Four years of excavations at a 5,500-year-old causewayed enclosure have shed vivid light on a Berkshire monument and the landscape’s early Neolithic past, illuminating the lives of some of the first farming communities in Britain.

A team from the universities of Leicester and Southampton recently re-examined previous Avebury excavations and conducted new surveying of the site (in a study published in the journal Antiquity), establishing a possible new chronology of the monument’s construction and shedding new light on its use.

This is a teaching resource published by Forestry and Land Scotland. Aimed at students of later primary school age (that is, 8- to 12-year-olds), it teaches them about the Neolithic way of life. It follows on from Forestry Commission Scotland’s previous teaching resource on the Mesolithic: Wolf Brother’s Wildwoods.

Alasdair Whittle’s most recent contribution to this fascinating period in European prehistory argues cogently against the concept of wholesale change at a particular point in time. As for all prehistoric archaeology spatial and temporal development, adaption, and adoption create a complex narrative. This complexity has been made convincingly clear from recent innovations in chronometric dating techniques, which in turn have assisted Bayesian modelling research.

The oldest human cranium fragment ever mudlarked from the Thames (found on its foreshore) has been identified as Neolithic. The cranium was discovered by Martin Bushell while he was walking along the south bank of the river, just one week after starting his new hobby of mudlarking.

Caherconnell Archaeological Field School (CAFS) was set up in 2010 with a vision for providing unforgettable archaeological experiences in the unique Burren region. In partnership with the National university of Ireland in Galway we aim to provide the very best archaeological education as well as a cultural element which sees students interact with the people of the area daily. […]

Over the recent past there has been a flurry of literature concerned with the Neolithic of the British Isles, each book promoting a new interpretation on the life and death of its people. This book is no exception. The literature has clearly shown that the Neolithic is a complex world of social relations and entanglement with ramifications to our present: we are products of this significant period in our history.

The latest contribution to our understanding of Neolithic lifestyles in the British Isles comes in the form of a wide-ranging book by Keith Ray and Julian Thomas. In it, they demonstrate that many Mesolithic sites of gathering continued to be regarded as special places throughout the Neolithic. This deliberate commemoration of the past gives important insights into the minds of the first farmers. Chris Catling investigates.

I hope you had a wonderful festive period – but even as we look forward to what 2019 might bring, the past still has plenty to reveal. This month’s cover feature takes us deep into the Neolithic, where we consider evidence for whether sites that were monumentalised during this period were also considered ‘special’ during […]

In this concise and readable book, Shennan brings together ancient whole-genome DNA data with excavated evidence to produce a detailed analysis of the mechanisms of the invention of agriculture in the Near East and its subsequent spread through Europe.