Beyond Barrows: Current Research on the Structuration and Perception of the Prehistoric Landscape Through Monuments

Europe is dotted with tens of thousands of prehistoric barrows. In spite of their ubiquity, little is known on the role they had in pre- and protohistoric landscapes. In 2010, an international group of archaeologists came together at the conference of the European Association of Archaeologists in The Hague to discuss and review current research on this topic. This book presents the proceedings of that session.
The focus is on the prehistory of Scandinavia and the Low Countries, but also includes an excursion to huge prehistoric mounds in the southeast of North America. One contribution presents new evidence on how the immediate environment of Neolithic Funnel Beaker (TRB) culture megaliths was ordered, another one discusses the role of remarkable single and double post alignments around Bronze and Iron Age burial mounds. Zooming out, several chapters deal with the place of barrows in the broader landscape. The significance of humanly-managed heath in relation to barrow groups is discussed, and one contribution emphasizes how barrow orderings not only reflect spatial organization, but are also important as conceptual anchors structuring prehistoric perception. Other authors, dealing with Early Neolithic persistent places and with Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age urnfields, argue that we should also look beyond monumentality in order to understand long-term use of “ritual landscapes”.
The book contains an important contribution by the well-known Swedish archaeologist Tore Artelius on how Bronze Age barrows were structurally re-used by pre-Christian Vikings. This is his last article, written briefly before his death. This book is dedicated to his memory.
This publication is part of the Ancestral Mounds Research Project of the University of Leiden.

Table of Contents

Beyond Barrows – an introduction
By David Fontijn

*Inventions of Memory and Meaning – Examples of Late Iron Age Reuse of Bronze Age Monuments in South-Western Sweden-
By Tore Artelius†

Part I (Beyond monumentality)

Memorious Monuments. Place persistency, mortuary practice and memory in the Lower Rhine Area wetlands (5500-2500 cal BC)
By Luc W.S.W. Amkreutz

The centrality of urnfields. Second thoughts on structure and stability of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age cultural landscapes in the Low Countries.
By Roy van Beek and Arjan Louwen

Part II Orderings of funerary landscapes

Döserygg and Skegrie. Megalithic centres in south-west Scania, southern Sweden
By Magnus Andersson and Björn Wallebom

Post alignments in the barrow cemeteries of Oss-Vorstengraf and Oss-Zevenbergen
By Harry Fokkens

Part III Zooming out: barrows in a landscape

Bronze Age barrow research in Sandy Flanders (NW Belgium): an overview
By Jeroen De Reu and Jean Bourgeois

history of open space. Barrow landscapes and the significance of heaths – the case of the Echoput barrows
By Marieke Doorenbosch

Ways of Wandering – In the Late Bronze Age Barrow Landscape of the Himmerland-area, Denmark
By Mette Løvschal

Part IV monument-building – an evolutionary approach

The Bet-Hedging Model as an Explanatory Framework for the Evolution of Mound Building in the Southeastern United States
By Evan Peacock and Janet Rafferty

David Fontijn is professor in the Archaeology of Early Europe at the Faculty of Archaeology, University of Leiden, the Netherlands. His research deals with the early agrarian societies of Europe from prehistory up until the early historical period, with special attention to the Bronze Age and (early) Iron Age, the exchange and deposition of metalwork and on the archaeology of so-called “ritual” landscapes. He is currently leading the NWO-VICI project “Economies of Destruction” investigating the puzzling destruction of valuable objects in Bronze Age Europe (2015-).