Symbols and Signs

For those interested in symbol use and meaning making, here’s an interesting artifact:

What on earth can this mean? What is interesting to me is that there is both a presentational and discursive message but they have no intrinsic meaning individually and they provide no complementary effect either. Nevertheless, lots of fun for us since the public transport system is so good, we have no need of a car to get around.

As you can see from the picture, we were headed to the Arbeia Roman fort that was established by Hadrian to built, maintain and protect his wall. Arbeia was redeveloped by Emperor Severus in the early 3rd century. It appears Severus spent some time working here and, interestingly, he was black. There’s an interesting fact I’d never seen in my history books. The base was quite large, although my pictures don’t give sufficient perspective on its size:






Further views of our day trip follow. First, we took the ferry from South Shields across the Tyne River to North Shields—part of that great public transit system. Our metro ticket gets us across the river.



At Tynemouth we found one of the oddest shopping centers ever—this church converted to a little mall—a cathedral to capitalism. See if you can make out the red sign on the front . . .



Perhaps a view of signage on the inside will make the point clearer:



Other, symbols relative to the exercise of wealth AND power are just down the street. At the coast, the priory was built, circa 1020 to protect the community and shipping. Here you can see remainders of the priory through its own gate: