On the importance of cereal cultivation in the British Neolithic

This paper has two purposes. Firstly, we will present a summary of current evidence for cultivated and wild plants in the Neolithic of Britain. Since the pioneering synthesis by Moffett et al. (1989), comprehensive reviews have been undertaken at a regional level (e.g., Huntley and Stallibrass 1995; Campbell and Straker 2003; Murphy 1997), and we will bring these together with databases of archaeobotanical reports (e.g., English Heritage 2004; Tomlinson and Hall 1996) and other recent work. Secondly, we will discuss the importance of cereal cultivation. Some have argued that the neolithic economy remained essentially mesolithic, and that cereals were ‘special’ foods consumed only rarely and in ‘ritual’ contexts. Others have argued that cereals were more widely consumed, and formed the basis of the domestic economy.