Presents a review of latest research into genetic evidence for descendancy and population movement and their implications for our understanding of the European Neolithic.
A current paradigm-changing aDNA revolution is offering unparalleled insights into central questions within archaeology relating to the movement of populations and individuals; patterns of descent; relationships; and aspects of identity at many scales and of many different kinds. The impact of recent aDNA results can be seen particularly clearly in studies of European Neolithic populations, the subject of contributions presented in this volume. This has all helped to reset the terms in which we must now consider movements and mixtures of people both at the start of the Neolithic and at its end, and complex questions of identities and relationships. If the terms of archaeological debate have been permanently altered, this has left many issues in its wake.
This volume stems from the online day conference of the Neolithic Studies Group held in November 2021, which aimed to bring geneticists and archaeologists together in the same forum, and in the second place to enable critical but constructive inter-disciplinary debate about key issues arising from the application of advanced aDNA analysis to the study of the European Neolithic and Chalcolithic. The resulting papers gathered here are by both geneticists and archaeologists. Overall, they offer wide-ranging reflections on the progress of aDNA studies, and on their future reach and character, and a series of significant, up-to-date, period and regional syntheses of various manifestations of the Neolithic across the Near East and Europe, including particularly Britain and Ireland. Chronological coverage in some papers extends into the Chalcolithic or Copper Age.
