home
objects 2
imperial gifting: creating loyalty through water provision

rebecca reidel

I wanted, this time around, to focus on a larger, architectural, object in order to test the limits of how we have been using the words ‘object’ in this course and address how we can develop a model for the relationship between the terms ‘object’ and ‘monument.’ I would like to begin with a quote from an essay by Ruth B. Phillips:

A monument is a deposit of the historical possession of power. Although it exhibits the traces of the particular historical will to memory that caused its creation, the monument cannot maintain that memory in a stable form. On the one hand, the physical monument is always subject to processes of destruction, erosion, and accretion. On the other hand, the cultural construction of a painting or other object as monument is altered by evolving narratives of history and art history. The process of monument making and unmaking and the orchestration of memory and forgetting are most visible in the aftermath of major shifts in regimes of power. [1]

I chose the Roman aqueduct at Segovia, in Northern Spain as the topic of my analysis. This aqueduct was built at the end of the 1st or beginning of the 2nd century C.E. under either the Emperor Vespasian or Nerva. There is no extant inscription allowing a more accurate dating. Before jumping into a discussion of the monument itself it is useful to note a few historical points of interest. By the end of the 2nd century C.E. Spain had largely fallen under Roman provincial rule as a result of repeated military campaigns conducted by the first-century Emperors of Rome. Upon seizing the city of Segovia, soldiers were left there to keep the peace and ensure military control of the region. The indigenous population at the time, the Vacceos, were an ancient tribe who had settled in the central area of northern Spain centuries earlier.

The creation of this Roman colony was solidified, as were many other colonies of the period across Europe and North Africa, by the construction of an aqueduct that would provide a consistent source of potable water for the inhabitants of the settlement.  The aqueduct transported water from Cold Spring, situated in the nearby mountains some 17 km from the city. The technological genius of this feet of engineering is unparalleled by anything that had been built in this region of Spain prior to Roman invasion, and the water that it carried allowed for steady population growth in the region.

Nearly immediately following its construction, the aqueduct at Segovia was a monument in the sense that it was a marker of Imperial power and control in the region. Throughout the Roman period this monument would have been a signifier of Roman-ness, and after the fall of Spain to the Moors and Muslims the presence of the aqueduct would have retained its “Roman-ness” thereby aggrandizing Rome’s new conquerors.  

How can we read the aqueduct as a gift from the emperor of Rome to the local inhabitants? In an arid, mountainous climate such as that found at Segovia, water is an extremely valuable resource. Therefore any provision of water to this city would endow the provider with a great deal of power and control. The construction of a bridge that transported water to the city using the power of gravity would have almost certainly seemed magical to the local population. This structure certainly seemed magical to the city’s medieval inhabitants over 1,000 years later who recorded a legend for its construction. The legend, very briefly, involved a water carrier who sold her soul to the devil in exchange for having the water arrive directly on her doorstep. Her soul was saved at the last moment and the townsfolk purified the devil’s bridge with holy water.

Additionally, this infrastructural provision would, after a generation, have become a necessity, and thus created a dependant population. This creation of dependency can also be discussed within the context of gift and response. The emperor gifted the aqueduct to the inhabitants of the conquered town and in exchange he demanded their loyalty, citizenship, servitude (in some cases) and (in others) enlistment in the military themselves. In thinking of Althusser’s “Ideological State Apparatuses” the reproduction of the relations of production (i.e. subsistence living) for the inhabitants of Segovia was forever altered by the construction of the aqueduct by the ‘ruling class’ (the Roman Empire). The Empire was able to incorporate and hold this distant territory for over two hundred years not through the repressive power of their military presence there (which lasted only a short time), but more by creating an infrastructure that would demand and reinforce loyalty to the state.

The aqueduct is still the city's most important architectural landmark. It had been kept functioning throughout the centuries and preserved in excellent condition. The first reconstruction of the aqueduct took place during the reign of the King Ferdinand and Queen Isabelle. Later, in the 16th Century, the central niches were restored and statues of the Virgin and St. Stephen were placed in them. The aqueduct provided water to Segovia, mainly to the Segovia Alcázar, until very recently. During the 20th Century, the aqueduct suffered wear and tear due to pollution from heaters and automobiles. Restoration projects have been ongoing since 1997 in order to guarantee the aqueduct's survival. Tourists flock to Segovia to see and photograph the aqueduct, making it one of the major sources of revenue for the city of Segovia today.

Most interestingly, for the purposes of our discussion today, is the fact that despite the passage of nearly 2,000 years, and the rise and fall of countless forms of rulership, the Roman aqueduct is once again (or still?) a vital resource for the survival of this city. It no longer carries water and has thus lost its primary functionality. One would assume that it would have been dismantled, as were so many of the ancient structures, for reuse of materials or to make way for new construction. This particular structure has, however, never fallen into complete obsolescence, although its meaning has changed through time.

I would like to return to the quote with which I began:

Although it [the monument] exhibits the traces of the particular historical will to memory that caused its creation, the monument cannot maintain that memory in a stable form. On the one hand, the physical monument is always subject to processes of destruction, erosion, and accretion. On the other hand, the cultural construction of a painting or other object as monument is altered by evolving narratives of history and art history.

The ‘will to memory’ that originally brought about the construction of the aqueduct had, as its intention, the creation and control of a Roman imperial presence in Spain through the ideological state apparatus of the provision of infrastructure in this region. However, the monument still stands today. Yes, it has accrued some minor additions (i.e. statuary), but it has essentially been maintained in its original form since antiquity. Where the difference enters in is the meaning of the aqueduct for the city of Segovia today. The cultural construction surrounding the structure has changed dramatically.   

If we follow Baudrillard’s argument that an object becomes an object (i.e. looses it’s functionality) when it is possessed, I would argue that the aqueduct at Segovia became an object (as opposed to its being an aqueduct as such) when it no longer carried water and was transformed into a tourist destination following the Spanish civil war. (c. 1940’s) Having fallen into disrepair as a result of the civil uproar, and no longer necessary as a source of water for the city, it was never restored to working order.

In his chapter on collecting, Baudrillard asserts that as soon as something is possessed it is abstracted from its function and brought into relationship with the subject. [2] Following the civil war, and the reorganization of the Spanish state, the residents of Segovia took ownership, metaphorically speaking, of their aqueduct; indeed they adopted it as the central image on their new coat of arms.  In so doing it became an object, one whose meaning was transformed. Today this relic of imperialism is the symbol of the city. It is their possession, their pride, and indeed their livelihood.

So to address, briefly, the question of the relation between the terms ‘monument’ and ‘object,’ I would suggest the following: that as the evolving narrative of history allows for the unmaking of the ideological state apparatus that is being reinforced by a given monument, and the monument no longer carries out its original function but is possessed in one way or another, then it has become an object. It does not loose its monumental status, as long as a memory of its original context remains, but it does fall into the realm of the object. In closing I would also like to note that through the process of alienation and commodification the aqueduct at Segovia has perhaps lost its agency.
[1] Phillips, Ruth B. “Settler Monuments, Indigenous Memory: Dis-membering and Re-membering Canadian Art History,” in Monuments and Memory, Made and Unmade (2003) Eds. Robert S. Nelson and Margaret Olin. p.281.

[2] Baudrillard, 91.

home
objects 2