ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how is it that in some societies, such as the Dogon, a building can be literally torn down and rebuilt and yet still be regarded conceptually as the oldest building in the community, while in other societies or contexts, a building or object can be deliberately destroyed in an effort to erase the past only for its memory to survive as a consequence of this means of forgetting. In doing this, it draws on a range of case studies mostly but not exclusively from African contexts, that deal with some of the ways in which different societies use the material remains of their own past and that of others in order to reach a better understanding of how historical values and meanings can be attached to ancient material culture. There is, of course, a detailed and sophisticated system of such understanding that began to emerge in Western thought in the 1850s.
