From the Archives: Humans are symbolic animals who create meaning from things. An eccentric movement to craft birdhouses into personal memorials has arisen spontaneously in central Florida.
Along the St. Johns River in central Florida, scores of personalized birdhouses decorate the “Birdhouse Canal.” The birdhouses are constantly changing. Some birdhouses disappear as they fall into the canal or are purposefully removed, while new birdhouses populate the canal as folks memorialize the recently deceased. The variety of birdhouses—their form, construction materials, and unique attributes—is remarkable.
Memorialization is how humans commemorate people, events, and ideals. Miniatures, like birdhouses, suit the task of memorialization because they focus viewers’ attention on the similarities and differences between the “real” and the “replica”—between our actual lived experiences and how these experiences can be condensed into a symbol.
And the house is a powerful symbol: a shelter from the storms of life, a dwelling for family, a connection to community. The place where we eat, play, converse, grow, work, slumber, and dream, our homes shape our memories of youth and our roles as siblings and parents. The house is a symbol of who we are at our core.
This photo essay explores how Americans use unique objects, in this case birdhouses, to celebrate and memorialize important people—especially the deceased—in our lives. Less than a decade ago, people began spontaneously decorating the canal along the St. Johns River—which borders two Florida state parks—with birdhouses to publicly display their lives, their sense of themselves, and, often, their losses.
Humans are uniquely symbolic animals: Unlike beetles or cats, we understand that an object can stand for an idea, that one thing can represent something else entirely. A red octagon means stop. A heart means love. Along the St. Johns River, miniature birdhouses mean self, family, community, and humanity. Birdhouses treat souls.Jonathan Walz is an archaeologist who studies the later archaeology of Africa. He earned a Ph.D.