Megaliths, Cultural Landscape and the Production of Ancestors

The book presents the results of ten years of fieldwork in the Senegambia in an anthropological archaeology perspective. The research is regional is scope and integrates different categories of data to decipher what the local megalithic tradition was all about. Tested settlement were selected according to their position in the settlement hierarchy and location in the Petit Bao Bolon drainage. The mortuary practices represented in the excavated monuments are diverse and versatile, signalling varying degrees of ritual intensity. Clearly there is no isomorphic relationship between any monument variant and any inhumation category. All the recorded instances appear to be variations on the same theme, that is. mapping the landscape, producing ancestors enshrined in highly elaborate and labour-intensive monolith-circles, to support the living. Celebrating the dead is celebrating life.