West side story: the early Neolithic in the west of Britain

At the turn of this millennium, a series of thought-provoking papers observed that the study of the Neolithic in Britain had come to be dominated by narratives from Wessex and Orkney, or in another version, by narratives from Wessex and two satellites, in Orkney and on the Yorkshire Wolds. Now the Neolithic evidence across Britain is certainly much more evenly distributed, as recent syntheses demonstrably testify, as well as many important projects. This paper here underlines this. It looks at the early Neolithic on the west side of Britain as a whole, and with some reference to Ireland. Indeed, such is the wealth of evidence now available from up and down the west side of Britain, that a brief, unifying overview may be useful, not least to identify some of the key questions for continuing and future research; it is to be noted that several key sites still await full publication, and a planned revision of the chronology for the early Neolithic in England and Wales previously presented has not yet been completed.