More Afterword: The Archaeology of the Capitol Insurrection

Yesterday, I wrote a bit more of the afterword of my book and described how the murder of George Floyd and the resulting protests shaped certain aspects of my book on the archaeology of contemporary American culture. Of course, the events of the summer of 2020 also put into relief areas of my book where I would have invested more critical attention were it written a year or two later. The following paragraphs are a bit on the raw side and reflect my efforts to articulate in a formal way my ideas. I obviously need to contextualize the events at the Capitol more clearly than I have done here, but this feels pretty easy to do. What I was hoping to present here is evidence for a core of a decent idea that will serve as fitting reflection on the chaotic and distressing time in which I wrote this book.

The final part of my afterword will reflect on the events of January 6, 2021 and how my immersion in the book writing and revision process drew my attention to the materiality of the insurrection and investment of the Capitol building. Just as the protestors in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death sought to transform and recode urban public spaces, the rioters who stormed the Capitol likewise attempted to manipulate objects in an effort to stake claim to public space and affairs. To be clear, this is not to suggest that protestors of the summer of 2020 and the insurgents who sought to seize the Capitol in January 2021 are morally equivalent. Nor do their tactics or the context of their protests represent similar attitudes toward public space. Instead, an archaeological reading of Capitol insurrection suggests that the aggrieved supporters of President Trump and various conspiracy theories created situations where objects out of place communicated their desire to disrupt the conduct of public affairs. In contrast, the protestors who worked to remove or recoded monuments in urban areas did so in an effort to create new public spaces that reflected the social and racial character of their community. The rioters who invested the Capitol appeared in most cases to have no systematic aims in their use of objects during the event other than to disrupt public order through creating objects out of place. 

The most iconic image associated with the Capitol riot involved Adam Johnson walking through the Capitol carrying Speaker of the House of Representative’s lectern. He wears a hat emblazoned with the President Trump’s name and faces the camera and waves. His destination with the lectern remains unclear from the photograph, and it appears that his removal of the lectern is primarily a symbolic gesture that parallels the protestors’ claims to take the country back from what they viewed as illegitimate forces. Johnson is literally taking a symbol of the country with him in an effort to take back the country. His destination, ultimately, remains unclear. 

A similarly disturbing photograph that saw wide circulation showed three secret service agents with their guns drawn in the House of Representatives chamber. They braced their guns on a large piece of furniture which they had moved to barricade the door. Like the photo of Johnson carrying the lectern, this photo represents the disruption of public affairs through the displacement of an object. The bench becomes a barrier against violence and a visible threat of force in the civic space of the House chamber whose very function is to negotiate differences in a peaceful way. The horrifying stories of the use of a fire extinguisher to kill Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick similarly represent the radical displacement of an object designed to provide security in a time of crisis. Thus symbols and spaces of peaceful public and civic activities become reappropriated for violent ends.  

The rioter’s desire to “take back their country” likewise contextualizes their decision to displace the American flag with campaign banners emblazoned with President Trump’s name or battle flags of the Confederacy. By their own logic, these displacements did not represent an effort to permanently transform public space by replacing the flag of the United States with that of the president or a defeated Confederate army, but an effort to disrupt public affairs by removing the symbols of political sovereignty. Their claims to represent American political ideals and the deliberate admixture of traditional national symbols, however, made clear that these displacements, just as the secret service’s movement of the bench to block the door of the House chamber, were temporary measures designed to suspend what they saw was compromised public conduct.

The trauma of the COVID pandemic, the protests in the summer of 2020, and the Capitol insurrection of 2021 pushed me continuously to reflect on the roles that archaeology and objects play in articulating the diverse realities of a contemporary American experience. The ability of objects to disrupt, transform, and protect our sense of community served as a constant reminder that archaeological perspectives on the contemporary world provides a way to tease out more complex and sympathetic understandings experiences. While this book has likely fallen short of providing a context to come to terms with diverse and unprecedented events of the “long 2020,” my hope is that some of the objects, issues, and situations presented here offer a way forward to producing a more inclusive world.