The Future Neolithic

As for Shakespeare, every generation gets the Neolithic it deserves. This chapter discusses emerging views of what the Neolithic is and how to study it, with the thesis that recently there has been a quiet revolution in how we understand the Neolithic. A broad change in how Neolithic specialists understand the relationship between science and the humanities is envisioned, with the principal result that a new interpretive vocabulary, including a definition of the Neolithic, has arisen. This is illustrated with regard to changing understandings in the study of animals, plants, landscapes, things and monuments; for example, rather than being culture written on the material world, or material worlds determining culture, the practices of Neolithic life defined participation in a specific kind of historic process structured by these relations. The effects of changing perspectives are shown in, for example, multi-scalar approaches to both the origins and the end of the Neolithic.