Betylmania? - Small Standing Stones and the Megaliths of South-West Britain.

Abstract

This paper calls attention to a previously neglected element of thebroad repertoire of monumental megalithic structures that characterize thelater third and second millennia BC across the British Isles – extremely smallstanding stones. Despite their frequency and the complex arrangements andassociations they embody, these miniliths are rarely recorded in detail andfrequently marginalized to a generic background. As a result, they are largelyabsent from interpretative accounts. Drawing upon recent debates regardingmateriality and monument form, alongside the results of excavations explicitlytargeting tiny stone settings, the discussion argues that the phenomenon ofraising and fixing small uprights was not only widespread and persistent, butsheds important light upon the beliefs and ideas driving monumentconstruction during the later Neolithic and Bronze Ages