Mis à jour le 17.10.2016

« The megalithic architectures of Europe »

Icône actu internationale

En cette année 2015, Oxbow Books publie une ouvrage de synthèse collectif édité par Luc Laporte et Chris Scarre sous le titre de « The megalithic architectures of Europe », ISBN : 9781785700149, 248 p.

La couverture du livre

Le site en propose une présentation en anglais ainsi que la table des matières, reproduites ci-dessous :
Megalithic monuments are among the most striking remains of the Neolithic period of northern and western Europe and are scattered across landscapes from Pomerania to Portugal. Antiquarians and archaeologists early recognised the family resemblance of the different groups of tombs, attributing them to maritime peoples moving along the western seaways. More recent research sees them rather as the product of established early farming communities in their individual regions. Yet the diversity of the tombs, their chronologies and their varied cultural contexts complicates any straightforward understanding of their origins and distribution. Megalithic Architectures provides new insight by focusing on the construction and design of European megalithic tombs – on the tomb as an architectural project. It shows how much is to be learned from detailed attention to the stages and the techniques through which tombs were built, modified and enlarged, and often intentionally dismantled or decommissioned. The large slabs that were employed, often unshaped, may suggest an opportunistic approach by the Neolithic builders, but this was clearly far from the case. Each building project was unique, and detailed study of individual sites exposes the way in which tombs were built as architectural, social and symbolic undertakings. Alongside the manner in which the materials were used, it reveals a store of knowledge that sometimes differed considerably from one structure to another, even between contemporary monuments within a single region.

The volume brings together regional specialists from Scandinavia, Germany, Britain, France, Belgium and Iberia to offer a series of uniquely authoritative studies. Results of recent fieldwork are fully incorporated and much of the material is published here for the first time in English. It provides an invaluable overview of the current state of research on European megalithic tombs.

Table of Contents

  • 1.Preface: megalithic architecture in Europe
    Luc Laporte & Chris Scarre
  • Section 1: The megalith-builders
    • 2. Menga (Andalucia, Spain): the biography of an exceptional megalithic monument
      Leonardo Garcia Sanjuan & José Antonio Lozano Rodríguez
    • 3. Structural functions and architectural projects within the long monuments of Western France
      Luc Laporte
    • 4. Megalithic building techniques in the Languedoc region of southern France: recent excvations at two dolmens in Hérault
      Noisette Bec Drelon
    • 5. Megalithic constructional techniques in north-west France : cairn III at Prissé-la-Charrière
      Florian Cousseau
    • 6. A monumental task : building the dolmens of Britain and Ireland
      Vicki Cummings & Colin Richards
    • 7. The megalithic construction process and the building of passage graves in Denmark
      Torben Dehn
    • 8. Accident or design? Chambers, cairns and funerary practices in Neolithic western Europe
      Chris Scarre
    • 9. Dolmens without mounds in Denmark
      Palle Eriksen and Niels H. Anderson
    • 10. In the eye of the beholder
      Jørgen Westphal
  • Section 2: Cemeteries and sequences
    • 11. Building forever or just for the time being? A view from north-western Iberia
      Ramón Fábregas Valcarce & X.I. Vilaseco Vázquez
    • 12. The megalithic architecture of Huelva (Spain): typology, construction and technical traditions eastern Andévalo
      Jose Antonio Linares Catela
    • 13. The clustering of megalithic monuments around the causewayed enclosures at Sarup on Funen, Denmark
      Niels H. Andersen
    • 14. Two types of megaliths and an unusual dolmen at Lønt (Denmark)
      Anne Birgitte Gebauer
    • 15. Common motivation, different intentions? A multiscalar approach to the megalithic architecture of the Funnel Beaker North Group
      Franziska Hage, Georg Schafferer & Martin Hinz
  • Section 3: Chronologies and context
    • 16. Between East and West: megaliths in the centre of the Iberian peninsula Primitiva
      Bueno Ramirez, Rosa Barroso Bermejo & Rodrigo de Balbín Behrmann
    • 17. Megalithic hollows: rock-cut tombs between the Tagus and the Guadiana
      Leonor Rocha
    • 18. Houses of the dead and natural rocks: new evidence from western France
      Philippe Gouezin
    • 19. The stone rows of Hoedic (Morbihan) and the construction of alignments in western France
      Jean-Marc Large &Emmanuel Mens
    • 20. Paintings in the megalithic monuments of Brittany Primitiva
      Bueno Ramirez, Rodrigo de Balbín Behrmann, Luc Laporte, Philippe Gouezin, Rosa Barroso Bermejo, Antonio Hernanz Gismero, José M. Gavira-Vallejo & Mercedes Iriarte Cela
    • 21. Stability in a changing world: insights from settlement intensity patterns and archaeobotany
      Martin Hinz & Wiebke Kirleis
  • Part 4: Conclusion
    • 22. Ostentation, power, and megaliths: the example of Easter Island
      Nicolas Cauwe
    • 23. A southern point of view Primitiva
      Bueno Ramirez & Luc Laporte
    • 24. A northern point of view
      Chris Scarre & Torben Dehn