Unsettling the Neolithic

by Douglass W. Bailey

This book takes a fresh look at the European Neolithic and asks pertinent questions about the way in which we study it. By unsettling accepted notions regarding sedentism and the onset of farming, the contributors are able to sow that many ideas which are taken as read may need re-evaluating in the light of new modes of thinking. Sedentism and mobility form the bulk of this volume's focus, and a number of papers look at these concepts through examining/re-examining certain sites or collections of sites. Paul Halstead makes the case that sedentism does not preclude a large degree of mobility. Bailey asks us to completely re-think our attitude to the built environment of the Neolithic, arguing that we are trapped by details as to the purpose of structures, rather than on what effect their presence had on the people who used them. Taken together, these fourteen papers encourage us to move beyond the search for sedentism or mobility as a characteristic of society.

Table of Contents

Unsettling the breaking down concepts, boundaries and origins ( Douglass Bailey and Alasdair Whittle )
Across the unstable dwellings and fluid landscapes in the earliest Neolithic of Greece ( Kostas Kotsakis )
Deconstructing unsettling frontiers of the Mesolithic-Neolithic Balkans ( Dušan Boric )
Can seasonality studies be used to identify sedentism in the past? ( Nicky Milner )
Resettling the faunal evidence for seasons of consumption and residence at Neolithic sites in Greece ( Paul Halstead )
Plain animals, environment and culture in the Neolithic of the Carpathian Basin and adjacent areas ( László Bartosiewicz )
Lived experience in the Early Neolithic of the Great Hungarian Plain ( Alasdair Whittle )
The role of pottery in agropastoralist communities in early Neolithic southern Romania ( Laurens Thissen )
Sensing the sounds and landscape perception ( Steve Mills )
Beyond the meaning of Neolithic specific objects and serial repetition ( Douglass Bailey )
Weaving house life and death into a blueprint for a hypermedia narrative ( Ruth Tringham )
Memory and environmental archaeology in tells ( J.G. Evans )
The spatio-temporal organisation of the early 'town' at Çatalhöyük ( Ian Hodder )
Settling the a digestif ( Andrew Sherratt )

176 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2005