The Significance of Monuments: On the Shaping of Human Experience in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe

by Bradley,Richard

• ISBN13: 9780415152037
• ISBN10: 0415152038
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-03-18
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The Neolithic period, when agriculture began and many monuments--including Stonehenge-- were constructed, is an era fraught with paradoxes and ambiguities. Students of prehistory have long found the highly theoretical interpretations of the period perplexing and contradictory. Starting in the Mesolithic and carrying his analysis through to the Late Bronze Age, Richard Bradley sheds light on this complex period and the changing consciousness of these prehistoric peoples.The Significance of Monumentsstudies the importance of monuments tracing their history from their first creation to six thousand years later. The book begins with a discussion of how monuments first developed and their role in developing a new sense of time and space among the inhabitants of prehistoric Europe. The second part goes on to study how such monuments were modified and reinterpreted to suit the changing needs of society through a series of detailed case studies.

Table of Contents

List of figures	ix	(2)
Preface	xi
PART I From the house of the dead	1	(82)
1 Structures of sand: settlements, monuments and the nature of the Neolithic	3	(17)
2 Thinking the Neolithic: the Mesolithic world view and its transformation	20	(16)
3 The death of the house: the origins of long mounds and Neolithic enclosures	36	(15)
4 Another time: architecture, ancestry and the development of chambered tombs	51	(17)
5 Small worlds: causewayed enclosures and their transformations	68	(15)
PART II Describing a circle	83	(82)
6 The persistence of memory: ritual, time and the history of ceremonial monuments	85	(16)
7 The public interest: ritual and ceremonial, from passage graves to henges	101	(15)
8 Theatre in the round: henge monuments, stone circles and their integration with the landscape	116	(16)
9 Closed circles: the changing character of monuments, from enclosures to cemeteries	132	(15)
10 An agricultural revolution: the domestication of ritual life during later prehistory	147	(18)
References	165	(12)
Index	177