Monumentality and Landscape: Linear Earthworks in Britain
A research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust and hosted by the
Institute of Archaeology, UCL and Department of Archaeology, Durham University
The Monumentality and Landscape: Linear Earthworks in Britain project seeks to understand how and why human societies chose to delineate landscape in monumental form. Our project will compare—for the first time—the two periods when tangible large scale territoriality emerged in the British landscape: The Iron Age and the early middle ages.
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Our investigation will assess social complexity through the lens of social and organizational capacity and the light that this research sheds on a fundamentally important shift in human behaviour and political identity. We will provide the first national characterization of this exceptional but neglected body of evidence applying scientific dating within a cultural setting.