PLACES OF TRANSFORMATION: BUILDING MONUMENTS FROM WATER AND STONE IN THE NEOLITHIC OF THE IRISH SEA Chris Fowler & Vicki Cummings (University of Manchester & Cardiff University) Using the Irish Sea area as a case-study, we argue that both sites and landscapes can be under- stood as containing a series of components procured from the landscape and from human, animal, and object bodies.These components were organized in a way that commented on and related to specific cultural relationships between these different locations and through the sub- stances found within them. This idea is explored by examining Neolithic monuments, material culture, and natural materials in southwest Wales, northwest Wales, the Isle of Man, and south- west Scotland.We trace some metaphorical schemes which were integral to Neolithic activity in this part of the Irish Sea. In particular, we highlight the metaphorical connections between water and stone in places associated with transformation, particularly the repeated transforma- tion of human bodies.We suggest that the series of associations present in the Neolithic were not invested with a uniform meaning but, instead, were polyvalent, subject to conflicting inter- pretations, contextually specific and variable through both space and time. The relationship between these elements was therefore dependent on the contexts of their association. Never- theless, the association of water and stone can be found repeatedly throughout the Neolithic world and may have been the medium of a powerful trope within broader conceptions of the world. This article is intended as a preliminary consideration of these issues (particularly the links between stone, mountains, water, quartz, shell, and human remains) and is offered as a thinking-point for ongoing research in this area. Introduction: places of water and stone Megalithic monuments dating from the Neolithic period (c.4,000-2,400 BC) are found all along the coasts of the Irish Sea. There is evidence that people in the Irish Sea zone were in contact with one another during the Neolithic period. Material culture moved across the Irish Sea from Ireland to Britain and vice versa (Cooney 2000; Saville 1994; Sheridan 1986). Furthermore, the monuments scattered along the shores of the Irish Sea share a number of characteristics which, in com- bination with the distinctive material culture found in association with these sites, suggests that the Irish Sea was an area of cultural interaction in the Neolithic.We have chosen the eastern side of the Irish Sea as a case-study through which to explore the connections created between water and stone.We are not suggesting that the eastern Irish Sea zone constitutes a bounded region, but it contains over one hundred megalithic monuments which provide an ideal case-study for think- ing about how places and bodies were transformed in Neolithic practices. This article therefore focuses on southwest Wales, northwest Wales, southwest Scotland, © Royal Anthropological Institute 2003. J. Roy. anthrop. Inst. (N.S.) 9, 1-20