ABSTRACT
Historical traces are all around us: we inhabit a world full of signs of the past, of survivals, reconstructions, commemorations. We are born into worlds which were previously lived in; we grow up with degrees of awareness of different aspects of the past. Historical consciousness is an inevitable part of the human condition; we are intrinsically beings who live within some conception of time, some knowledge that certain things have gone before, are changing, and will change in the future. Every human society inhabits landscapes of memory: from the surrounding hills in which the Gods created humanity, where the evil demons lived, where famous battles were fought, to the urban jungles counterposing mock Gothic railway stations, fragments of ancient walls, modernist architecture, medieval churches, council house slums, street plans following ancient sheeptracks or eighteenth-century grids or multi-lane highways. The traces of the activities of previous inhabitants of this planet are all around, from old stone chipping tools found by the seashore through medieval strip field patterns still waving through the field grass, to disused railway lines and rusting car dumps, although some traces will be more wilfully preserved than others. Physical representations of past activities are everywhere, however jumbled and lacking in organisation.
