In Twyla Tharp’s book, The Creative Habit, she talks about muscle memory:

If there’s a lesson here, it’s: get busy copying.  That’s not a popular notion today, not when we are all instructed to find our own way, admonished to be original and find our own voice at all costs!  But it’s sound advice.  Traveling the paths of greatness, even in someone else’s footprints, is a vital means to acquiring skill.

I maintain that pre-modern ways of doing things, of feeding/clothing/housing ourselves, are ‘great’ because hundreds of thousands of people tested them against hunger/wear/weather.

She also talks about institutional memory; albeit in a business context:

"Look, it’s very rare to come across something truly original in a corporate environment.  Most, if not all of your good ideas are probably sitting somewhere in your files or are locked up in the brains of the people who have worked at your company for years.  In other words, the good ideas are institutionalized.  They exist and they’re yours for the taking.  All you’ve got to do is find a way to tap into them."

That’s what we do with historic recreation, isn’t it? – we research and copy.  Or, like Leo Lionni’s Frederick, who stores the summer colors and warm sun away for his fellow mice – we remember.