This interesting volume of ten well-constructed papers from fifteen contributors arises from a 2012 meeting to consider a feature described by the editors in their helpful introduction as lying ‘at the very heart of Neolithic studies’, albeit usually in a negative sense. As Leary and Kador note, this is because a broad contrast has been drawn between mobile Mesolithic peoples and settled Neolithic communities. Many of the papers in this volume explore the reality of this generalised divide through the presentation of specific case studies.

In geographical terms, various parts of Britain are considered, along with north-west Ireland and the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) of the North European plain (it is particularly unfortunate that this chapter lacks maps, given that the likely readership will be less familiar with the geography). A greater continental presence might have been revealing in terms of contrasts in patterning from what are superficially similar topographies.

One significant area of research represented (unsurprisingly) is on the ways in which material culture can used to examine types of mobility in the landscape, most obviously the movement of objects through that landscape before their eventual deposition, sometimes as lithic scatters (currently a rather neglected form of evidence) as explored in the chapters by Bickle, Chan et al, Loveday, Gannon, Last and Bond. Other chapters consider bioarchaeological evidence, such as isotopic analysis of people and cattle and ancient DNA (Bickle, Chan et al). The focus tends to be on the provenance of the people (animals and objects being moved), with less emphasis on the physical process and routeways taken, as these are still generally far harder to determine.

The papers all attempt to grapple with some of the key questions regarding mobility: who and what is moving/being moved; is movement uni-directional or part of a pattern of return visits; what is the distance of movement involved (local, regional, long-distance); and what are the constraints on movement? Traditionally, this has been discussed through lithic analysis, and although this is now unfashionable, there is a vast archive of data in museums that can be usefully interrogated, as Last argues and Bond demonstrates. Nevertheless, as they acknowledge, this material has its limitations (especially that of chronological resolution), and Chan et al are able to broaden out the discussion by considering bioarchaeological remains in the form of plant and animal materials in the Stonehenge area. Of course, this is a landscape replete with remarkable monuments, so the reasons for movement will not be the same as elsewhere. Other papers address these questions more or less successfully, depending on the nature of the evidence available.

The two papers focusing on monuments and movement (Moore and Loveday), along with Bond’s, which considers some specific examples, naturally examine a more local scale, although Loveday’s very well argued article (not coincidentally the longest and best illustrated in the volume) on cursus monuments also probes the similarities in location (for example, proximity to rivers) of this class of monument across southern Britain, which clearly implies long-distance contacts. These papers usefully bring to the fore the question of social constraints on movement, complementing the water-related papers that emphasise more physical constraints.

Seascapes and riverscapes as well as landscapes are discussed by Rogers, Gannon and Haughey. The first two are grounded in specific locations (Rogers on the North Sea coast, and Gannon on the Hebrides), while Haughey’s paper on riverine movement is rather over-supplied with ethnographic anecdotes whose value was often implicit. The emphasis on the potential of movement by water is very welcome, as most archaeologists are firmly land-bound, and considering visibility from the sea of natural and artificial cues and landmarks is an under-rated topic, not just for prehistory.

Does this volume, as the book’s title suggests, move on debate concerning mobility in the Neolithic? Certainly it provides an important corrective to older notions of a static Neolithic in contrast to the constantly mobile Neolithic, and it does advance thinking in terms of both theory and worked examples. The question of social constraints on movement is one that should be engaged with more deeply in future work, although difficult to assess in detail in a period largely lacking obvious land boundaries, as a ‘right to roam’ may not be a particularly appropriate concept for prehistory. As Loveday notes, the evidence we have for Neolithic violence is significant, and although it may not be territorially based in an obvious way, there must have been a web of contacts across Neolithic Europe that facilitated, tolerated or prevented the movement of people and materials.