Emanuele PREZIOSO

I am an anthropological cognitive archaeologist with a background in archaeology, anthropology, and philosophy. I received my doctorate from the University of Oxford, where I developed my research at the intersection of memory, material culture, and temporality. My work approaches these themes through a cross-disciplinary synthesis of cognitive science, anthropology, archaeology, and media studies. It situates memory as a sociomaterial and temporal phenomenon, examining how actions with things in specific environments mediate remembering and constitute memory. Drawing on Material Engagement Theory (MET) and on my own Mediational-Constitutional Principle (MCP), I study how human cognition develops through material practices across time and in different technological and social contexts. The impact of my research extends across trauma and displacement studies, philosophical anthropology, media theory, and developmental psychology, with particular relevance for contemporary debates on human–environment interaction and ecological approaches to memory.

I am currently affiliated with several international research centres and collaborative networks. I serve as a Postdoctoral Researcher within the Centre for the Anthropology of Technics and Technodiversity (CATT) at University College London, where I investigate how trauma memory emerges through material and craft practices in contexts of migration and displacement. At the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, I am a member of the Interuniversity Center for Habit Studies (PhilHabits), contributing to its interdisciplinary programme on habits, human–ecological relations, and material culture. I am also a collaborator in the Bone Memories of a Polis project, an ΕΛΙΔΕΚ initiative investigating the collective traumatic memory of the birth of democracy in Athens.

Methodologically, my work combines community-based participatory research and integrate qualitative and quantitative methods, phenomenological interviews, chaîne operatoire diagrams, interdisciplinary theoretical synthesis, micro-ethnographic analysis of gesture, perception, and tool use. I conduct long-term ethnographic and comparative fieldwork, working alongside potters, artists, and refugees. These studies I also develop public-facing research outputs, including the docuseries Holy Craft!, educational workshops on craft and cognition, and community exhibitions.

I am currently finalising my first book, Memory in Cognitive Archaeology and Anthropology, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in June 2026. The book develops the first integrated methodological framework for studying memory and remembering as social, material, cultural, biological, and multi-temporal phenomena. Through a synthesis of cognitive archaeology, anthropology of technics, and philosophy of mind, the volume advances an account of memory that conceives remembering as an embodied activity re-enacted through engagements with things, tools, and environments across generations.

Pubblicazioni

Prezioso, E., Parisi, F.  (2025). Extending the extended self: a mediational-constitutional proposal. Synthese 205(124), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-025-04965-0

Prezioso, E. (2024). The Knossian Kamares Style as transgenerational memory. The Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 31, 1430–1461. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-024-09643-y

Prezioso, E., & Alessandroni, N. (2023). Enacting memories through and with things: Remembering as material engagement. Memory Studies 16(4), 962-983. https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980221108475

Prezioso, E., & Giobbe, M. (Eds.) (2022). Innovative Approaches to Archaeology. BAR. Oxford.

Prezioso, E. (2022). The Role of Aesthetics for Memory: A Material-Engagement Approach to the Making of Knossian Kamares Decorations. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.99612

Prezioso, E. (2021). Fleeing from categories: Monstrous artefacts and style in archaeology. In C. Nirta & P. Andrea (Eds.) Monstrous Ontologies: Politics, Ethics, and Materiality. Vernon Press, pp. 169-192.

Hicks, J.M., & Prezioso, E. (2021). On «Thinging Beauty. Anthropological Reflections on the Making of Beauty and the Beauty of Making» by Lambros Malafouris, Maria Danae Koukouti. Reti, saperi, linguaggi 8(1), 27-42. https://doi.org/10.12832/101343

Prezioso, E. (2020). Cognitive Archaeology and the ‘Ancient Mind’: Mesopotamian motifs in the formationof Egyptian elites in the fourth millennium”. In: Marco Iamoni (Ed.), From the Prehistory of Upper Mesopotamia to the Bronze and Iron Age Societies of the Levant. Volume 1. Proceedings of the 5th “Broadening Horizons” Conference (Udine 5-8 June 2017). Edizioni Università di Trieste, pp. 125-144. http://hdl.handle.net/10077/30208