Where Memory Settles: Terroir, Tools, and the Material Practice of Place
Preprints.org April 10, 2026 Harald Bentz Høgseth preprint
Memory is not stored solely in human minds but is distributed across people, materials, tools, and environments, particularly in historic wooden neighborhoods. Drawing on the WoodiSH project, the article proposes expanding the concept of terroir—originally from viticulture—to describe how landscape, materials, craft traditions, and human practices shape the character and memory of place. Combining material culture studies, phenomenology, and 4E cognition with Tim Ingold's meshwork and wayfaring, the authors argue that knowledge about built heritage emerges through movement and practical interaction with material environments. Historic wooden neighborhoods in Trondheim, Vilnius, and Pori are living archives where traces of use, repair, and everyday life accumulate. Heritage environments should be understood as pedagogical and cognitive landscapes, not merely objects of preservation.