In "Houses in a Landscape," Julia A. Hendon examines the
connections between social identity and social memory using
archaeological research on indigenous societies that existed more
than one thousand years ago in what is now Honduras. While these
societies left behind monumental buildings, the remains of their
dead, remnants of their daily life, intricate works of art, and
fine examples of craftsmanship such as pottery and stone tools,
they left only a small body of written records. Despite this
paucity of written information, Hendon contends that an
archaeological study of memory in such societies is possible and
worthwhile. It is possible because memory is not just a faculty of
the individual mind operating in isolation, but a social process
embedded in the materiality of human existence. Intimately bound up
in the relations people develop with one another and with the world
around them through what they do, where and how they do it, and
with whom or what, memory leaves material traces.
Hendon conducted research on three contemporaneous Native
American civilizations that flourished from the seventh century
through the eleventh CE: the Maya kingdom of Copan, the hilltop
center of Cerro Palenque, and the dispersed settlement of the
Cuyumapa valley. She analyzes domestic life in these societies,
from cooking to crafting, as well as public and private ritual
events including the ballgame. Combining her findings with a rich
body of theory from anthropology, history, and geography, she
explores how objects--the things people build, make, use, exchange,
and discard--help people remember. In so doing, she demonstrates
how everyday life becomes part of the social processes of
remembering and forgetting, and how "memory communities" assert
connections between the past and the present.
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