Money and Metonymy: Coins and the construction of identity
in contemporary British ritual
Ceri Houlbrook, University of Manchester
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
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
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)
1p 2p 5p 10p 20p 50p £1 £20
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
70000
80000
90000
Denominations of UK coins in coin-trees
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’
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