Recycling Prehistory? Reality or Myth?
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-11-20

Transitions are defined as a period of change from one state to another. The problem is in Archaeology a lot of the time when we start research we do not know what the state is, and even more importantly what state is supposed to change to. If we then focus on trying to identify a transition are we in danger of just recycling past interpretations rather than asking our archaeological data new questions? In Britain, the Mesolithic-Neolithic ‘transition’ (archaeological changes between the 5th and 4th millennium BC) has remained a complex topic for over a century. This presentation targets trying to understand if we should really be calling this period of archaeology a transition at all? Instead it argues that archaeology should think again about what ‘traditional transitions’ actually are…

Robert Leedham (University of Central Lancashire) and Nathaniel Welsby (University of Central Lancashire) 

TAG Deva 2018 
Session: Rethinking Transitions