prehistoric britain - The Neolithic
Traditionally the arrival of the Neolithic in Britain has been seen as a wave of immigration from the continent, supplanting the local hunter-gatherers. Modern archaeology now considers that farming along with pottery and settled living was in fact adopted by the native population who were related to the similarly newly-farming Neolithic people across the water. Knowledge of farming and ceramics probably passed between kinfolk through intermarriage, trade and other cultural ties. Links with continental Europe are demonstrated by finds of axes made from exotic stone such as jadeite.

Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of modern European populations shows that over 80% are descended in the female line from European hunter-gatherers. Less than 20% are descended in the female line from Neolithic farmers from the Middle East. In 1997 DNA analysis was undertaken on a tooth from a Mesolithic man whose remains were found in Gough's Cave at Cheddar Gorge. His mitochondrial DNA was of a type found in 11% of modern European populations.

Such findings have cast doubt on the traditional view of successive waves of mass immigration annihilating earlier peoples. Historical examples where only the ruling, clerical and mercantile classes travelled long distances may be applicable to prehistory too. The arrival of farming and a sedentary lifestyle as shorthand for the Neolithic is increasingly giving way to a more complex view of the changes and continuities in practices that can be observed from the Mesolithic period onwards. For example the development of Neolithic monumental architecture apparently venerating the dead may represent more comprehensive social and ideological changes involving new interpretations of time, ancestry, community and identity.

In any case, the Neolithic Revolution, as it is called, introduced a more settled way of life and ultimately led to societies becoming divided into differing groups of farmers, artisans and leaders. Forest clearances were undertaken to provide room for cereal cultivation and animal herds. Native cattle and pigs were reared whilst sheep and goats were later introduced from the continent as were the wheats and barleys grown in Britain.

The construction of the earliest earthwork sites in Britain began during the early Neolithic (c. 4400 BC- 3300 BC) in the form of long barrows used for communal burial and the first causewayed enclosures, sites which have parallels on the continent. The former may be derived from the long house although no long house villages have been found in Britain, only individual examples. The stone-built houses on Orkney such as those at Skara Brae are however indicators of some nucleated settlement in Britain. Evidence of growing mastery over the environment is embodied in the Sweet Track, a wooden trackway built to cross the marshes of the Somerset Levels and dated to 3807 BC. Leaf-shaped arrowheads, round-based pottery types and the beginnings of polished axe production are common indicators of the period.

The Middle Neolithic (c. 3300 BC-c. 2900 BC) saw the development of cursus monuments close to earlier barrows and the growth and abandonment of causewayed enclosures as well as the building of impressive chamber tombs such as the Maeshowe types. The earliest stone circles and individual burials also appear.

Different pottery types such as Grooved ware appear during the later Neolithic (c. 2900 BC-c. 2200 BC) whilst new enclosures, called henges were built, along with stone rows and the famous sites of Stonehenge and Silbury Hill reached their peak. Industrial flint mining such as that at Cissbury and Grimes Graves began.

Next