In the classical art of memory from Roman times to the Renaissance, the house was made to serve as a structure for remembering. An imagined construction — with a succession of entry ways, passages, courtyards and rooms, all appropriately furnished — was used to fix the memory of specific objects. To recall these objects, one had only to journey through this familiar mnemonic space and to ‘recollect’ the memory of the objects that one had purposely stored in a particular place within the house. Images posed in ordered locations within a familiar architecture formed the basis of a complex mnemonic artifice known popularly as a ‘memory palace’ (Yates 1966).^[1]

The structure of many Austronesian houses suggests features similar to those of a memory palace. Austronesian houses are ordered structures that minimally distinguish the categories of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ and more generally establish a progression of designations within a defined internal space. Different parts of the house are identified with specific objects and specific activities.

Often the house itself is conceived as part of a wider-oriented space, which may be grounded in an ordered cosmology. This preoccupation with orientation may require that the proper placement of objects, the location of persons and the performance of cultural activities all occur in reference to the symbolic coordinates expressed in the house. As such, the house becomes more than an architectural design for the ‘indwelling’ of cultural traditions. It becomes in effect the prime structure for the performance of what are deemed to be those traditions. More than just a ‘memory palace’, an Austronesian house can be the theatre of a specific culture, the temple of its ritual activities. As in the West, a ‘memory palace’ of this kind may be regarded as a cosmological forum, a ‘theatre of the world.’^[2]

On the island of Roti, the traditional house can be considered as such a memory palace. It is not, however, simply an abstract template for the storage of selected memories but rather a physical structure for the detailed preservation of specific elements of cultural knowledge. The house’s posts, beams, spars, and even the spaces between these spars, as well as all of the house’s levels, partitions, subdivisions and internal demarcations are specifically named; and each location is assigned a symbolic image. The house on Roti thus preserves the same relationship between image, object and location in a fixed physical form as an artfully contrived memory palace.

The Rotinese house is also the place for the performance of rituals or, equally important, the reference point for those rituals performed ‘outside the house’. Here the house functions as a fundamental ‘intermediate’ structure: in relation to the person, it is itself a ‘body’ and serves as a macrocosm (a replicate body) for ritual performance; in relation to a wider symbolic universe, the house is itself a microcosm that replicates the order of the world. Performances within the house thus function at two levels simultaneously referring to both the person and the cosmos.

Critically important to the house as the locus of ritual performance is an insistence on ‘remembering’. Thus one of the most frequent refrains in Rotinese ritual performances is the exhortation to remember: ‘Do continue to remember and always bear in mind’.

This refrain is generally stated as a preface to a longer ritual statement and often occurs among the first lines that open a ritual speech. In the language of mortuary rituals, however, this refrain can be used to carry even greater significance. It may be chanted as the direct speech of the deceased instructing his descendants. In the rituals for welcoming a bride into her new house, this same exhortation to remember can become so densely linked to metaphors of the house that specific structures within the house become the physical memento of the event itself.

These excerpts from an address to the bride’s group hint at the density of this imagery:

Sadi mafandendelek	Do continue to remember
Ma sadi masanenedak …	And always bear in mind …

Hu ndia de lole faik ia dalen	Because on this good day
Ma lada ledok ia tein	And at this fine time
Nde bena emi uma di madadi	Your house posts begin
Ma emi eda ai matola …	And your tree ladder appears …

Lakameni tutui	The lakameni tree tells its leaves
De ana tui ta sala don	It tells its leaves but lacks no leaves
De don nai uma-lai	For its leaves are in the upper house
Ma nggaemeni o’olu	And the nggaemeni sheds its bark
De olu ta sala tean	It sheds its bark but lacks no hard core
De tean nai la’o-dale.	For its hard core is near the fireplace.
De kae mai uma-lai	Climb up into the upper house
Ma hene mai la’o-dale	And mount to the fireplace
Te tean nai uma-lai	For the hard core is in the upper house
Ma don nai la’o-dale.	And the leaves are near the fireplace.

The reply, in ritual language, of the bride’s group extends this imagery which transforms the house into a remembrance of the event.

Nde bena lole faik ia dalen	Thus on this good day
Ma lada ledok ia tein-na,	And at this fine time,
Ke-fetok-ka, ana lali	The girl-child, she moves
Ma tai-inak-ka, ana keko	And the female-child, she stoops
Nde bena ana keko mai uma-di	Stooping she comes to the house posts
Ma ana lali mai eda-ai …	Moving she comes to the tree ladder …
Nde bena ana molo tunga lelete	Thus she steps along a bridge
Ma ana tabu tunga fifino …	And she sets foot along a path …
Fo ela leo bena	So let it be
Ke-fetok-ka, ana molo	That the girl-child, she steps
Ma tai-inak-ka, ana tabu	And the female-child, she sets foot
Fo ela bena eda-ai natetu	That the tree ladder be erect
Ma uma-di nakatema.	And the house posts be set.
Fo daeng-nga ela	Let the meaning be
Ana dadi neu koni-keak	That it become a remembrance
Ma ana moli neu hate-haik	And it grow as a memento
Nduku do-na	For all times
Ma losa nete’en-na neu.	And for all ages.

Here the idea of remembering, based on the verbal pair neda//ndele, implies a reflection that focuses on the house. The order and solidarity of the house is an assurance of the strength of the marriage. The transformation of an object into a remembrance (koni-keak//hate-haik) points to Rotinese ideas of knowing. The house is architecturally, if not archetypically, a significant locus for two forms of knowledge.