Memory and forgetting are fundamental to human existence and experiences of the world. Within archaeology, there has been increasing interest in the role of the past in the past. To date, however, there has been little specific discussion of how such long-term persistence of place and practice was possible; and why this was the case. The sixteen papers in this volume use detailed contextual evidence to address these questions. In many instances, contributors discuss less visible examples where 'memory work' can be identified from non-monumental, 'everyday' landscapes. The case studies focus on British archaeology from the Neolithic to the early medieval period, but other contributions deal with Neolithic Central Europe, ancient Etruscan and Egyptian landscapes, and historic Native American practices. The volume interweaves theoretical considerations of memory, materiality and landscape with exciting evidence emerging from research and developer-funded commercial archaeology, challenging existing methodologies and proposing new research questions for future fieldwork and post-excavation practice.

Despite notable explorations of past dynamics, much of the archaeological literature on mobility remains dominated by accounts of earlier prehistoric gatherer-hunters, or the long-distance exchange of materials. Refinements of scientific dating techniques, isotope, trace element and aDNA analyses, in conjunction with phenomenological investigation, computer-aided landscape modelling and GIS-style approaches to large data sets, allow us to follow the movement of people, animals and objects in the past with greater precision and conviction. One route into exploring mobility in the past may be through exploring the movements and biographies of artefacts. Challenges lie not only in tracing the origins and final destinations of objects but in the less tangible ‘in between’ journeys and the hands they passed through. Biographical approaches to artefacts include the recognition that culture contact and hybridity affect material culture in meaningful ways. Furthermore, discrete and bounded ‘sites’ still dominate archaeological inquiry, leaving the spaces and connectivities between features and settlements unmapped. These are linked to an under-explored middle-spectrum of mobility, a range nestled between everyday movements and one-off ambitious voyages. We wish to explore how these travels involved entangled meshworks of people, animals, objects, knowledge sets and identities. By crossing and re-crossing cultural, contextual and tenurial boundaries, such journeys could create diasporic and novel communities, ideas and materialities.