Inscribed Across the Landscape by Roy Loveday

Inscribed Across the Landscape by Roy Loveday

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Summary

A study of Cursus monuments which addresses their purpose

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Inscribed Across the Landscape by Roy Loveday

Between the anonymity of the Early Neolithic with its collective tombs and the invisibility of the Late Neolithic with its great empty henges, there lies a shadowy Middle Neolithic when individuals emerge from the gloom armed with a variety of prestige artefacts. Once thought to have been an aberrant phase when monuments had lost their significance, it is now clear it was the period when the very largest of them were in use - the enigmatic cursuses. Cursus are intriguing monuments. Far bigger - and in many cases far better laid out - than anything that had gone before or was to follow in the next 3000 years. Leviathans that swallowed people and land; signalling devices probably to be read from above by the gods rather than on the ground by figures dwarfed by their dimensions. Stubbornly empty, these 'British Nasca lines' are nevertheless susceptible to reasoned enquiry that lays bare both their conceptual origins and their role in a society on a trajectory to individual power.
ROY LOVEDAY completed a PhD on cursus monuments. He has written extensively about them and all aspects of ritual monuments from megalithic art to the Stonehenge barrow cemeteries. His particular interest is in the causes of the Middle Neolithic transformation. He is an Honorary Fellow of the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at Leicester University.
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780752436524
ISBN 10 075243652X
Title Inscribed Across the Landscape
Author Roy Loveday
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher The History Press Ltd
Year published 2002-03-01
Number of pages 128
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.