Interpreting Neolithic Landscapes: Ancestral Geographies

Archaeological evidence suggests that Neolithic sites had many different, frequently contradictory functions, and there may have been other uses for which no evidence survives. How can archaeologists present an effective interpetation, with the consciousness that both their own subjectivity, and the variety of conflicting views will determine their approach.
Because these sites have become a focus for so much controversy, the problem of presenting them to the public assumes a critical importance. The authors do not seek to provide a comprehensive review of the archaeology of all these causewayed sites in Britain; rather they use them as case studies in the development of an archaeological interpetation.

Ancestral Geographies of the Neolithic is a vivid portrait of life in the small, dispersed communities of Neolithic Britain. Focusing on the landscape and monuments of the fourth millennium B.C., Mark Edmonds provides a dramatic interpretation of how these prehistoric peoples understood the world in which they lived. Central to this study is the idea that communities of the time thought about the land, and about themselves, in ways different from those we take for granted today. Kinship, ancestry, the presence of the dead, and various forms of affiliation were significant elements of their world view. These themes were brought into sharpest focus during gatherings at the monumental enclosures and tombs that appear in our record for the first time, where communities engaged in ancestral rights and acknowledged their ties to the land, to the past and to each other.

Mark Edmonds is Senior Lecturer in landscape archaeology at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Stone Tools and Society.