Agricultural History Review, Volume 52 Part 2 (2004), p. 207

Once upon a time, the start of the neolithic stood uncomplicatedly for the beginning of agriculture settled existence, in the case of Britain and Ireland from around 4000 BC as the chronology is currently understood. Farmers farm, and do so in one place, agriculture and settled existence reinforcing one another. In older model, farmers also tend to breed farmers, and the beginnings of the neolithic were mostly ascribed colonizers from abroad rather than to indigenous populations. Over the last twenty to thirty years of research, much more complicated possibilities have begun emerge. The process by which agriculture was established may have been much more drawn out, it suggested, with the keeping of animals perhaps more important initially than the cultivation of cereals. some regions at least, the neolithic seems to be characterized by settlement other than permanent long-lasting, one of several possible indications of some kind of continuity from earlier populations of foragers. The model of acculturation has not been universally accepted, especially in Ireland, and other recent research based on isotopic studies of protein in the diet has gested the possibility once again of quite rapid transformations at the start of the neolithic; and those studies are themselves in turn the subject of current ical review. Meanwhile, improved dating begins to allow us to separate phenomena which have often been lumped together, as noted by Bradley in his concluding paper here, such that samples for isotopic studies have come so far largely from monuments perhaps two three or three to four centuries after the start of neolithic.

This very welcome volume therefore offers invaluable reports from these shifting front lines. It mainly does what it says on the tin, and discusses settlement, but issues of diet, identity and beginnings are never far away, rumbling in the background. Beginnings are discussed

Reviews by Sheridan, Tresset and Woodman and McCarthy, the first two tending strongly to a more traditional view of

and colonizations from the continent, but the latter duo rais-

ing the important possibility of connections between 222 central-west France and Ireland. There are other studies

in the first part of the volume of individual sites or individual regions. Some of the authors reassert the older

and picture of neolithic people as permanently settled farm-

ers, but others, such as prominently Cooney, Armitt, Darvill, Barclay, Gibson, and Bradley, are more concerned to explore the many diversities evident within

this and between regions. Indeed, one of the major questions

so upon which we need to reflect much further is the scale to of networks. What does it mean now to talk of lowland Scotland, or even parts of Ireland? As Alex Gibson perceptively notes, there seems to be a tension between the to perhaps more local scale of day-to-day dwelling, and wider patterns of shared cultural affiliation manifested

was in artifact and monument styles.

One of the most striking changes to the archaeologi- In cal record of this period in recent years has been the discovery of example after example in Ireland of timber-

and framed structures. The second part of the volume

presents a series of important reports, brought together in this kind of detail for the first time, on what has been dubbed elsewhere (and repeated in the contents pages here but not in the text itself) the ‘Irish house boom’.

sug- Over the same period of research, far fewer examples

have turned up in southern Britain, and the cases of Balbridie on Deeside and Claish Farm in Stirlingshire might

crit- point to a further structured difference between south

on the one hand and north and west on the other. Ballyharry, Cloghers, and Thornhill, to cite the most complex of the structures here, join others already known of this important data set. The individual reports to are quite brief and it mostly falls to Cooney, earlier in

the the volume, to reflect on the now evident diversities, and

to Cross, as an endpiece, to discuss how we should label them. She challenges the prevailing notion of ‘house’ and its connotations of residential sedentism, preferring

the the label of ‘hall’, with connotations of feasting for

restricted lineages. The jury is out on this one, since as Cross notes (p.199) final faunal and other reports are

208 the agricultural not yet available. Hints of abundant cattle bone, burnt cereal depositions and numerous finds of fine serving pottery vessels are suggestive, but we need more detail.

This volume will be widely used and quoted. Watch out for a complementary forthcoming volume from the same publishers on monumentality in the neolithic of western Britain, edited by Chris Fowler and Vicki Cummings. That will add further reflections on the domains of dealing with the dead, the past, the landscape and community to this already complicated scene.