The Megalithic Architectures of Europe

Luc Laporte, Chris Scarre, Christopher Scarre, Luc Laporte

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781785700170
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: Social Sciences

Megalithic monuments are among the most striking remains of the Neolithic period of northern and western Europe and are scattered across landscapes from Pomerania to Portugal. Antiquarians and archaeologists early recognized the family resemblance of the different groups of tombs, attributing them to maritime peoples moving along the western seaways. More recent research sees them rather as the product of established early farming communities in their individual regions. Yet the diversity of the tombs, their chronologies and their varied cultural contexts complicates any straightforward understanding of their origins and distribution.
Megalithic Architectures provides new insight by focusing on the construction and design of European megalithic tombs – on the tomb as an architectural project. It shows how much is to be learned from detailed attention to the stages and the techniques through which tombs were built, modified and enlarged, and often intentionally dismantled or decommissioned. The large slabs that were employed, often unshaped, may suggest an opportunistic approach by the Neolithic builders, but this was clearly far from the case. Each building project was unique, and detailed study of individual sites exposes the way in which tombs were built as architectural, social and symbolic undertakings. Alongside the manner in which the materials were used, it reveals a store of knowledge that sometimes differed considerably from one structure to another, even between contemporary monuments within a single region.
The volume brings together regional specialists from Scandinavia, Germany, Britain, France, Belgium and Iberia to offer a series of uniquely authoritative studies. Results of recent fieldwork are fully incorporated and much of the material is published here for the first time in English. It provides an invaluable overview of the current state of research on European megalithic tombs.

Table of contents

• List of contributors
• Preface: megalithic architecture in Europe
• SECTION 1: THE MEGALITH-BUILDERS
• 1. Menga (Andalusia, Spain): biography of an exceptional megalithic monument
• 2. Structural functions and architectural projects within the long monuments of Western France
• 3. Megalithic building techniques in the Languedoc region of southern France: recent excavations at two dolmens in Hérault
• 4. Megalithic constructional techniques in north-west France: cairn III at Prissé-la-Charrière
• 5. A monumental task: building the dolmens of Britain and Ireland
• 6. The megalithic construction process and the building of passage graves in Denmark
• 7. Accident or design? Chambers, cairns and funerary practices in Neolithic western Europe
• 8. Dolmens without mounds in Denmark
• 9. In the eye of the beholder: key architectural elements in 25 years of visual analysis of Danish megalithic tombs
• SECTION 2: CEMETERIES AND SEQUENCES
• 10. Building forever or just for the time being? A view from north-western Iberia
• 11. The megalithic architecture of Huelva (Spain): typology, construction and technical traditions in eastern Andévalo
• 12. The clustering of megalithic monuments around the causewayed enclosures at Sarup on Funen, Denmark
• 13. Two types of megaliths and an unusual dolmen at Lønt, Denmark
• 14. Common motivation, different intentions? A multiscalar approach to the megalithic architecture of the Funnel Beaker North Group
• SECTION 3: CHRONOLOGIES AND CONTEXT
• 15. Between east and west: megaliths in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula
• 16. Megalithic hollows: rock-cut tombs between the Tagus and the Guadiana
• 17. Houses of the dead and natural rocks: new evidence from western France
• 18. The stone rows of Hoedic (Morbihan) and the construction of alignments in western France
• 19. Decorative techniques in Breton megalithic tombs (France): the role of paintings
• 20. Stability in a changing world: insights from settlement intensity patterns and archaeobotany
• SECTION 4: CONCLUSIONS
• 21. Ostentation, power, and megaliths: the example of Easter Island
• 22. A southern viewpoint
• 23. A northern viewpoint