A view from north of the border

Abstract

• In 2021, Alasdair Whittle and his colleagues published a map showing their model of the Neolithisation of Britain and Ireland featuring, a northwards and westwards spread, from the south-east corner of England, of farming as a subsistence strategy and of other novel, associated, 'things and practices' - to borrow one of Whittle et al.'s phrases. (Whittle et al. 2011, fig. 14.177). On that map, a large dragon was shown looming over a large part of northern England and Wales, indicating that 'there be dragons' - or rather a paucity of radiocarbon dates, making it hard to assess the timing and tempo of the appearance of the Neolithic 'things and practices' in that part of Britain. The main purpose of this brief contribution is to argue that the dragons are beginning to be slayed and that there is in fact, quite a lot that can be said about the earliest Neolithic in Northern England - and about the rest of the Neolithic as welll.