Nassau, deconstructed

Dump or ritual offering site?

Back rooms like this may be just what they look like: forgotten areas that accumulated junk. Conversely, they may be highly special areas reserved for the use of the most prominent individuals.

The wooden framed cork panel rests on one chair as if it fell there in place, but we cannot see where it came from so we assume it was brought here to be stored or forgotten. This suggests a dump.

That seemed a straightforward interpretation until I realized that these objects stood between the observer and two covered piercings on the back wall. These portals opened and connected this otherwise unassuming space to a separate space via a conveyor. The passage was not large enough for a person to pass through, indicating that there may be a distinction between those who occupied this space and loaded things onto the conveyor and those who collected the objects from the conveyor in the other room. Was this part of a ritual offering by which supplicants paid tribute to their overlords? The conveyor may have served to separate the unwashed from the clean.

Such distinctions between rulers and ruled are commonly found in human societies in which those with high status create material barriers between themselves and others and appropriate symbols of cleanliness. Their distance from physical labor is taken to be a natural attribute supporting their claim to high status. (Nassau County / June 15, 2008)