Abstract EN:

A space cannot be inhabited without inhabiting its history. Such history is endured as the contingency of historical processes, but it is also handed down as collective memory.This thesis provides an analysis of European Bronze and Iron Age landscapes and territories from the perspective of social memory (end 3rd –1st millennium BC). Four studies, covering two study areas are presented: the interfluve Seine-Yonne (Parisian Basin) and the peninsula of Istria with Kvarner Bay, on the shores of the Adriatic Sea (Croatia).The case studies are grouped under two main themes. The first theme examines memorial landmarks, necropoles in particular. How were these places used and maintained, what was their purpose? It follows that besides commemorating the past, burial places were used to maintain and model social time.The second theme turns to territory, namely its institutionalisation. During the later Prehistory, the appropriation of space must have been intimately related to economic and other everyday practices, but the hold over such space was often expressed through the maintenance of necropoles; as if the hold over present passed through the hold over the past. What was the character of such territories, through which practices were they maintained? Two studies grouped in this section rely on visibility analysis in order to evaluate the visual impact of memorial and landmark structures (burial mounds and hillforts). This approach provides clues on the “landscape discourse”, maintained through various, conspicuous interventions in the landscape.