Material artefacts, structures and technologies are central to human efforts to measure, structure and valuate aspects of their world; that is, their importance is frequently epistemic as much as - or rather than - mechanical. The two case studies presented in this seminar explore how people in the European Neolithic and Bronze Age acted creatively to conceptualise and organise such important phenomena as seasonal rythms, activities and resource quantities, trade and exchange. Together, they raise interesting issues concerning the roles that these specific ways of ordering the world played in the broader cultural developments that they formed part of.