The programme on last night mentioned by Moss on her Doggerland thread 'Britain's Stone Age Tsunami' made the point that after this event when the fertile plain linking Britain to the continent of Europe was drowned by the combination of melting glaciers and a probable tsunami, the sea might have become feared and people may have chosen to move inland away from coastal areas.

PS: I attended a talk by Ron Hutton last year about his book on Pagan Religions - very good!

[quote="Evergreen Dazed"]I'm reading Huttons 'Pagan Religions..' at the moment and have been thinking about the evidence for Neolithic occupation found at some, as they remain now, IA hill fort sites.

I know finds of Neolithic houses are rare due to the nature of their construction, but I wonder if many, outside of very large communities, will be found on naturally defended areas such as hill tops, meaning a very large number will be under hill forts?

Apart from Durrington, Orkney (which is different anyway) I'm not sure in what sort of landscape Neolithic houses have been found in Britain. Were they in naturally defended areas?

Are we in the middle of a shift in thinking about the Neolithic in terms of a 'peaceful' time, and should we now consider it war-like, or is the general thinking still that Neolithic occupation of defended areas is an exception?[/quote

Hill tops do seem to have been used , relatively recent Irish discoveries are Knocknarea ,Turlough Hill (Co Clare )Mullafarghna (Co Sligo ) in Cornwall Carn Brea and more recent finds at Carn Galver and Helman Tor suggest settlement due to the amount of artefacts found . It was the hill tops that have the best evidence for warfare (as opposed to interpersonal violence ).

I've never bought the peaceful Neolithic stuff , it seems to have been politically inspired rather than evidence based , marxist : (Childe ) egalitarian society , everybody poor and happy with no place for the greedy and feminist : (Gimbutas )goddess worship until warrior blokes took over .

EGD, your post prompted to get on with reading a book I bought a while back by Barry Cunliffe Britain Begins. In his chapter 'New People, New Ideas,4200-3000BC' he writes about Neolithic constructions. I've copied an extract below ...

The radiocarbon evidence allows us to offer a sketch of how the Neolithic package, coming from north-east France, Belgium and the Low Countries spread across Britain …

Perhaps the most striking characteristic of the early phase of settlement is the appearance of large rectangular timber-built houses or halls as they may more appropriately be called. They have been found across Britain from White Horse Stone and Yarnton near Oxford to a number of finely preserved structures in eastern Scotland. A comparable example has been excavated at Llandegai near Bangor in north Wales, while at least forty-six rectangular houses have so far been identified in Ireland. Although there is some variation in size and structural detail, all are imposing structures representing the concerted effort of the community working together to identify, cut, haul, and erect timbers. Many of the larger buildings show a marked similarity in plan, size, and internal layout, having partitioning dividing the large enclosed space into discrete areas for different functions. Clearly we are dealing with a tradition of building.

I will continue reading ...