Islamic Lives of Iberian Megaliths

Abstract

Modernist archaeology involves the dating and ordering of events, construction phases, objects, people, or processes in well-bounded and discrete sequences. The notion that objects or monuments date to one time or one cultural phase, however, is problematic, particularly in the case of large stone monuments, such as megaliths, whose construction and use are generally dated to the Neolithic, between 6000 and 2500 BCE. This paper examines the methodological challenges of such work and surveys what the archaeological record reveals about the nature of Andalusi engagements with megaliths.