Over the last few years I have been conducting research concerning the ways in which the people of Newfoundland, Canada, remember the Beothuk, a native people of that island who became extinct (or were exterminated) in the early 19th century. Through this research I have been addressing the question of how we may theorise the presence of the past. This is particularly a concern with the material traces of past lives, be they human bones or scratches on stones, and how these traces are enfolded into the work of individual and collective memory. This work is presently being prepared as a monograph entitled Beothuk Ghosts: Memory, Materiality and the Politics of Postcolonial Regret in Newfoundland. This concern with the material traces of the past and politics of heritage and commemoration has lead me to become a founding member of the bones collective - a network of anthropologists, archaeologists, historians and artists who are concerned with the "emotive materiality" and "affective presence" of human remains. For more information see: http://www.san.ed.ac.uk/research/bones_collective