This book brings together the results of recent research on the Neolithic long cairns lying in the shadow of the Black Mountains in south-east Wales, focusing upon Penywyrlod and Gwernvale, the two best known tombs within the group, previously excavated in the 1970s. Important results lie in both new site detail and reassessment of the wider context. Small-scale excavation, geophysical survey and geological assessment at Penywyrlod size=2>- the largest of the Welsh long cairns - gave further information about the distinctive external and internal architecture of the monument. In turn, this opened the opportunity to reassess the pre-monument sequence at Gwernvale, with re-examination of both Mesolithic and Neolithic occupations, including timber structures and middens, lithic and pottery assemblages, and cereal remains. The frame for wider reassessment is given by fresh chronological modelling both of the monuments themselves, suggesting a sequence from Penywyrlod and Pipton to Ty Isaf and Gwernvale, probably spanning the 38th to 36th centuries cal BC, and of early Neolithic activity in south Wales and the Marches across the same sort of period. A detailed study of the major assemblages of human remains from the Black Mountains tombs includes evidence for diet, trauma and lifestyles of the populations represented. Recent isotope analysis of human remains from the tombs is also reviewed, implying social mobility and migration within local populations during the early Neolithic. This book makes a significant contribution to the study of tomb building, treatment of the dead, place making, and Neolithisation in western Britain. Viewed in the context of tombs within the Cotswold-Severn tradition as a whole, it leads to an appreciation of the local and regional distinctiveness of architecture and mortuary practice exhibited by the tombs in this area of south-east Wales, emerging as part of the intake of a significant inland area in the early centuries of the Neolithic.

The study of European prehistory has been revolutionized in recent years by the rapid growth rate of archeological discovery, advances in dating methods and the application of scientific techniques to archaeological material and new archaeological aims and frameworks of interpretation. Whereas previous work concentrated on the recovery and description of material remains, the main focus is now on the reconstruction of prehistoric societies and the explanation of their development. This volume provides that elementary and comprehensive synthesis of the new discoveries and the new interpretations of European prehistory. After and introductory chapter on the geographical setting and the development of prehistoric studies in Europe, the text is divided chronologically into nine chapters. Each one describes, with numerous maps, plans and drawings, the relevant archaeological data, and proceeds to a discussion of the societies they represent. Particular attention is paid to the major themes of recent prehistoric research, especially subsistence economy, trade, settlement, technology and social organization.

Problems in Neolithic Archaeology is a notable contribution to the debate about how we can write prehistory. Drawing on both processual and post-processual approaches, it reaffirms the central role of theory and interpretation while accepting as permanent the uncertainty which makes the testing of archaeological hypotheses difficult or even impossible. Dr Whittle asserts in particular the need for greater self-confidence and for the formulation of new theory and questions more appropriate to the archaeological record. The book's specific strength lies, however, in a close contextual study of the Neolithic period in western and central Europe. In this respect it provides an admirable complement to his textbook Neolithic Europe.

The current paradigm-changing ancient DNA revolution is offering unparalleled insights into central problems within archaeology relating to the movement of populations and individuals, patterns of descent, relationships and aspects of identity – at many scales and of many different kinds. The impact of recent ancient DNA results can be seen particularly clearly in studies of the European Neolithic, the subject of contributions presented in this volume. We now have new evidence for the movement and mixture of people at the start of the Neolithic, as farming spread from the east, and at its end, when the first metals as well as novel styles of pottery and burial practices arrived in the Chalcolithic. In addition, there has been a wealth of new data to inform complex questions of identities and relationships. The terms of archaeological debate for this period have been permanently altered, leaving us with many issues. This volume stems from the online day conference of the Neolithic Studies Group held in November 2021, which aimed to bring geneticists and archaeologists together in the same forum, and to enable critical but constructive inter-disciplinary debate about key themes arising from the application of advanced ancient DNA analysis to the study of the European Neolithic. The resulting papers gathered here are by both geneticists and archaeologists. Individually, they form a series of significant, up-to-date, period and regional syntheses of various manifestations of the Neolithic across the Near East and Europe, including particularly Britain and Ireland. Together, they offer wide-ranging reflections on the progress of ancient DNA studies, and on their future reach and character.

