Enclosing the Neolithic: Recent Studies in Britain and Europe

Part I of this collection presents papers by British and Irish archaeologists involved in the study of circular earthen monuments at both a national and regional level. Scotland, Ireland, Wessex and Kent form regional syntheses against a historical perspective. That the earth circle is not a purely insular phenomenon is then demonstrated by regional European syntheses. These overviews, gathering together a great body of data from across Europe into a single volume, offer comparative possibilities and a springboard for future research. Enclosure is the central theme: the need for enclosure, the place of enclosures within the biographies of given locales, the function(s) of the enclosures, their date, their origins, their variation over time, their roles in society. Everywhere their emergence and demise seems to represent ideological changes, perhaps related to sun worship or at least celestial observation and the emergence of new pan-European warrior elites in the mature Bronze Age.