ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that a critical examination of the current dominance of a grand narrative, mobility model for the Neolithic in Western Europe. It suggests that the postmodern condition itself, the impact of nationalism and imperialism, the downplaying of domesticity and the patterns of mobility of modern life are all factors that influence perspectives on the Neolithic in western Europe. The chapter focuses on three issues: nationalism, gender and the concept of landscape and being. There have been a number of recent, important, widely quoted texts written by archaeologists based in Britain concerned with aspects of the European Neolithic. Another feature of the new Neolithic orthodoxy is a down-playing of domesticity. This appears to owe some of its origins to the reinterpretation of the model of settlement for the Neolithic of southern Britain. In the mobility scenario it is argued that, as in the Mesolithic, Neolithic people perceived territories as trails running through the landscape.
