Giants In The Landscape Monumentality And Territories In The European Neolithic

Proceedings from the session held at the XVII World UISPP Congress, Burgos, 2014. The session considered the various manifestations of the relationship between Neolithic enclosures and tombs in different contexts of Europe, notably through spatial analysis.

Proceedings from the session held at the XVII World UISPP Congress, Burgos, 2014. The session considered the various manifestations of the relationship between Neolithic enclosures and tombs in different contexts of Europe, notably through spatial analysis.

Dolmens are iconic international monumental constructions which represent the first megalithic architecture (after menhirs) in north-west Europe. These monuments are characterised by an enormous capstone balanced on top of smaller uprights. However, previous investigations of these extraordinary monuments have focussed on three main areas of debate. First, typology has been a dominant feature of discussion, particularly the position of dolmens in the ordering of chambered tombs. Second, attention has been placed not on how they were built but how they were used. Finally much debate has centred on their visual appearance (whether they were covered by mounds or cairns). This book provides a reappraisal of the ‘dolmen’ as an architectural entity and provides an alternative perspective on function. This is achieved through a re-theorising of the nature of megalithic architecture grounded in the results of a new research/fieldwork project covering Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia. It is argued that instead of understanding dolmen simply as chambered tombs these were multi-faceted monuments whose construction was as much to do with enchantment and captivation as it was with containing the dead. Consequently, the presence of human remains within dolmens is also critically evaluated and a new interpretation offered.

The Neolithic ('New Stone Age') marks the time when the prehistoric communities of Europe turned their backs on the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that they had followed for many thousands of years, and instead, became farmers. The significance of this switch from a lifestyle that had been based on the hunting and gathering of wild food resources, to one that involved the growing of crops and raising livestock, cannot be underestimated. Although it was a complex process that varied from place to place, there can be little doubt that it was during the Neolithic that the foundations for the incredibly complex modern societies in which we live today were laid. However, we would be wrong to think that the first farming communities of Europe were in tune with nature and each other, as there is a considerable (and growing) body of archaeological data that is indicative of episodes of warfare between these communities. This evidence should not be taken as proof that warfare was endemic across Neolithic Europe, but it does strongly suggest that it was more common than some scholars have proposed.Furthermore, the words of the seventeenth-century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, who famously described prehistoric life as 'nasty, brutish, and short', seem rather apt in light of some of the archaeological discoveries from the European Neolithic.

This volume originates in a conference session that took place at the 2018 International Council of Archaeozoology conference in Ankara, Turkey, entitled "Humans and Cattle: Interdisciplinary Perspectives to an Ancient Relationship." The aim of the session was to bring together zooarchaeologists and their colleagues from various other research fields working on human cattle interactions over time. The contributions in this volume reflect well the breadth of work being undertaken on the ancient relationship between humans and cattle across the continents of Europe, Africa and Asia, and from the late Pleistocene to postmedieval period. Almost all involve the study of archaeological cattle remains and use different zooarchaeological methods, but the combination of these approaches with that of ethnography, isotopes and genetics is also featured. Author Interview

One of the principal characteristics of the European Neolithic is the development of monumentality in association with innovations in material culture and changes in subsistence from hunting and gathering to farming and pastoralism. The papers in this volume discuss the latest insights into why monumental architecture became an integral part of early farming societies in Europe and beyond. One of the topics is how we define monuments and how our arguments and recent research on temporality impacts on our interpretation of the Neolithic period. Different interpretations of Göbekli Tepe are examples of this discussion as well as our understanding of special landmarks such as flint mines. The latest evidence on the economic and paleoenvironmental context, carbon 14 dates as well as analytical methods are employed in illuminating the emergence of monumentalism in Neolithic Europe. Studies are taking place on a macro and micro scale in areas as diverse as Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Germany, the Dutch wetlands, Portugal and Malta involving a range of monuments from long barrows and megalithic tombs to roundels and enclosures. Transformation from a natural to a built environment by monumentalizing part of the landscape is discussed as well as changes in megalithic architecture in relation to shifts in the social structure. An ethnographic study of megaliths in Nagaland discuss monument building as an act of social construction. Other studies look into the role of monuments as expressions of cosmology and active loci of ceremonial performances. Also, a couple of papers analyse the social processes in the transformation of society in the aftermath of the initial boom in monument construction and the related changes in subsistence and social structure in northern Europe. The aim of the publication is to explore different theories about the relationship between monumentality and the Neolithic way of life through these studies encompassing a wide range of types of monuments over vast areas of Europe and beyond.

A new history of Neolithic Europe, with major implications for the whole of archaeology, using Bayesian statistical analysis to bring dating down from the long-term to the span of lifetimes. Following on from the revolutionary and award-winning Gathering Time, this is the career culmination work by one of the world's leading prehistorians.

The North European megaliths are among the most enduring structures built in prehistory; they are imbued with symbolic meanings which embody physical and conceptual ideas about the nature of the world inhabited by the first Northern farmers. The Megaliths of Northern Europe provides a much needed up-to-date synthesis of the material available on these monuments, incorporating the results of recent research in Holland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. This research has brought to light new data on the construction of the megaliths and their role in the cultural landscape, and Magdalena Midgley offers a fascinating interpretation of the symbolism of megalithic tombs within the context of early farming communities. This wealth of new evidence suggests the Northern European megaliths were important foci in the wider north-west European context. The construction of dolmens and passage graves, using huge glacial boulders, demanded both great communal effort and considerable skill. In addition to this technical expertise the master builders also made use of their esoteric knowledge of rituals. This was expressed in the use of exotic building materials and special architectural features, and in the placement of tombs within the natural and cultural landscapes, creating new metaphors and images. Fully illustrated, this book will be of interest to both undergraduate and postgraduate students of European Prehistory, Archaeology and Prehistoric Anthropology, as well as architects who study ancient architecture and social anthropologists who study modern megaliths.