyshire, 2012

Collective Anonymity?

Ingleton, Yorkshire Aira Force, Cumbria

David Wolman: ‘many people see cash’s anonymity as an almost sacred virtue’ (2012: 7)

The ‘I was here’ syndrome

‘leaving something of yourself for others to see’

‘artistic graffiti’

‘a nice way of saying ‘I’ve been here’. Like graffiti, carving your name into a tree’

‘leaving your mark’

The ‘I was here’ syndrome

Susan Stewart: ‘a matter of individuation’ (1988: 165)

Abel and Buckley: ‘announcements of one’s identity, a kind of testimonial to one’s existence in a world of anonymity’ (1977: 16)

Robert Reisner: ‘“I was here” syndrome’ (1971: 70)

Portmeirion Coin-Tree Site, Gwynedd, Wales

Tarr Steps Coin-Tree Site, Somerset, England

1p 2p 5p 10p 20p 50p £1 £20

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

70000

80000

90000

Denominations of UK coins in coin-trees

Conspicuous Consumption?

Statement of ‘Otherness’?

Ingleton coin-tree, Yorkshire

Commemorative Coins

50 pence piece, 2003, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the formation of the Women's Social and Political Union

Lydford Gorge coin-tree, Devon, England

Commemorative Coins

The design of the 1998 commemorative 50 pence piece.

50 pence piece inserted into Bolton Abbey coin-tree, Yorkshire. 1998, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the National Health Service

Money and MetonymyChristopher Tilley: the ‘thing is the person and the person is the thing’ (2006: 63)

Alfred Gell: the ‘objectification of personhood’ (1998: 74)

Nicholas Thomas: a thing ‘is not immutable’ (1991: 28)

Chris Fowler: ‘all things are potentially inalienable to some degree’ (2004: 59)

Jon Mitchell: ‘in and through performance, objects of material culture become subjects’ (2006: 385)

Gell: ‘The index is…a congealed ‘trace’ of the artist’s creative performance’ (1998: 33)

Gell: An object becomes a ‘congealed residue of performance and agency in object-form’ (1998: 68)

The ‘artist’ = the depositor The ‘index’ = the coin

The Coin as ‘Souvenir’ and ‘Index’

A thing is not immutable (Thomas 1991: 28)

AlienableSecular

Little economic valueAnonymousObject

InalienableRitualised

Metaphorical valueIndividuated

Subject with agency