Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the different ways that place, material and practice might have acted on social and individual memory in the past. Examples drawn from research on the use of British caves and rock shelters in prehistory will be used to examine three different kinds of remembering. First we can look at formal performance encoding and reinforcing ritual commemoration of semi-mythologized events or people. Secondly we have evidence for repeated action managing more immediate memory within social contexts such as burial ritual. Finally we have those repeated actions which arise from and inculcate bodily memory in learning and practicing life skills. All of these manifestations of memory can be approached through a concern with biographies of practice. These broaden and deconstruct traditional object biographies by focussing not on some notional ‘life’ of a bounded object but on the traditions and practices involved in the production and use of all kinds of things and places.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers the different ways that place, material and practice might have acted on social and individual memory in the past. Examples drawn from research on the use of British caves and rock shelters in prehistory will be used to examine three different kinds of remembering. First we can look at formal performance encoding and reinforcing ritual commemoration of semi-mythologized events or people. Secondly we have evidence for repeated action managing more immediate memory within social contexts such as burial ritual. Finally we have those repeated actions which arise from and inculcate bodily memory in learning and practicing life skills. All of these manifestations of memory can be approached through a concern with biographies of practice. These broaden and deconstruct traditional object biographies by focussing not on some notional 'life' of a bounded object but on the traditions and practices involved in the production and use of all kinds of things and places.