Going over: people and their times

This concluding chapter does not aim to be a magisterial overview or a comprehensive summary. The preceding chapters speak for themselves of the range and quality of research currently being carried out across north-west Europe relevant to the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition. Instead, the chapter offers some brief, personal reflections on what we are doing well and what we could still do better, and thus tries to define some of the continuing challenges for future research.

Mistrust traditions, consider innovations? The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in southern Scandinavia

For the individuals participating in the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition, one question must have recurrently emerged as a prime concern: ‘Should I mistrust traditions and consider innovations’? This concern encompassed the introduction of new material culture and new techniques of obtaining food. It also involved new ways of conceiving the world and people's place in it. And it was affected by important – sometimes catastrophic – changes in the physical environment. It must be emphasized that the question of whether to mistrust traditions and consider innovations is not only a matter of concern for prehistoric actors. It is also important for those who are making prehistory today. As is presented in this chapter, the facts presented for south Scandinavia have been variously interpreted as indicating the rapid introduction of a ‘Neolithic’ package with new ways of thinking and acting, as well as reflecting a mixture of traditions and gradually incorporated innovations. Future research into the transition should focus on combining new problem-oriented excavation with fresh ideas about how the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic occurred.

From fish and seal to sheep and cattle: new research into the process of neolithisation in northern Germany

The border between the Mesolithic and the Neolithic in Central Europe is traditionally defined on the basis of subsistence strategy. It is the development from hunter-gatherer groups in the forests of the early Holocene to the first farmers. The debate on the character of this process has been going on for over 100 years. This chapter presents results of new research on this subject, with an emphasis on northern Germany.

The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Scotland: a review and new evidence from Tiree

Although both the Mesolithic and Neolithic of western Scotland have been studied since the early 20th century, our knowledge of both periods remains limited, as does our understanding of the transition between them – whether this is entirely cultural in nature or involves the arrival of new Neolithic populations and the demise of the indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. The existing data provide seemingly contradictory evidence, with that from dietary analysis of skeletal remains suggesting population replacement and that from settlement and technology indicating continuity. After reviewing this evidence, this chapter briefly describes ongoing fieldwork in the Inner Hebrides that aims to gain a more complete understanding of Mesolithic settlement patterns, without which there can only be limited progress on understanding the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition.

From midden to megalith? The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Britain

The transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic in Britain and Ireland remains one of the most debated and contested transitions of prehistory. Much more complex than a simple transition from hunting and gathering to farming, the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Britain has been discussed not only as an economic and technological transformation, but also as an ideological one. In western Britain in particular, with its wealth of Neolithic monuments, considerable emphasis has been placed on the role of monumentality in the transition process. Over the past decade the author‧s research has concentrated on the early Neolithic monumental traditions of western Britain, a deliberate focus on areas outside the more ‘luminous’ centres of Wessex, the Cotswold–Severn region, and Orkney. This chapter discusses the transition in western Britain, with an emphasis on the monuments of this region. In particular, it discusses the areas around the Irish Sea – west Wales, the Isle of Man, south-west and western Scotland – as well as referring to the sequence on the other side of the Irish Sea, specifically eastern Ireland.

Houses, bodies and tombs

The house is among the features that are supposed to characterize early farming. Its presence implies sedentism, while its absence suggests a mobile pattern of settlement. That idea raises many problems. What applies to individual houses also applies to settlements. British archaeologists have been frustrated by their inability to locate what they had expected to find. If people were growing crops and raising livestock, then surely they must have occupied more substantial shelters than mobile hunter-gatherers, and their living sites ought to be easier to identify. That has been difficult to demonstrate, with the result that at different times a wide variety of earthwork enclosures have been claimed as permanent settlements; ditches and pits have been recruited as subterranean dwellings; and even mortuary monuments have been assigned to the living rather than the dead. This chapter argues that the survival of houses has been given an importance that it cannot support. It suggests that the reason why the field evidence poses so many problems is because the histories of the buildings in which people had lived were reflected by the ways in which their bodies were treated when they died.

The temporality of transformation: dating the early development of the southern British Neolithic

This chapter has three aims: first, to draw attention to now-routine methods of refining radiocarbon chronologies; second, to sketch some of the first results from the application of such methods to early (but not yet really the earliest) parts of the southern British Neolithic sequence; and third, to discuss on a provisional basis the implications of a more refined sequence for our understanding of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition and the very early development of the southern British Neolithic. In so doing, the distinctions between chronology, history, and temporality become harder to sustain.

Mesolithic myths

This chapter highlights important new trends in Mesolithic archaeology by presenting some myths. Put crudely, myths help us to tell stories, or guide other actions. Whilst myths may have their origins in a real event or process, such stories also grow in the telling, and take on a life of their own. And myths, of course, reveal much about the community within which they exist. The chapter explores three myths of the Mesolithic, the first of which explores ‘Mesolithic monuments’. The second relates to analytical scale. Finally, the myth in early Mesolithic Britain is explored.

The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the Paris Basin: a review

The last thirty years have seen increasing numbers of excavations of early Neolithic settlements in the main Paris Basin river valleys. These early Neolithic sites can be seen as part of the Danubian period, and specifically belong to the Rubané and Villeneuve–Saint-Germain–Blicquy cultures. The Paris Basin is also an area with many excavated Mesolithic sites. This chapter presents a review of research into neolithization processes on the westernmost edge of Danubian expansion. The study is mainly based on lithic finds, because recent work has greatly improved our knowledge not only of Early Neolithic, but also of Mesolithic, flint industries in the Paris basin.

Exploiting molecular and isotopic signals at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition

The paucity of cultural finds at this key stage in human prehistory increases the need to fully and effectively exploit all the sources of evidence that exist. Organic residues, preserved in association with skeletal remains and pottery, have the potential to provide various levels of information relating to diet and subsistence, and thus the wider interactions of ancient humans with their environment. This chapter explores the potential to enhance the rigour and level of information retrievable from the biochemical constituents of skeletal remains and pottery by exploiting new sources of molecular and isotopic information. It addresses the following possibilities: (i) deriving palaeodietary information from human remains via the complementary use of amino acid and lipid components; and (ii) assessing terrestrial and marine contributions to organic residues preserved in skeletal remains and pottery.