It is just over forty years since the start of the excavations of the Ascott-under-Wychwood long barrow (1965-69) under the direction of Don Benson. The excavations belonged to the latter part of a great period of barrow digging in southern Britain, which was ending just as, by striking contrast, intensified investigation and fieldwork at causewayed enclosures were beginning. Although a long gap has passed since the excavations took place, they have nonetheless produced a rich and important set of results, and the analysis has been enhanced by more recent techniques. The site now joins Burn Ground and Hazleton North as one of only three Cotswold long barrows or cairns to have been more or less fully excavated. The barrow had been built in two main stages, in a series of bays defined by lines of stakes and stone, and filled mainly with earth and turf, with some stone; it was enclosed or faced by stone walling, the outermost being of very fine quality. The barrow contained two opposed pairs of stone cists, each with a short passage from the long sides of the monument. The cists and passages contained the remains of some 21 people (of all ages and both sexes), probably deposited in a variety of forms from fleshed inhumations to incomplete secondary remains and cremations. The barrow was built in the 38th century cal BC and was probably one of the earliest such constructions in the region. It was probably in use for only three to five generations, lasting into the 37th century cal BC. Occupation features from the early fourth millennium cal BC included small pits, hearths and two small timber post structures, and there were finds of pottery, flint, axe fragments, stone querns and animal bone. People used cattle, sheep and pigs, and there is a range of wild species, especially in the midden. The authors of this report not only document the finds and research, but also address wider questions of how the early Neolithic inhabitants viewed their society through the barrow, and how the development of the site reflected memory and interaction with a changing world.

The hunt is on for the most detailed histories of people in the remote past that we can achieve. We can now routinely, through Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates, construct much more precise chronologies than previously, down to the scales of lifetimes and generations, and even on occasion of decades. Better timing opens estimates of duration and the evaluation of the tempo of change. Rather than the conventional default perspective of generally slow change and much continuity, in blocks of time a couple of centuries long or more, we can now examine sequences that are often much more dynamic, quicker-changing, and from time to time more interrupted and punctuated than we had previously imagined. We can now write much more precise and ambitious narratives about the actions, decisions and choices of past people; the pre- can and should come out of prehistory. Despite the absence of written records, such narratives can be aligned much more closely with those of history and its concerns with the specific and the particular, and can serve to rid archaeology of its addictions to generalisation and fuzzy chronology. Coming out of a recent major project funded by the European Research Council, and with the experience of Gathering Time (Oxbow Books 2011) also behind it, The Times of their Lives sets out this case. It considers the varying timescales of archaeology, history and anthropology, and the construction of precise chronologies. It examines the reach of precision in a series of case studies across Neolithic Europe to do with big themes of settlement, monumentality and materiality through the sixth to third millennia cal BC. It goes on to consider the implications of much more precise chronologies for narratives of social differentiation and change through the Neolithic sequence, and reflects on how to combine the varying timescales presented by turning points in the long term, by the slow time of daily life, subsistence practices and population growth, and by lifetime and generational developments. It ends by looking ahead to a future archaeology, exploiting the best of archaeological science, which can write precise and detailed narratives for the people of early history. Though focused on the European Neolithic, The Times of their Lives sets a challenge for archaeology as a whole.

From about 5500 cal BC to soon after 5000 cal BC, the lifeways of the first farmers of central Europe, the LBK culture (Linearbandkeramik), are seen in distinctive practices of longhouse use, settlement forms, landscape choice, subsistence, material culture and mortuary rites. Within the five or more centuries of LBK existence a dynamic sequence of changes can be seen in, for instance, the expansion and increasing density of settlement, progressive regionalisation in pottery decoration, and at the end some signs of stress or even localised crisis. Although showing many features in common across its very broad distribution, however, the LBK phenomenon was not everywhere the same, and there is a complicated mixture of uniformity and diversity. This major study takes a strikingly large regional sample, from northern Hungary westwards along the Danube to Alsace in the upper Rhine valley, and addresses the question of the extent of diversity in the lifeways of developed and late LBK communities, through a wide-ranging study of diet, lifetime mobility, health and physical condition, the presentation of the bodies of the deceased in mortuary ritual. It uses an innovative combination of isotopic (principally carbon, nitrogen and strontium, with some oxygen), osteological and archaeological analysis to address difference and change across the LBK, and to reflect on cultural change in general.

This volume explores the landscape settings of megalithic chambered monuments in Wales. Set against a broader theoretical discussion on the significance of the landscape, the authors consider the role of visual landscapes in prehistory, meanings attached to the landscape, and the values and beliefs invested in it. Wales is rich in Neolithic monuments, but the general absence of certain classic monumental forms found in the rest of Britain and Ireland, such as causewayed enclosures, henges, and cursus monuments, seems to have marginalised the Welsh record from many wider discussions on the Neolithic. Instead of seeing Wales as an area which lacks many of these 'classic' components, Cummings and Whittle argue that Wales has its own unique and individual Neolithic which is simply different from the Neolithic found further to the east. It is suggested that this difference may relate to an essentially mobile existence, with strong links back to the Mesolithic period. The authors present three detailed case studies, examining the settings of sites in south-west, north-west and south-east Wales. They outline the history of research for each region, including the previous classification of the monuments and any excavations, and describe the specific landscape settings of the monuments. They assess the significance of a variety of landscape features which would have been visible from the monuments, in particular emphasising the mythological and symbolic significance of the sea, rivers and mountains. An illustrated inventory of sites completes the volume.