The Significance of Monuments

The Significance of Monuments: On the Shaping of Human Experience in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe is an archaeological book authored by the English academic Richard Bradley of the University of Reading. It was first published by Routledge in 1998.

Adopting a chronological approach from the Mesolithic through the Neolithic and into the Early Bronze Age, Bradley discusses the various different types of monuments that were constructed in Europe during this period, from the passage tombs and causewayed enclosures to the later stone circles. Throughout, he offers new interpretations of the evidence, often criticising older viewpoints.

Synopsis

Chapter one, "Structures of Sand", introduces the themes that Bradley explores in the book, and outlines prior archaeological approaches to understanding the Neolithic. In the second chapter, "Thinking the Neolithic", Bradley argues that Mesolithic European worldviews centred on fertility and regeneration, with no distinction made between humans and the natural world. In the third chapter, "The death of the house", Bradley suggests that the Early Neolithic long mounds, which were used as burial monuments, had their symbolic origins in decaying and collapsing longhouses, postulating a relation between the "houses of the living" and the "houses of the dead". Chapter four, "Another Time" argues against prior suggestions that Early Neolithic burial mounds represent a focus on the ancestors. Instead he suggests that it was the passage tombs that held such an ancestor-focus, because they permitted the living to enter into the tomb, where the dead were stored. The fifth chapter, "Small Worlds", examines the causewayed enclosures, arguing that these earthworks established a new sense of place and sacred geography in Neolithic Europe.