Monumentality in Neolithic Britain: The Case of Southwest Scotland Julian Thomas School of Arts, Languages and Cultures University of Manchester Introduction The role of monuments of earth, timber and stone has long been identified as one of the key issues in the Neolithic archaeology of northwest Europe. And, as Andrew Sherratt once argued (1997: 148), it was the further development of monuments of prodigious size and scale, organised into ‘complexes’ that developed over an appreciable period of time, that set Britain and Armorica apart from central Europe in the later Neolithic. The defining characteristic of a monument may be seen as either its massiveness, its durability, or its commemorative capacity (Thomas 2013: 315), and consequentially archaeologists have addressed the phenomenon in a variety of different ways, only some of which are mutually compatible. Monument building has been identified as a conspicuous expenditure of effort, which may serve as a manifestation of elite power (Trigger 1990: 124). The scale of construction might represent an index of social complexity, reflected in the ability to mobilize labour (Renfrew 1973). But alternatively, building projects could be a means of bringing social cohesion or personal prestige into being, rather than reflecting any pre- existing situation, and this might prove a risky undertaking (Richards 2004: 108). The imposing scale and permanence of monuments can render them as presiding features of landscapes over the long term, and in traditional societies lacking state institutions, they can be connected with forms of authority that devolve from the past (Bradley 1984: 61). But monuments are also meaningful architecture, whose component materials may be significant, and which may serve as the settings for assemblies and performances of various kinds, some but not all of which might be ritualized in character. Furthermore, their physical endurance may have the result that their meanings change over time in ways that were not intended by their builders (Osborne 2014: 5). Therefore, the progressive development of regional groupings of monuments may be either planned or haphazard, with each new structure responding to and transforming the significance of earlier acts of construction. This contribution discusses a series of Neolithic monuments in Dumfries and Galloway investigated by the author between 1994 and 2002, with the support of Historic Scotland (Fig. 1). These are pertinent not only to the developments in northern England dealt with in this volume, but also to the wider issues mentioned above. While these projects are now published (Thomas 2007; 2015), the intention here is to revisit them in the light of more recent work. A particular feature of the region is the presence of complexes made up of earth and timber structures, which are often inconspicuous in the modern landscape. This has contributed to the comparative neglect of the Neolithic archaeology of southwest Scotland. As Gordon Barclay once remarked, had the group of monuments at Dunragit been built of stone instead of wood, they would now be as celebrated as Stonehenge (2001: 13). The sites discussed here are concentrated in two groups, around Dumfries town and on the northern edge of Luce Bay, south of Stranraer.