The early Neolithic of Northern Europe

In Britain, Ireland and Southern Scandinavia, the Early Neolithic is characterised by monumental constructions (e.g. causewayed enclosures, dolmens) and by specific traditions of depositional practice. Some aspects of these practices are similar in both regions, for example the shapes and use of monuments, their overall developmental sequences, and the traditions of deposition (kinds of objects and their treatment, locations chosen and so on). In spite of these similarities, however, there has been little explicit comparative work, largely also because of research paradigms that tended to stress local and regional peculiarities over wide-spread similarities.

Given the increasing evidence for group and personal mobility in recent years, this begs the question of whether such similarities are the result of accidental convergence on the basis of a broadly shared “Neolithic” lifeway, or rather the result of contacts, whether direct or as part of a large-scale, but loose network of interaction. The papers in this volume provide initial case studies to address this issue. Regional case studies of Britain, Ireland, southern Scandinavia, northern France and northern Germany form the basis for reflecting on the similarities and differences of sites and materials to those from adjacent areas, and on the forms and rhythms any potential contact might have taken. Authors draw on both archaeological studies of specific material categories or site patterns, as well as on aDNA evidence or modelling of 14C dates. Papers also offer theoretical reflections on the modalities of contacts and connections at this time, defining more directed questions and priorities to further develop this line of research in the future.

Table of Contents

The Early Neolithic of northern Europe: new approaches to migration, movement and social connection
Vicki Cummings, Rune Iversen and Daniela Hofmann

Funerary practices on the fringe. The social dimensions of the Neolithic burial chamber of Stein and its European connections
Luc Amkreutz

Looking for gaps. Fourth-millennium cal BC Neolithic monuments from western France and beyond
Luc Laporte

The Stone Age boats of Atlantic Europe and the adjacent Nordic regions
Bettina Schulz Paulsson

Crossing the straits: islands, monuments, and maritime mobility in Neolithic north-west Europe
Chris Scarre

The end of the beginning of archaeogenomics. Beginnings and ends in Neolithic Britain
Tom Booth

Active artefacts and mutable identities: the role of material things in the formation of the British Neolithic
Julian Thomas

A provisional model for the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Britain
Alasdair Whittle

The material culture of long-distance connections: the lithic evidence from Neolithic Orkney
Hugo Anderson-Whymark

Brú na Bóinne in the Early(ish) Neolithic
Stephen Davis

Notes from the archives: re-analysis of skeletal assemblages from three later fourth millennium BC Irish passage tombs
Jessica Smyth, Jonny Geber, Neil Carlin, Muiris O’Sullivan and Seren Griffiths

Pots, stones, bones and a grain. The recipe for a more nuanced view of Neolithisation in Britain, Jutland and Switzerland
Martin Hinz

A comparison between the Neolithic monuments in the Sarup environs, the British Isles and Ireland
Niels H. Andersen

Understanding the role of flint artefacts at Neolithic causewayed enclosures in Britain and southern Scandinavia
Peter Bye-Jensen

The paradox of the Babel fish. Culture, geology and society in Neolithic Europe
Anne Teather, Lasse Vilien Sørensen

Neolithisation in Sweden, based on directly dated cereals
Karl-Göran Sjögren

Times of uncertainty at the end of the Early Neolithic in south-east Norway? Depositions of long thin-butted flint axes in the Inner Oslo Fjord area indicate social interaction and negotiation across Scandinavia in a period of change
Almut Schülke

Entangled data: a review of data biases in archaeology and their effect on European Neolithisation
Alfredo Cortell-Nicolau

Daniela Hofmann has obtained her PhD from Cardiff University and is currently Junior Professor at Hamburg University, Germany. She has published extensively on funerary archaeology, as well as the figurines and domestic architecture of the central European Neolithic, but she is also interested in instances of structured deposition and in spheres of exchange.

Vicki Cummings is Reader in Archaeology in the School of Forensic and Applied Sciences, University of Central Lancashire where she specialises in the Mesolithic and Neolithic of Britain and Ireland, with a particular focus on monuments and landscape. She has a broader interest in hunting and gathering populations, interpretive archaeology and stone tools.

Mathias Bjørnevad-Ahlqvist is a researcher specialising in ritualised practices of the Mesolithic and Neolithic. He has particularly focused on interdisciplinary and biographical approaches to hoarding. Furthermore, he has published on heritage-related issues with Native American and First Nation objects in Danish museums, and he has worked as Research Assistant on the DFF-funded Deep Histories of Migration project, which assessed the connectivity across Northern Europe in the Early Neolithic based on the statistical analyses of ritual practices.

Rune Iversen is Associate Professor of Archaeology at the University of Copenhagen. His research focuses on the European Neolithic, including migrations, cultural interactions, art and iconography. He is currently PI of two research projects, one of them (Deep histories of migration: the early Neolithic around the North Sea) financed by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (IRFD, Grant 0132-00022B) and co-led with Daniela Hofmann and Vicki Cummings. He is also principal editor of the Danish Journal of Archaeology.