Chris Scarre (Durham University, UK)

The islands of north-west Europe hold a special place in the study of Neolithic monumentality through the unusual density and character of the remains that many of them contain. This has sometimes been taken to indicate that islands were special places during the Neolithic, reserved perhaps for particular activities, or that the communities living on them had a special status. This is true for several islands or island groups around the shores of Brittany and western Britain, such as Molène, Scilly, and Arran. Were these vibrant insular communities, or places whose significance derives largely from their relationship to adjacent mainlands? Recent fieldwork on Herm in the Channel Islands suggests that settlement and funerary activity may have been interspersed, but does not exclude the possibility that pilgrimage and the attraction of special places, including certain islands, may have played an important role in determining the choice of burial locations by Neolithic communities.