The genesis of megaliths: Monumentality, ethnicity and social complexity in Neolithic north‐west Europe

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Abstract
The most striking feature of the distribution of early Neolithic monuments in northern and western Europe is their occurrence in areas where Mesolithic hunting and fishing populations had already achieved considerable density and formed perhaps the predominant proportion of the first farming groups. A second element is the proximity of these areas to the fertile loess zone of central Europe, whose cultures provided a common background to the diversity of ‘megalithic’ groups which developed on its margins. Both aspects are essential to an understanding of the megalithic phenomenon. The existence of these two common elements helps to explain the remarkable degree of parallelism between local sequences on different parts of the periphery, despite the fact that these took place at significantly different times within a period of 800 years. This throws some light on recent discussions of the ‘meaning’ of megalithic monuments.

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