ABSTRACT
Mrs Edna Younger regularly visited our project site over the 2003 field season. Funded by English Heritage to examine the archaeology of two post-medieval cottages in northern Cheshire, the Alderley Sandhills Project was in the process of excavating the material remains of her interwar period childhood home (Casella and Croucher 2010). When shown this fragmentary artefact, Mrs Younger shared a detailed and sweet memory of the dollhouse that her father, a skilled local tradesman, had made for one of her early birthdays. The fact that this artefact had been recovered from soils that overlay the foundations of the neighbouring house was irrelevant. She proudly told us her story on numerous site visits, and to the news and television reporters whose appearance inevitably followed our English Heritage press release. The artefact had Porcelain doll figurine, early twentieth century, Hagg Cottages, northern Cheshire. Alderley Sandhills Project, 2004. Photograph courtesy of Eleanor Conlin Casella https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203093610/b8dd03a5-e1bd-4835-8288-934c84d32dfd/content/fig11_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> become hers: a recovered fragment of her past; an object of yearning for a nostalgic childhood half remembered, half created.
