Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss ways in which knowledge of the past could have been memorized within communities using examples from excavations at Melton, East Yorkshire. Here, we explored an extensive landscape dating between the third millennium BC and the medieval period.

Paper long abstract:

British archaeologists are often surprised by evidence that people were aware of their own history stretching back for hundreds if not thousands of years. We are not always willing to accept that historical knowledge could have been passed down repeatedly from one generation to the next.

To discover the relationship that communities had with their own past we need to understand the ways in which landscapes were inhabited over the long-term. This is more difficult than it should be as we are sometimes unable to see beyond the confines of our own specialist periods.

I will consider these questions using examples from recent excavations by On-Site Archaeology at Melton where excavation has revealed a landscape of habitation between the third millennium BC and the first millennium AD. There were several examples where people had acted with an awareness of their past with regard to burials, boundaries and buildings. The examples suggested that memories could have been held for hundreds or thousands of years, raising the question of how this historical knowledge was transmitted and remembered. This may have included stories told by granny around the household fireplace or broader social memories held by the whole community and expressed through regular ceremonies or perhaps the naming or marking of features in the landscape.