Paper short abstract:

Roadside memorials stand as indicators of certain facts.They start as markers of an event, but soon come to represent individual and communal processes of grief,mourning, and shifting of social roles.As with witness marks, they reveal information to those who witness and participate in or with them.

Paper long abstract:

A witness mark is a groove, line, or mark that occurs with intent, by accident, or naturally. A witness mark is the result of a particular process and comes to be an indicator that imparts information. For a watchmaker, witness marks are invaluable for the repositioning of parts during a repair. The same can be said of a roadside memorial. The memorial immediately lets the witness know that something has occurred on that space. The landscape has been changed, in some cases forever. Flowers, notes, pictures, and toys start to crowd each other out around the base of a marker, often a cross. While initially roadside memorials are thought to simply be markers of death, an indicator of the loss of life, they soon come to be transformed into spaces that represent so much more. They are sites where new biographies, community belonging, and understandings of social roles are tested, negotiated, and reaffirmed. As with witness marks, roadside memorials, help the mourners and members of the community figure out how to put all the 'parts' back together again. The tribute items left at the roadside memorial impart information to the mourners and any observers, especially once the memorials begin to fade and weather, in the same way the grooves and marks help a watchmaker know what place and order the parts need to be in.