Monument

These practices proliferated significantly in the nineteenth century, creating the ideological frameworks for their conservation as a universal humanist duty.

In both cases, their conflictive nature is explicit in the need for their conservation, given that a fundamental component of state action following the construction or declaration of monuments is litigating vandalism and iconoclasm.

However, not all monuments represent the interests of nation-states and the ruling classes; their forms are also employed beyond Western borders and by social movements as part of subversive practices which use monuments as a means of expression, where forms previously exclusive to European elites are used by new social groups or for generating anti-monumental artifacts that directly challenge the state and the ruling classes.

Historians such as Lewis Mumford proposed that the practice began with Paleolithic landmarks, which served as sites for communication with ancestral spirits.

In art history, monuments are seen as significant sculptural forms; in architecture and urban planning, they are crucial for city organization and mapping.

Françóise Choay highlights the distinction between these views: "The historic monument is a precisely datable invention of the West... exported and diffused beyond Europe from the late nineteenth century.

From an art historical point of view, the dichotomy of content and form opens up the problem of the "linguistic ability" of the monument.

For example, the Washington Monument's location was conceived by L'Enfant to help organize public space in the city, before it was designed or constructed.

Many countries use 'ancient monument' or similar terms for the official designation of protected structures or archeological sites which may originally have been ordinary domestic houses or other buildings.

'object of iconoclastic gestures, a sort of condemnation perhaps linked to some change of community or beliefs "[9][10] The term is often used to describe any structure that is a significant and legally protected historic work, and many countries have equivalents of what is called in United Kingdom legislation a Scheduled Monument, which often include relatively recent buildings constructed for residential or industrial purposes, with no thought at the time that they would come to be regarded as "monuments".

New ideas about what constitutes the archaeological record have revealed that certain legislative and theoretical approaches to the subject are too focused on earlier definitions of monuments.