I have been told many stories by people who found it hard to let go of the everyday objects left behind by their loved ones after death. A woman whose mother had, just before she died, bought a large tub of malted milk drink powder called Horlicks, confided, “I could not throw this away. It was in the cupboard for five years! And it was solid. But because she’d bought it, it became like an artifact.” Similarly, another woman kept her grandfather’s “dreadful misshapen shoes,” saying, “I think you have to hold onto things until it’s time to release them.”
These stories were told to me during my time as a researcher on the Continuing Bonds Project from 2016–2018. The project was a collaboration between archaeologists like me and health care professionals at Bradford and Leicester in the U.K. It sought to use archaeology to encourage discussions around the often-taboo ...
