ABSTRACT
N o modern-day archaeologist would agree with Aubrey’s characterization, for science has shown that both the Native Americans and the late prehistoric Europeans were much more sophisticated than Julius Caesar and other Roman authors would have us believe. By the time Roman legions campaigned north of the Alps, the society of temperate Europe enjoyed a level of complexity that has fascinated archaeologists for generations (Cunliffe, 2004, 2011) (Figure 20.1). How, then, did such complexity arise? Did it develop as a result of indigenous cultural evolution or because of a diffusion of people and ideas from Southwest Asia (see Table 15.1)?
