burial monuments

Lights, Camera, Action!

Continuing his series of articles entitled ‘Travels in an Antique Land’, independent traveller Karl Harris guides us round four Theban tombs recently opened to the public.

Megaliths of the World: Volume I

REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH The burial monumentality associated with the Neolithic is very much a global phenomenon. This desire to bury the dead in an artificial cave covered with an earthen or cairn mound occurs over at least six millennia.…

The First Stones: Penywyrlod, Gwernvale, and the Black Mountains Neolithic long cairns of south-east Wales

REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH The two Cotswold-Severn Neolithic burial-ritual monuments of Penywyrlod and Gwernvale occupy the western hinterlands of the Black Mountains in Breconshire, Wales. Both monuments are only part of a handful of Neolithic burial-ritual monuments in Wales to…

Above Two Roman carved stone heads, including this portrait of a woman, have gone on display at the Discover Bucks Museum.

Museum news: Roman sculptures on display in Buckinghamshire, and hieroglyphs exhibition announced at the British Museum

The latest on exhibitions, acquisitions, and key decisions.

LEFT Gwern Einion’s steeply sloping capstone stands against a dramatic sky in Gwynedd. What was the purpose of dolmen monuments like these, and were they always denuded stone frames, or had they originally been covered by mounds of earth?

Designed to enchant: the great dolmens of Neolithic northern Europe

The word ‘dolmen’ – derived from the Breton taol maen (‘stone table’) – is regarded as a folk term for Neolithic monuments that consist of a massive capstone supported by three or more upright stones, or orthostats. Archaeologists have sought to subdivide these monuments into more precise typological categories, but Vicki Cummings and Colin Richards, the authors of Monuments in the Making, politely suggest that they are wrong to do so. Is it time to reclaim the word? Chris Catling reports.