Lynne Kelly

Lynne Kelly (born 1951) is an Australian writer, researcher and science educator.

Her academic work focuses mainly on the study of primary orality, as well as the mnemonic devices used by ancient and modern oral cultures from around the world.

She proposes a theory on the purpose of the Stonehenge megalithic, which she believes served as a centre for the transmission of knowledge among Neolithic Britons.

She has been interviewed on different podcasts and radio programs about her work on primary orality, popular science and skepticism.

Kelly holds a Bachelor of Engineering from Monash University, a Graduate Diploma of Computing from Deakin University, a Diploma of Education from Rusden State College, a Master of Education from Melbourne University and a Doctoral Degree from La Trobe University.

Kelly's writing also includes educational resources for courses on mathematics, thinking skills and information technology, as well as a novel.

Kelly has also published books for popular science audiences on spiders, crocodiles and skepticism.

She has previously worked as a teacher and she currently works as an Honorary Research Fellow at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.

A fundamental part of Kelly's research delves into the transmission of scientific and technological knowledge among small-scale oral cultures such as Aboriginal Australians, the Pueblo people and some African cultures.

Kelly's research indicates that oral cultures possess a large body of scientific knowledge on animal behavior, plant properties, the landscape, natural phenomena, location of sacred places and water sources.

This knowledge is encoded in myths, rituals, chants and mnemonic devices.

According to Kelly's theory, the manner of accessing stored information would depend on whether the culture was mobile or more settled.

Hunter-gatherer societies would depend on portable mnemonic devices and techniques that would allow them to use the landscape as a mnemonic tool, such as the method of loci.

Kelly has observed similar techniques within the modern Australian Aborigines, who use features on the landscape as visual cues to retrieve information.

On the other hand, societies that were less mobile but not completely settled would create local replications of the landscape to access information, such as circles of timber or stone, sequences of mounds and other prehistoric built environments.

Kelly's research also indicates that both nomadic and sedentary societies rely on performance and entertainment as a part of their complex knowledge storage system.

The use of songs and rituals is a vital component of retention techniques which further strengthens memorization, and it is ubiquitous among the cultures studied by Kelly.

People participating in the performance would sing and tell stories while also touching a mnemonic object, moving around the site, or dancing, as a way to trigger kinaesthetic cues to access the knowledge.

Lynne Kelly has spoken against the portrayal of native peoples by the media, and sometimes even in academia, as having a close relationship with their environment but being at the same time simplistic and superstitious.

These portrayals tend to focus only on their religion and rituals, and very rarely acknowledge their vast scientific knowledge.

In 2015, Kelly published a book under the title Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies, which incorporates the research from her doctoral thesis When Knowledge Was Power.

This work explores the link between power and the control of knowledge in oral cultures, as well as the different mnemonic techniques and devices used by those cultures.

Kelly also suggests a new theory on the purpose of the archaeological sites of Chaco Canyon, Poverty Point and Stonehenge.

In June 2016, Kelly's doctoral research was published for a general readership under the title The Memory Code.

This work comprises the results of Kelly's research, spanning over almost a decade, into mnemonics of Indigenous peoples from around the globe.

Kelly's work on Australian Aboriginals includes the identification of songlines with memory techniques.

She has found research stating that up to 70% of these songlines contains knowledge about animals, plants and seasons.

The book created much interest from the media and the public even before its release.

Since the publication of The Memory Code, Kelly has been invited to numerous radio shows and public lectures to discuss her work on indigenous knowledge, mnemonics and the application of memory techniques and devices in everyday life.

Kelly has been known for trying the same techniques she has researched to memorize long lists of categories and events, including succeeding to memorize all the countries of the world by population order; memorizing a historical chronology of prehistoric and historic events, and a guide of the 408 birds of the state of Victoria.

She has memorized those lists and events using the loci method, the help of mnemonic devices, and by creating stories connecting the elements she is trying to memorize.

Kelly has received the support and orientation of Australian Aboriginal advisors for her research, particularly from her colleague Nungarrayi, who is Warlpiri.

More recently, Kelly's 2021 collaboration with Aboriginal co-author, Margo Neale, enhanced her knowledge on the complexity of Australian Songlines, the basis of many of her ideas on Indigenous knowledge systems.

According to Kelly's theory, Stonehenge served the purpose of a mnemonic centre for recording and retrieving knowledge by Neolithic Britons, who lacked written language.

The knowledge could have included pragmatic information on animal classification and behavior, geography and navigation, land management and crop cycles, as well as cultural knowledge on history, politics, genealogy and religion.

In Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies, Kelly suggests that knowledge may have been originally preserved by the nomadic Britons by using the landscape as a mnemonic tool, in a similar fashion to the memorization technique known as Method of loci.

As the Britons started to settle, they would have needed to modify the way they stored their knowledge as they were not moving as much anymore, so they would have built Stonehenge in an attempt to replicate the landscape locally, allowing them to memorize and store knowledge.

The circles and stones or timber posts would have represented the landscape, and each stone would have been associated with a segment of their knowledge system.

Kelly's research also indicates that once the Neolithic Britons' society settled, the ceremonial spaces would have become more restricted and the rituals controlled by the elites.

Kelly's theory on the purpose of Stonehenge would also explain certain physical features such as circles or lines of posts and ditches at other archaeological sites such as the Durrington Walls and Avebury, which previously had not been explained.