Draft_HomeMega

The Leverhulme Trust-funded project (2024-2027) ‘Megalithic Origins: the emergence of monumentality in Neolithic Western Europe’, led by Dr Marta Díaz-Guardamino, aims to determine the context in which monumentality first appeared in Europe. The emergence of megalithic monumentality is a pivotal development in the history of human social complexity, yet the connection between early monumentality and the agricultural transition in prehistoric Europe requires clarification.

State-of-the-art dating techniques and contextual analysis will be applied to clarify whether monumentality arose independently in different regions, and in what social and symbolic contexts, with the objective of elucidating why and how apparently dispersed and relatively distant communities used early monuments in similar ways.