Summary
In this presentation we trace how monumental landscapes, their construction, transformation and endurance, render prehistoric communities visible to us. Focusing especially on northwestern Iberia, this work focuses on the megalithic landscapes of Neolithic Galicia. Monumentality in a broader sense is explored as a long-term process emerging from changing engagements with space, memory, and social practice. Early monumentality not only materialises these engagements but also possesses a explicitly active element. The first monuments domesticate space, alter the societies that live with them, and inscribe enduring social meanings into the landscape. Drawing on current archaeological fieldwork, geophysical, geochemical and spatial analyses, as well as neuroscientific research, this work looks into how megalithic architectures structured perception, organised movement, and articulated changing societal rationalities over time. By integrating theoretical perspectives, this contribution highlights how monuments acted as anchors of collective memory, formalising certain social practices and scaffolding others. Their long afterlives continued to shape communities far beyond their initial creation, mediating social tensions and reflecting recurrent cycles of inequality, negotiation, and resistance.
Keywords
Monumentality. Megalithism. Landscape Archaeology.