- Title Pages
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction: transitions and transformations
- From Mesolithic to Neolithic modes of thought
- From Mesolithic to Early Neolithic in the western Mediterranean
- Neighbours but diverse: social change in north-west Iberia during the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic (5500—4000 cal BC)
- Beyond the models: ‘Neolithisation’ in Central Europe
- Beyond ‘migration’ versus ‘acculturation’: new models for the spread of agriculture
- Mobility, specialisation and community diversity in the Linearbandkeramik: isotopic evidence from the skeletons
- Exploiting molecular and isotopic signals at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition
- Neolithic cattle domestication as seen from ancient DNA
- Substitution of species, techniques and symbols at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Western Europe
- The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the Paris Basin: a review
- Neolithic fragrances: Mesolithic-Neolithic interactions in western France
- Changing places: monuments and the Neolithic transition in western France
- The neolithisation of the Scheldt basin in western Belgium
- The gradual transition to farming in the Lower Rhine Basin
- Mesolithic myths
- The Neolithic sensory revolution: monumentality and the experience of landscape
- Houses, bodies and tombs
- Neolithic farming in Britain and central Europe: contrast or continuity?
- The temporality of transformation: dating the early development of the southern British Neolithic
- The Thames Valley in the late fifth and early fourth millennium cal BC: the appearance of domestication and the evidence for change
- Mesolithic-Neolithic transitions in Britain: from essence to inhabitation
- From Picardie to Pickering and Pencraig Hill? New information on the ‘Carinated Bowl Neolithic’ in northern Britain
- From midden to megalith? The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Britain
- The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Scotland: a review and new evidence from Tiree
- Parallel worlds or multi-stranded identities? Considering the process of ‘going over’ in Ireland and the Irish Sea zone
- From fish and seal to sheep and cattle: new research into the process of neolithisation in northern Germany
- Mistrust traditions, consider innovations? The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in southern Scandinavia
- Going over: people and their times
- Index
Changing places: monuments and the Neolithic transition in western France
Changing places: monuments and the Neolithic transition in western France
- Chapter:
- (p.243) Changing places: monuments and the Neolithic transition in western France
- Source:
- Going Over: The Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition in North-West Europe
- Author(s):
Chris Scarre
- Publisher:
- British Academy
The suggestion that monuments were not a feature of the initial Neolithic poses anew the question of the Mesolithic contribution to the earliest Neolithic of Atlantic Europe. Put bluntly, are these monuments the consequence of contact and acculturation between incoming farmers and indigenous hunter-gatherers, as was envisaged twenty years ago? If so, what was the nature of the Mesolithic contribution? Was it the forms of the monuments themselves, or did it lie more generally in attitudes to materials, places, and landscape? This chapter suggests that the craggy landscapes of Atlantic Europe may have inspired the construction of megalithic monuments. The new monumentality could as well have been the response of incoming farming communities to these landscapes, however, as a transformation in the behaviour of indigenous foraging groups, who may have envisaged these landscapes in entirely different ways. The landscape beliefs of Mesolithic communities might have played a role in the inception of megaliths, but the scarcity of Mesolithic monuments and the presence of a ‘premonument’ Neolithic suggests that it was the advent of farming groups or farming ideologies that laid the crucial foundations.
Keywords: Neolithic, Mesolithic, megalithic monuments, farming groups, hunter-gatherers
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- Title Pages
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction: transitions and transformations
- From Mesolithic to Neolithic modes of thought
- From Mesolithic to Early Neolithic in the western Mediterranean
- Neighbours but diverse: social change in north-west Iberia during the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic (5500—4000 cal BC)
- Beyond the models: ‘Neolithisation’ in Central Europe
- Beyond ‘migration’ versus ‘acculturation’: new models for the spread of agriculture
- Mobility, specialisation and community diversity in the Linearbandkeramik: isotopic evidence from the skeletons
- Exploiting molecular and isotopic signals at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition
- Neolithic cattle domestication as seen from ancient DNA
- Substitution of species, techniques and symbols at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Western Europe
- The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the Paris Basin: a review
- Neolithic fragrances: Mesolithic-Neolithic interactions in western France
- Changing places: monuments and the Neolithic transition in western France
- The neolithisation of the Scheldt basin in western Belgium
- The gradual transition to farming in the Lower Rhine Basin
- Mesolithic myths
- The Neolithic sensory revolution: monumentality and the experience of landscape
- Houses, bodies and tombs
- Neolithic farming in Britain and central Europe: contrast or continuity?
- The temporality of transformation: dating the early development of the southern British Neolithic
- The Thames Valley in the late fifth and early fourth millennium cal BC: the appearance of domestication and the evidence for change
- Mesolithic-Neolithic transitions in Britain: from essence to inhabitation
- From Picardie to Pickering and Pencraig Hill? New information on the ‘Carinated Bowl Neolithic’ in northern Britain
- From midden to megalith? The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Britain
- The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Scotland: a review and new evidence from Tiree
- Parallel worlds or multi-stranded identities? Considering the process of ‘going over’ in Ireland and the Irish Sea zone
- From fish and seal to sheep and cattle: new research into the process of neolithisation in northern Germany
- Mistrust traditions, consider innovations? The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in southern Scandinavia
- Going over: people and their times
- Index
