This is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Oxford Journal of Archaeology. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in OXFORD JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 27(3) 217–239 (2008) 1 CHARACTERIZING THE EVOLUTION OF VISUAL LANDSCAPES IN THE LATE PREHISTORY OF SOUTHWEST MORBIHAN (BRITTANY, FRANCE) Elías LOPEZ-ROMERO GONZALEZ DE LA ALEJA Keywords: Visibility Analysis, Late Prehistory, Megaliths, Brittany, Morbihan. Abstract In the context of territorial analyses in Archaeology the visual attributes of sites play a key role in the definition of location strategies. This paper studies the Neolithic evidence from the south-western Morbihan area in Brittany (France) from a visual point of view, integrating the previous Mesolithic and the later Bronze Age occupation for the region so as to understand the diachronic evolution of the visual settlement patterns. The role played by the sea seems to be significant throughout the whole occupation of the area, but differences in both intervisibility of the sites and extension of visual areas allow us to make particular observations on different cultural uses of the landscape through time. 1. THEORETICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXTS The Morbihan area (southern Brittany, France) is well known for the number and magnitude of its Neolithic monuments and the profusion of research that has been carried out on them. The region delimited by the Blavet and the Laïta rivers (Figure1), on the west side of the Quiberon area was a main focus for settlement throughout the Neolithic period. Like the Quiberon