Initially stimulated by collaborative research undertaken by the editors on prehistoric monuments and their landscape context in Iberia, this volume coalesced by way of a European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) conference session at Pilsen in 2013. The result is an eclectic yet tightly focused collection of thirteen research papers, flanked by two introductory chapters and two reflective, recapitulatory pieces. The main premise is the notion that prehistoric monuments, as a singular form of materiality, possess the ability to influence actively the social lives and place-making practices of subsequent generations, sometimes centuries or millennia after their creation. Biographical approaches to material culture and landscapes have proved fertile ground in archaeology over the past few decades, and this latest addition applies this continually evolving framework on a pan-European and multi-period scale. The geographical scope is admirably diverse, opening up to an Anglophone audience case studies from hitherto overlooked areas such as Spain, Serbia and Tunisia, as well as offering fresh perspectives on more intensively studied sites in north-west Europe.
Detailed micro-studies of monuments and their hinterlands reveal remarkable commonalities across Europe in terms of how populations have responded to monuments, but equally serve to convey the importance of specific context in illuminating subtleties and variations from place to place, as Legarra Herrero articulates with reference to local responses to Bronze Age tombs in Crete (Chapter 14). Vejby (Chapter 9) asserts that interaction with place is reciprocal, reminding us of the agency of people and the surrounding landscape in shaping the trajectories of monuments, not exclusively the other way around.
For García Sanjuán and Díaz-Guardamino (Chapter 10), among other contributors, the point of departure is emphatically the monuments themselves, and how their innate properties furnish them with the ability to drive and shape place-biographies. Not surprisingly, such an approach differs somewhat from how scholars of later periods often address the subject of monument reuse. It is debatable whether this emphasis on prehistoric monuments serves in some respects to perpetuate the privileging of more ancient layers over later levels – a systemic issue in ‘rescue’ archaeology, at least until recently, and precisely what Legarra Herrero highlights as a long-standing problem in Crete. Weiss-Krejci (Chapter 16) advises against a restrictive prehistory/history dichotomy, not least because the whole concept of prehistory is relatively recent.
There are varying degrees of interpretation and engagement with theory. Some papers, such as Hvass’s synthesis of the extraordinary site history of Jelling in Denmark (Chapter 3) and the GIS-based analysis of Iron Age stelae in Brittany by Laporte et al (Chapter 8), are expressly rich in data. Williams’s innovative exploration of the dragon’s mound in Beowulf (Chapter 5) is one of the few papers in this collection to really get to grips with the materiality of the monument in question, despite it being arguably a figment of literary imagination. It also demonstrates how subjective and unconsciously biased our interpretations of material remains can be. Another stand-out chapter is Babić’s multi-temporal examination of the hill of Novi Pazar, in Serbia, a highly original treatise that challenges us to reassess how we view the archaeological record; not through discrete, linear chronological layers but as overlapping and interwoven assemblages of past practices (Chapter 13). The interesting part is the interface between periods that evades definition or demarcation: the ‘fuzzy areas where they cross the boundaries set by archaeological practice’ (Babić, p 261).
Many of the authors take great pains to define and debate the nuances between the different terminologies they employ. ‘After-lives’ are contrasted with ‘life-histories’, while Wheatley argues that the concept of ‘mementos’ – or episodic responses influenced by collective amnesia over the longue durée – is more fitting (Chapter 6). This may appear to be a question of semantics, but it underlines the value of writing with theoretical clarity in mind, and of having an extensive ‘conceptual toolbox’ to draw upon. As Bradley articulates in the concluding chapter, each monument has multiple distinct yet interlinked histories. Perhaps for this reason, their trajectories are difficult to define in simple terms.
Ultimately, this volume reminds us that the most fruitful route to understanding how monuments were perceived and reused involves full engagement with the myriad facets of material remains in the archaeological record, how these elements intersect physically and temporally, and how they are linked with the social lives of communities. The richly varied contributions contained within this volume set an exemplary precedent for exploring such an approach.
