I released a new episode of Sources and Methods today. This week I spoke with Lynne Kelly, author of ‘The Memory Code: The Secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and Other Ancient Monuments', a fascinating exploration of the intersection between history, archaeological sleuthing and memory techniques. We delved into the contents of her book as well as the practical applications she found for these ancient skills.
I’ve been fascinated with the work that Lynne has been doing on the history of memory and her own personal memory ‘experiments’. If you need some inspiration as to things you might learn (or ways you might learn them), head over to her blog and the page entitled ‘My 33 Memory Experiments’. She generously includes photos and explanations of how the various systems work. Her latest groups places them in even further context. As someone who’s been following her memory experiments for a while, I found the book really useful to understand why she was picking a certain technique over another.
She’s about to start a new project involving memory skills, education and schools (she discusses that in the podcast around the 34-minute mark) and I look forward to reading about the outcome.