ABSTRACT
As an exercise, this book has involved the isolation of a series of different aspects of the Neolithic of southern Britain, which have then been investigated in parallel: pottery, monuments, depositional practice, subsistence economy, funerary practice and regional variability. The separation of these elements has been largely arbitrary, and is primarily heuristic. Every element of Neolithic culture potentially has its own story (see Pitts 1996, for example), and tracing each through time can lead us to unexpected conclusions. This ‘genealogical’ approach can help to break down our preconceptions, but we should not imagine that putting the parts back together will create a definitive or final account of the Neolithic. At some points the different fragments which I have presented will converge, but it is equally possible that various aspects of the evidence will conflict or contradict one another. As an outlook, genealogical history is opposed to ‘totalising’ accounts of the past which attempt to impose a premature finality. I hope that some of what has been written here challenges orthodox views of British prehistory, and suggests interesting alternatives, but this is intended as a contribution to continuing debate rather than an end point. Necessarily, then, in drawing together the different strands of my argument this chapter will be somewhat provisional and speculative. The intention is to suggest future directions for investigation rather than bring about any kind of closure.
