Focusing on the greater Megalithic tradition (stone monuments) of Europe’s Atlantic Façade in the past in NW Iberia (c. 4500-2500 BC) and western Britain (3100-900 BC), this project, SHoW, investigated ways people drew their communities together with shared knowledge and beliefs and how these are reflected in the cultural landscapes they created. Cultural landscapes are ‘combined works of nature and humankind (
https://whc.unesco.org/en/culturallandscape/)(opens in new window)’ which humans value.
Using digital terrain models representing the physical shape of the real world, this project created 2D & 3D topographic models of views that can be seen from over 100 megalithic sites like tombs and standing stones, in Britain and Galicia. The models were layered with the paths of astronomical bodies as they would have been seen 1000s of years ago, standing at these very same monuments.
Through this achievement in 2D & 3D landscape modelling, it was possible to apply spatial analyses to carry out micro-locational and cross-locational comparisons as well as virtual reality modelling & interpretations using programmes like Stellarium. Stellarium is a virtual-reality video type software into which we could insert our monuments’ landscape models and watch prehistoric night skies in real time! Using all of these methods, SHoW has demonstrated that, on both sides of the Atlantic, Neolithic tombs within the same regions share particular landscape qualities that have been deliberately chosen, so too, standing stones of western Scotland. All these monuments share a cross-community desire to select very specific visual landscapes for their stone monuments that indicate their regional cultural emphases. The significance and depth of these differences were primarily illuminated by uncovering the connections between landscape form and astronomical phenomena, where the rising and setting of bodies like the Sun and the Moon, were connected to specific locations on the horizon as well as very particular horizon shapes. It seemed likely too, that these prehistoric people used cardinal points (like north & south) as a way to mark our their landscapes. In Galicia, the great majority of the tombs examined seem connected to seasonal markers that were likely linked to patterns of nature and resource acquisition, both wild & domestic, especially the milder times of the seasons. Yet standing stones seem primarily linked to the very first day of winter or summer and to major lunar events that could occur in any season (extreme rising and setting points in astronomical cycles, like the Sun at the solstices (annual cycle) and Moon (18.6-year cycle)). Where they overlap, however, is in the larger cosmological understandings of the Heavenly Cycles and conceptual notions linked to life and death.
Ultimately, the project has uncovered that the megalithic builders across space and time have shared a system of beliefs that links stones to death and life and the astronomical bodies that are seen to govern these things. Together, as a community, people act in some kind of concert to ensure that their understandings are constructed as objects for each other to observe, creating a shared understanding and reconfirming their World together. In these ways, people have created a connection to the past, their distant and recent ancestors, as well as working towards a stable community for the future, by reinforcing their connected knowledge and beliefs, and setting them in stone.
SHoW’s research in spatial landscape analyses, the importance and relevance of special landscapes and very particular astronomical phenomena has produced significant results and has been, and is in the process of being, published through several articles in scientific journals in the fields of archaeology, history of astronomy, & human cognition. These results, and interpretations about those people who created megalithic monuments, have also been presented at several scientific and public events. Revelations include notions of time, resource management, power of the dead & rituals. This project’s article in the Journal of World Prehistory is the most popular in this journal for all of 2020-21! Over 3,210 downloads! It explains that, on the Isle of Mull, Scotland, people combined standing stones, the land, the cremated dead & water ways. It shows how dramatic visual events were played out using a spectacular show based on light and darkness, manipulated through monument location, demonstrating the significance of the connection between the standing stones and the Sun to life, and a lack of connection, to death. Download it here:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10963-020-09139-z(opens in new window). We await the first publication of results on the megalithic landscapes of Galicia from the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. In the meantime, here is the public preprint link to the paper:
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/y9xfg(opens in new window).
