Transit: Serpent Mound Crossing Space, Time, Discourse (Critical Antiquities) - Softcover

Allen, Chadwick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022684983X ISBN 13: 9780226849836

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2026

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Chadwick Allen is professor of English and adjunct professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of Blood Narrative: Indigenous Identity in American Indian and Maori Literary and Activist Texts, Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies, and Earthworks Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022684983X
• ISBN 13: 9780226849836
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 127