(UN)SETTLING THE NEOLITHIC

(un)settling the Neolithic

(un)settling the Neolithic is a radical redirection in the study of the central and east European Neolithic (65003500 cal BC). Attacking the essentialisms of traditional approaches to the period, the volume pushes forward with new thinking about how best to understand human existence at this time in a critical region. Containing major statements by the key authorities on the topic, (un)settling the Neolithic challenges scholars, students, excavators and teachers to think again about the fundamental conceptions with which the Neolithic has been defined since the origins of its academic study. Contributors attack existing definitions of sedentism, mobility, the Mesolithic/Neolithic boundary, cultural coherence, settlement, village, house, tells, flat-sites, seasonality, residential permanence, pottery and domestication. Indeed, questions are raised about the legitimacy of claiming that there is a single, general, phenomenon that is termed Neolithic. The call is to move away from the comfort of the simple, general and easy explanations (such as the Neolithic equals settled farmers) and, then, to struggle with the complexities of the many diverse levels of (pre)historical specificities that flowed in and out of life over a 3000 year period starting in the middle of the seventh millennium cal BC. (un)settling the Neolithic is a call to embrace difficult, fractured and perforated traces of being in the Neolithic. It sets the agenda for a new examination of one of the most exciting periods of Europes prehistoric past.

(un)settling the Neolithic

Edited by Douglass Bailey, Alasdair Whittle and Vicki Cummings

CONTRIBUTORS:
Douglass Bailey Lzl Bartosiewicz Duan Bori J.G. Evans Paul Halstead Ian Hodder Kostas Kotsakis Steve Mills Nicky Milner Andrew Sherratt Laurens Thissen Ruth Tringham Alasdair Whittle

Edited by

Douglass Bailey, Alasdair Whittle and Vicki Cummings

Oxbow Books