Land ownership and landscape belief

Landscapes are cultural constructions that are shaped by and always shaping the people who dwell in them. Monuments and monumental landscapes are complex and detailed archaeological data sets that address issues of social structure and social transformation, the position of the individual in society, and ways in which that society constituted itself through communal action and memory. Mortuary monuments are highly charged parts of these cultural landscapes and are key to the understanding of ritual, social space, the disposal of the dead, and space as property. Studies of the mortuary monuments of the Orcadian Neolithic and their associated settlements and landscapes provide a framework to demonstrate different approaches to the broader context of monuments. A selection of Bronze Age monuments from Mongolia demonstrates the monumental manifestation of the transition to nomadic pastoralism and the emergence of ideologies of individuality and lineage through changes in mortuary landscapes.