Mark EDMONDS, Building and belonging: architecture and memory in Neolithic Orkney

Building and belonging: architecture and memory in Neolithic Orkney

Talk by Mark EDMONDS, (Archeologie, York), as part of the workshop "Memory, Place, and Material Culture", organized by John SUTTON, 2022-2023 research fellow at the Paris IAS, Emeritus Professor at Macquarie University, Australia, on May 16 and 17, 2023.

Presentation

If remembering and feeling, designing and decision-making are situated as well as embodied processes, then cognition can have material and ecological components. Our mental lives may be partly constituted by places – landscapes, built environments, neighbourhoods – and by artifacts. This workshop examines relations between memory, place, and material culture. Our topics include maps and spatial cognition, tools and devices in wayfinding and memory, mental health and the city, difficult places and historically burdened heritage, and spatial disruptions of memory. Speakers draw on evidence from archaeology, architecture, art, neuroscience, performance, philosophy, and sociology, opening up new questions about the nature of bodily and affective orientation as people navigate places and the past together.