Customer Reviews

The Significance of Monuments: On the Shaping of Human Experience in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe

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The author explores the 'human experience of time and place'  from the Later Mesolithic Period through the transformations in the archaeological record that occur in many areas during the Bronze Age. His contention is people's involvement with monuments was central to the creation of new senses of time and place, and that this helped in the transition to new types of settlements and agriculture. Interesting ideas but to this reviewer the reasons the author gives that the "sacred place" gave rise to settlement and agricultural sites instead of the chronology occurring the other way around or simultaneously are in the end not completely convincing.

An interesting book short yet well written and full of illustrations.

Recommended

I borrowed this book from the library, along with many others by this prolific author. I soon knew that I would have to buy it, there is so much in the book I will want to return to.

Unlike another reviewer, I did find the argument convincing - that the social significance of the monuments enabled settling and agriculture. But this book offers much more - it gives a really comprehensive overview of the sequence of monuments from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age into the Iron Age. Bradley also places these monuments within their landscape.

There is a great deal to think about as a result of reading this book - Bradley is talking about people of the same species, intelligence and life needs as us. They built extraordinary monuments, but what fascinates me most is why. Bradley presents the changes over time as the lifestyle changed from hunter gatherer to large agricultural settlements. The fact that the change was the gradual process that Bradley presents, and that the monuments were a significant catalyst to that change, is intriguing.