Remembering the House

Abstract

Although both anthropology and archaeology have long been interested in the relationship between the built environment and social forms, relatively little attention has been paid to the way in which the material home is implicated in processes of memory. Drawing on case studies from fieldwork in northern Botswana, this article argues that memory, or more especially processes of remembering, is importantly related to the spatial and temporal fluidity of the Tswana home and its inherent divisibility. The article argues that understandings of the house as a container for memory or biography have not sufficiently understood the way in which the materiality of the house, as well as its spatial configurations over time, are involved with the way in which such memories are formed and articulated. It also suggests that, in its connectedness to memory and community, building activity is an important material basis for cultural understandings of relatedness.