Significance of Monuments

Richard Bradley is Professor of Archaeology at Reading University. Current interests include landscape archaeology and rock art. Recent books include Altering the Earth and Rock Art and the Prehistory of Atlantic Europe. He is the general editor of the Routledge Journal World Archaeology.

'Bradley writes as he speaks: enthusiastically, lucidly and, even more importantly, interestingly.''Like a stone on calm water, it by necessity leaves out some areas but makes a profound impact on others and in so doing is no less gratifying. It should be essential reading to anyone interested in Neolithic studies.' - Alex Gibson, Landscape History vol 20 98'As someone who can work theory into practice, Bradley has the rare ability to produce successful interpretative archaeologies in a clear, readable and compelling style. It is a publication that deserves a wide audience, and not just within the closed circle of British prehistorians.' - Joshua Pollard'Bradley has identified some aspects of cosmological significance at a broad European level. The Significance of Monuments is stimulating, interesting, and enjoyable; I would highly recommend it for teaching.' - Assemblage, University of Sheffield

• List of Figures Preface Part One: From the House of the Dead 1. Structures of Sand: Settlements, Monuments and the Nature of the Neolithic 2. Thinking the Neolithic: the Mesolithic World View and its Transformation 3. The Death of the House: the Origins of Long Mounds and Neolithic Enclosures 4. Another Time: Architecure, Ancestry and the Development of Chambered Tombs 5. Small Worlds: Causewayed Enclosures and their Transformations Part Two: Describing a Circle 6. The Persistence of Memory: Ritual, Time and the History of Ceremonial Monuments 7. The Public Interest: Ritual and Ceremonial, from Passage Graves to Henges 8. Theatre in the Round: Henge Monuments, Stone Circles and their Integration with the Landscape 9. Closed Circles: the Changing Character of Monuments, from Enclosures to Cemeteries 10. An Agricultural Revolution: the Domestication of Ritual Life during later Prehistory References.