Chronology has long been a core concern of archaeological endeavour, especially for those of us dealing with prehistory. Dates, as Mortimer Wheeler wrote, are ‘of primary and ultimate and unrelenting importance’ (Wheeler, Reference Wheeler1954: 23). They are essential to an understanding of change, of how societies developed, of what followed what in sequences of artefacts, structures, and events. For a brief period in the mid-twentieth century, it seemed the answer might have been provided by the invention and application of radiocarbon dating. The construction of accurate and precise dating schemes remained problematic, however, and several decades ensued during which studies of European prehistory focused heavily on theoretical approaches. That phase too has now passed, with the emergence of a new suite of analytical approaches, including Bayesian analysis and the dramatic multiplication of available radiocarbon dates.
Alasdair Whittle and his team have been in the forefront of the new dating revolution. Their initial analysis of long mounds in southern Britain (Whittle & Bayliss, Reference Whittle and Bayliss2007) demonstrated the potential of formal Bayesian modelling, and it was followed by a more extensive project on the chronology of British causewayed enclosures and a more general consideration of the timing and tempo of the British earlier Neolithic (Whittle et al., Reference Whittle, Healy and Bayliss2011). Most recently, their ERC-funded The Times of their Lives (TOTL) project (2012-17) has applied the same approach (now thoroughly tried and tested) to a series of Neolithic sites and sequences in mainland Europe. The results of the individual TOTL studies have already been published in a series of separate papers in peer-reviewed journals. In this new book, however, which takes its title from the ERC project, Whittle has gone beyond the specifics to place the results within a broader perspective, and to discuss the improved understanding of Neolithic Europe that is now opening up.
The book falls essentially into three parts. After a brief Introduction (‘Hunting History’), discussion turns to the different timescales that have been used by archaeologists hitherto (Ch. 2, ‘Long Pasts, Brief Lives: The Lenses of History’). Attention is drawn to the tension between the long (but often imprecise) timespans that archaeology is uniquely equipped to explore, and the shorter timescales of individual lived experience that are one of our key interests, but are usually so difficult to access. The following chapter, ‘The Rags of Time: Building Chronologies’, focuses more specifically on dating methods and their implications, including the insights provided by dendrochronology in settings with favourable preservation of organic remains such as the Alpine lake villages.
The second part of the book takes the argument forward by illustrating just how much the formal modelling of radiocarbon dates has achieved, drawing not only on the TOTL results from continental Europe but also on the previous studies of Neolithic Britain. One chapter (‘“Sometimes Sudden and Sometimes Slow”: The Reach of Precision’) considers the outcomes and implications of studies of settlements, megalithic tombs, enclosures, and artefacts, concluding with some comments on the ‘ontological turn’. As Whittle explains, Bayesian chronologies could certainly enhance the study of relational frameworks in which ‘things’ have life force or animacy, but such a perspective is not consistent with the kind of historical approach he himself is advocating. The next chapter, titled ‘Time lords? Community and Leadership across the Neolithic Sequence’, takes a more thematic approach, reviewing the evidence for social change and the rise of inequality, from Vinča and Varna in the Balkans, to southern Brittany, and to Valencina de la Concepción in southern Spain. Here are sites with spectacular assemblages of exotic and high-status objects: the well-known Varna gold, the jadeitite axes of the Carnac grands tumulus, the amber, ivory, gold, and rock crystal from the Montelirio tholos and PP4-Montelirio structure 10.049. In the case of the latter, TOTL has shown that whoever these individuals were, their period of power was short-lived. Indeed, across Europe, Whittle concludes that social differentiation, where it arose, was invariably a brief and unstable phenomenon, not the prelude to established hierarchy or state formation, suggesting indeed that deeply embedded communal values were resistant to the rise of dominant lineages and hierarchies. This recalls Jean-Paul Demoule's discussion of the protohistoric burial evidence for northwest Europe, where periods of centralization and control appear to have alternated with periods in which archaeological evidence for inequality and social hierarchy was less visible; the latter representing perhaps not a failure to develop greater social complexity, but episodes of successful resistance to centralizing power (Demoule, Reference Demoule and Daubigney1993: 260).
The third and final section (Chs 6-7) returns to issues raised earlier, about the kind of narratives we can now construct for prehistoric times. In chapter 6, Whittle introduces the recent evidence from ancient DNA, which has led to a growing acceptance of the role of population movement in European prehistory. Formally modelled sequences of radiocarbon dates can of course provide precise timescales for the processes and events that aDNA is beginning to reveal. That includes ‘beginnings’, the origins of the Neolithic across Europe in which the ‘dominant story’ has once again become ‘the effects of incoming populations; and ‘endings’, notably the role of Yamnaya and Corded Ware mobility and migration in the third millennium bc. Here Whittle urges caution in the interpretation of the aDNA evidence, which from regional variation in mortuary practice might as easily be the result of a ‘fractured process’ of infiltration by a new population as a single large-scale migration. Once again, he notes that formal modelling of radiocarbon dates could provide a much finer-grained sequence of the process and pace of change, enabling new and better interpretative models to be developed for the archaeological and aDNA evidence.
Underlying the argument in this volume is Whittle's desire to remove the ‘pre-’ from ‘prehistory’, so that archaeologists can operate within a historical framework. This is illustrated by a number of specific case-studies, including for example the detailed sequence from the Uivar tell in western Romania, with a three- to four-metre sequence, encircling ditches around its base, and 182 radiocarbon dates. Bayesian analysis reveals the frequent rebuilding of individual houses, three major burnings that may have been associated with hostile attack, and a more settled period that coincided with the apogee of the Vinča settlement system.
These are impressive results and persuasive insights, but the challenge remains to weave them into a consistent, broader narrative. For that, many more dates will be required. Some means will also have to be found to incorporate those regions of Neolithic Europe where material suitable for precision dating is scarce. That applies, for example, to northwest France, where as Whittle notes, the attribution of the early Breton tombs to the mid-fifth millennium cal bc is not yet securely demonstrated. Similar uncertainty attaches to the origin of megalithic tombs in western Iberia. Formal modelling may be able to help with this, and has indeed recently been applied by Bettina Schulz Paulsson (Reference Schulz Paulsson2019), but the fundamental scarcity of securely contextualised samples remains problematic. More and better dates will be required if these regions are fully to be incorporated within the scope of high-precision chronologies.
The Times of their Lives does not offer a systematic new narrative for the European Neolithic. In that, it contrasts with Shennan's recent The First Farmers of Europe (Reference Shennan2018). The latter shares with TOTL a basis in chronological analysis, but it employs the very different approach of summed probability distributions. The broader regional narratives contrast with the detailed site-by-site studies which Whittle describes. But TOTL is no less concerned with ‘big stories’. Widespread ‘horizons of congruent change’ (in the late sixth millennium bc, the mid fifth millennium bc, and the early third millennium bc) are indeed one of the more intriguing features to emerge when the individual TOTL studies are viewed within a broader perspective. The merit of Bayesian dating, however, is that it also allows us in favourable circumstances to construct narratives at the level of the individual lifetime, returning ‘the actions, choices, and decisions of people in the Neolithic […] to centre-stage’ (p. 247). There is more work to do, but the case for a new kind of European prehistory, operating in parallel at different temporal scales, is clearly and persuasively argued.
