Building Space: The Structural Model of Megalithic Space

An abstract model of the organisation of the monumental landscape has been proposed for Galicia, NW Iberia. This model uncovers an order behind the empirical reality of the megalithic landscape which, to the bare sight of a modern observer (removed from either megalithic rationality or the one embedded in a rural vernacular tradition), appears to be random, contingent or disorganised.

In contrast to this impression of disorder (natural for any pre-hermeneutic observation, prior to the understanding of meaning), the relationships of the megalithic mounds (called mámoas in Galician language) among each other, with the physiography and the elements of the natural topography, with movement and transit, and with the visual impact and references, materializes the logic of the prehistoric megalithic landscape. These elements show a regularity that is the result of certain rules or principles (it will be discussed later whether this is, in fact, structural) that regulate the location of the mámoas and give rise to a certain pattern of order, of imposition of the megalithic cultural order on the world, and configure a structural model of the megalithic landscape. Such is our proposal here and hereinafter we will test it, calling attention of megalithic scholars to the fact that something similar should happen in any other megalithic landscape throughout Europe. “structural” here means that it is an abstract organisational model of the empirical landscape, a model to which the organisation of the empirical reality (or ground reality) can be reduced.

Megalithism. Neolithic. Structural Model of Space. Northwestern Spain. Landscape.