Round mounds and monumentality in the British Neolithic and beyond - Jim Leary

This volume, the tenth published collection of seminar papers
from the Neolithic Studies Group, is based upon a conference that
took place at the British Museum in November 2008. The meeting
aimed to consider the chronology and development of Neolithic
round mounds; their changing form and use; their relationships to
contemporary cultural, ancestral and natural landscapes; the
extent to which they provide scope for identifying local and
regional social organization; and, not least, why they were
round. Following the conference, further papers were offered for
this edited volume, widening and broadening the initial
discussion. The papers are arranged in rough geographic order starting in the
north and working southwards before heading across the Irish Sea
and then the Atlantic. Following a wide-ranging discussion of
round mounds across the world, two papers discuss aspects of
Scottish round mounds, before moving down to the Isle of Man, the
Neolithic round mounds of the Yorkshire Wolds, Liffs Low in the
Derbyshire Peak District, and round mounds on the Cotswolds. The
volume then moves to Wessex, starting with a discussion of
Silbury Hill, and followed by a re-evaluation of the Great Barrow
at Knowlton, Conquer Barrow at Mount Pleasant, and the Hatfield
Barrow at Marden. How archaeologists and heritage managers choose
to interpret round mounds is the subject of the next paper, using
Silbury Hill as the primary case study. This is followed by a
broad discussion of circular traditions, particularly formative
henges, in Wales and adjacent counties, round burial mounds in
the Boyne Valley, Ireland, such as Knowth, Dowth and Newgrange,
and Irish round mounds containing portal tombs. By way of
comparison with the evidence from the British Isles, the volume
then crosses over to North America for a broad discussion of
mound-building traditions there. Rounding off the volume is
another wide-ranging essay on the nature of round mounds, which
challenges our very understanding and interpretation of them.