The Whittle Collection

Key Papers by Prehistorian Alasdair Whittle on European Neolithic Archaeology

Alasdair Whittle

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9798888572436
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: Social Sciences

Highlights Alasdair Whittle's influential research on Neolithic society, farming, monuments, settlements, and radiocarbon chronology.

Alasdair Whittle is one of the most influential British prehistorians of the late 20th to early 21st century. This volume in our new Reflections series re-presents some of his most important papers published in Oxbow titles and celebrates his contribution to our understanding of Neolithic lifeways and the development of Neolithic society in Britain and Europe. The collection illustrates his pioneering work in the interpretation of both monumental and settlement sites, and the spread and nature of early farming in central and western Europe, including investigation of LBK longhouse life. Alasdair has also been at the forefront of the application of Bayesian statistics in radiocarbon dating, helping to revolutionise chronologies at a variety of geographical and temporal scales. This volume seeks to reflect some of the best of his innovative thinking and influence as seen through his publications with Oxbow.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Sources
• Editorial note
• Preface
• Chapter 1 - Introduction Getting started, keeping going and looking ahead
• Chapter 2 - Lived experience in the Early Neolithic of the Great Hungarian Plain
• Chapter 3 - The people who lived in longhouses What’s the big idea?
• Chapter 4 - Being alive and being dead House and grave in the LBK
• Chapter 5 - Performing LBK lifeways with Penny Bickle
• Chapter 6 - Houses in context Buildings as process
• Chapter 7 - As we were saying Connecting people and places
• Chapter 8 - Stones that float to the sky Portal dolmens and their landscapes of memory and myth
• Chapter 9 - Grand narratives and shorter stories
• Chapter 10 - The first stones Taking and keeping the land with William Britnell and Seren Griffiths
• Chapter 11 - A decade on Revised timings for causewayed enclosures in southern Britain with Alex Bayliss and Frances Healy
• Chapter 12 - Kinds of history The future of the Neolithic past