ABSTRACT

The intention of the preceding chapters has been to question some of the accepted wisdom concerning various aspects of the Neolithic of southern Britain. In each case, the means employed has been a consideration of change through time, seeking contrasts in the evidence and hoping to establish a series of parallel accounts of different elements of social life. In the next three chapters the focus changes from temporal to spatial variability, but with the same general objective in mind. From as early as Piggott’s Neolithic Cultures of the British Isles (1954), attempts have been made to investigate the British Neolithic on a regional basis, in his case considering primary and secondary areas of colonisation by the Windmill Hill Culture. For the most part, however, the social and cultural processes which took place in the Neolithic have been portrayed as geographically undifferentiated, perhaps because their material manifestations are superficially similar.