ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents a case for enactment in which practitioner is researcher and researcher is practitioner as a significant method in practice-led investigation, where the researcher is required both to perform and to reflect and analyse. It draws on some ritual studies and the adoption of the term 'enactment' in relation to ritual performance by John Keble. The book provides an overview of the processes of researching, commissioning, making and using artefacts drawing out some of the issues of authenticity, pragmatism, economics, compromise and failure in making artefacts for use. It also provides an account of the planning and making of a new medieval organ intended for St Teilo's Church, an act of creative archaeology that drew on the experience of making two other organs based on surviving early sixteenth-century fragments.