Going Over:
the Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition in North-west Europe

A conference organised by
the School of History and Archaeology, Cardiff University,
and supported by the British Academy

To be held in the Julian Hodge Lecture Theatre, Cardiff University

16-18 May 2005

The nature of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Europe as a whole has been the subject of very active research for decades. If anything, debate about the phenomenon has intensified in recent years, fuelled by continued fieldwork, new methods of analysis, shifting interpretations, and both new and revived models. Kinds of colonisation, styles of indigenous response, and rates of change, must all be thought about alongside consideration of worldview and the nature of and identity. The transition cannot simply be reduced to prime factors of subsistence, technology or populations, which have to be taken together with materiality, monumentality, and other expressions of agency. While all these aspects are individually debated, they have rarely been brought together for more unified and wider consideration.

This conference will bring together regional specialists from across north-west Europe, from Spain to Sweden, and specialists in new and developing scientific techniques. It will offer a series of regional reviews, and a survey of some of the most promising scientific techniques relevant to tracing human movement, diet changes, and other features of the transition. It will also provide reflection by other specialists on materiality, monumentality, and worldviews. Speakers will include Richard Bradley, Gabriel Cooney, Detlef Gronenborn, Jean Guilaine, Leendert Louwe Kooijmans, Lars Larsson, Julian Thomas, Chris Tilley and Alasdair Whittle.