One of the principal characteristics of the European Neolithic is the development of monumentality in association with innovations in material culture and changes in subsistence from hunting and gathering to farming and pastoralism. The papers in this volume discuss the latest insights into why monumental architecture became an integral part of early farming societies in Europe and beyond. One of the topics is how we define monuments and how our arguments and recent research on temporality impacts on our interpretation of the Neolithic period. Different interpretations of Göbekli Tepe are examples of this discussion as well as our understanding of special landmarks such as flint mines.
The latest evidence on the economic and paleoenvironmental context, carbon 14 dates as well as analytical methods are employed in illuminating the emergence of monumentalism in Neolithic Europe. Studies are taking place on a macro and micro scale in areas as diverse as Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Germany, the Dutch wetlands, Portugal and Malta involving a range of monuments from long barrows and megalithic tombs to roundels and enclosures. Transformation from a natural to a built environment by monumentalizing part of the landscape is discussed as well as changes in megalithic architecture in relation to shifts in the social structure. An ethnographic study of megaliths in Nagaland discuss monument building as an act of social construction. Other studies look into the role of monuments as expressions of cosmology and active loci of ceremonial performances. Also, a couple of papers analyse the social processes in the transformation of society in the aftermath of the initial boom in monument construction and the related changes in subsistence and social structure in northern Europe.
The aim of the publication is to explore different theories about the relationship between monumentality and the Neolithic way of life through these studies encompassing a wide range of types of monuments over vast areas of Europe and beyond.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction: Anne Birgitte Gebauer, Lasse Sørensen, Anne Teather and Antoónio Carlos Valera
• Thoughts on monumentalism
• 1. Neolithic monumentality for the 21st century: Anne Teather
• Origin of monumentalism
• 2. Monumentality in Neolithic southwest Asia: making memory in time and space: Trevor Watkins
• 3. Monumental – compared to what? A perspective from Göbekli Tepe: Moritz Kinzel and Lee Clare
• 4. From communal to segmentary: an alternative view of Neolithic ‘monuments’ in the Middle East. Comments on Chapters 2 and 3: Ian Hodder
• 5. Elite houses or specialised buildings? Some comments about the special buildings of Göbekli Tepe in relation to Chapters 2 and 3: Christian Jeunesse
• 6. Response to comments by Ian Hodder and Christian Jeunesse: Trevor Watkins
• 7. Response to comments by Ian Hodder and Christian Jeunesse with notes on a potential Upper Mesopotamian ‘Late PPNA Hunter-Crisis’: Lee Clare and Moritz Kinzel
• Monuments and social change
• 8. Monuments and social stratification within the early Funnel Beaker culture in south Scandinavia: Lasse Sørensen
• 9. Do hundreds of megalithic monuments signify a full Neolithic way of life? Investigating the establishment of Neolithic societies on Rügen Island, Germany: Anja Behrens
• 10. From hierarchies in balance to social imbalance – transformation processes in the later Funnel Beaker north societies in the western Baltic Sea region (3100–2900 BC): Jan Piet Brozio
• 11. Narratives of 3rd-millennium transformations: new biographies of Neolithic societies, landscapes and monuments: Johannes Müller, Jan Piet Brozio, Walter Dörfler and Wiebke Kirleis
• 12. Settling the monumental issue in the Dutch Wetlands: Gary R. Nobles
• 13. Celebrating stones – megalith building traditions among Angami-Naga, northeast India: Maria Wunderlich
• 14. Megalithic structures and settlements in the Valley of Posic, Amazonas, northern Peru: Andreas Valentin Wadskjær and Gitte Lambertsen Hjortlund
• Funerary monuments
• 15. Stones as boundaries – stones as markers: a megalithic tomb in southern Portugal: Lars Larsson
• 16. Putting earthen long barrows back on the map: remarks about the Middle Neolithic monumentality of northern Poland: Łukasz Pospieszny, Michał Jakubczak and Grzegorz Kiarszys
• 17. In search of the lost heritage: non-invasive exploration of the monumental Funnel Beaker culture long barrows in the region of Wietrzychowice in central Poland: Piotr Papiernik, Rafał Brzejszczak, Dominik Kacper Płaza, Joanna Wicha and Piotr Wroniecki
• 18. Making sense of Scottish Neolithic funerary monuments: tracing trajectories and understanding their rationale: Alison Sheridan and Rick Schulting
• 19. Group benefits? The story of a cluster of megalithic monuments in Danish Funnel Beaker society: Anne Birgitte Gebauer
• Enclosures and landscapes
• 20. Storied structures, sustainability and resilience in Late Neolithic Malta: excavations at Santa Verna, Gozo: Eóin Parkinson, Rowan McLaughlin, Catriona Brogan, Simon Stoddart and Caroline Malone
• 21. Ephemeral and cosmological monumentality: the ‘strange’ ditched enclosures of Chalcolithic south Portugal: António Carlos Valera
• 22. Connecting stories of the Neolithic in north-eastern Portugal: walled enclosures and their relationships with the genealogy of the landscape: Maria de Jesus Sanches and Ana Margarida Vale
• 23. The Neolithic roundel and its social context on the furthest reaches of the Danubian World: Lech Czerniak, Agnieszka Matuszewska, Marcin Dziewanowski, Łukasz Pospieszny, Michał Jakubczak and Michał Szubski
• 24. The living and the dead – the early Neolithic monumental landscape of southwest Scania, southern Sweden: Magnus Andersson and Magnus Artursson
• Conclusion
• 25. The lives of monuments and monumentalising Life: Julian Thomas