Cattle raiding is one of the big things in the early Neolithic. The idea that you were killed in conflict might be something that qualified you to be almost a martyr or hero. Often the sort of population that seems to be chosen for burial in these tombs has special qualities about them. There's a site called Warbarrow down on Cranbourne Chase where people seem to have had different disabilities.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss megaliths - huge stones placed in the landscape, often visually striking and highly prominent.
Such stone monuments in Britain and Ireland mostly date from the Neolithic period, and the most ancient are up to 6,000 years old. In recent decades, scientific advances have enabled archaeologists to learn a large amount about megalithic structures and the people who built them, but much about these stones remains unknown and mysterious.
With
Vicki Cummings
Professor of Neolithic Archaeology at the University of Central Lancashire
Julian Thomas
Professor of Archaeology at the University of Manchester
and
Susan Greaney
Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Exeter.