Creating World Views: Work-Expenditure Calculations for Funnel Beaker Megalithic Graves and Flint Axe Head Depositions in Northern Germany

Abstract

The creation, maintenance, and modification of prehistoric built spaces and structural landscapes required communities that engaged and interacted collectively. Starting from the appearance of early monumentality and depositional behaviour in Funnel Beaker communities, we trace the variation in this phenomenon among three study areas in what is now northern Germany. In doing so, we build on a specific perspective and approach, namely that of work-expenditure calculations for megalithic graves and flint axe heads. In the process, variable dynamics of construction and deposition activities within the Early and Middle Neolithic are revealed, which we regard as differentiated translations of widespread impulses, adapted to the needs of different socio-cultural communities. The similar developments seen in flint axe head depositions and in the construction of megalithic monuments are indicative of evolving spaces of memory, landscapes of cooperative collaboration, and an increasing structuring of local environments that seem to follow a specific understanding of, and interaction with, space.

Keywords

• collective action
• neolithic monumentality
• megalithic architecture
• neolithic ritual practices
• work expenditure