Materiality, Personhood and Monumentality in Early Neolithic Britain

Abstract

Archaeological studies of the material and historical conditions of life have in recent years stimulated discussion of the relationality of people and material culture. Engagement with the material world is one context in which senses of personhood and identity emerge and are transformed. People and materiality are interanimated in the more or less transient events and actions of daily life. Personhood and the material world are loaded with sense and made meaningful through citation and reanimation of cultural values and tradition. This contribution discusses the contingent and possibly transient senses of personhood that may have been constituted in some specific material and historical circumstances relating to early Neolithic monuments in southern Britain. A case study focuses on the relationality of people, animals, earth, stone, architecture and material culture.