Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Transit: Serpent Mound Crossing Space, Time, Discourse

Transit: Serpent Mound Crossing Space, Time, Discourse

Allen, Chadwick

Paperback

Series: Critical Antiquities

Art HistoryConceptual ArtTeaching Instruction

ISBN10: 022684983X
ISBN13: 9780226849836
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: Jun 5 2026
Pages: 112
Weight: 0.46
Height: 0.35 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
How an ancient Indigenous earthwork traveled from Ohio to Washington state in the mid-1970s.

In Transit, Chadwick Allen chronicles the surprising history of how the ancient snake effigy known as Serpent Mound, located in what is now southern Ohio, traveled to Seattle, Washington in the 1970s, at the height of American Indian activism associated with the Red Power movement. Allen considers Indigenous earthworks built for thousands of years across the eastern half of the North American continent, questioning what it would mean if they were understood not as static entities fixed in space and time, but as animate forces with the ability to travel. Allen also looks at the origins of the modern effigy in the nineteenth century, when archaeologists reconstructed Serpent Mound's deteriorating form to create a static icon suitable for touristic display within the confines of a settler state memorial.

Drawing from archival research, interviews, and site-specific encounters, Transit meditates on the significance of building an earthen effigy in the Pacific Northwest, as part of what became the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center, and on the complexity of the mound's generative contexts. Allen's research intersects the mid-twentieth century, when artist Robert Smithson created his iconic Spiral Jetty earth sculpture and when the Muscogee (Creek) Nation designed its innovative Mound Building. The story remains ongoing in the twenty-first century, as new mounds are rising in Oklahoma and artists, activists, and intellectuals are again asserting the power of Indigenous design.

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