This collection of 24 papers aims to reconsider the nature and significance of the Irish Sea as an area of cultural interaction during the Neolithic period. The traditional character of work across this region has emphasised the existence of prehistoric contact, with sea routes criss-crossing between Ireland, the Isle of Man, Anglesey and the British mainland. A parallel course of investigation, however, has demonstrated that the British and Irish Neolithics were in many ways different, with distinct indigenous patterns of activity and social practices. The recent emphasis on regional studies has further produced evidence for parallel yet different processes of cultural change taking place throughout the British Isles as a whole. This volume brings together some of these regional perspectives and compares them across the Irish Sea area. The authors consider new ways to explain regional patterning in the use of material objects and relate them to past practices and social strategies. Were there practices that were shared across the Irish Sea area linking different styles of monuments and material culture, or were the media intrinsic to the message? The volume is based on papers presented at a conference held at the University of Manchester in 2002.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Introduction: locating The Neolithic of the Irish Sea: materiality and traditions of practice
• Chapter 2: Neolithic connections along and across the Irish Sea
• Chapter 3: An Irish sea change: some implications for the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition
• Chapter 4: Connecting the mountains and sea: the monuments of the eastern Irish Sea zone
• Chapter 5: The searchers: the quest for causewayed enclosures in the Irish Sea
• Chapter 6: Tales of the land, tales of the sea: people and presence in the Neolithic of Man and beyond
• Chapter 7: Fluid horizons
• Chapter 8: Falling off the edge of the Irish Sea: Clettraval and the two-faced Neolithic of the Outer Hebrides
• Chapter 9: Labouring with monuments: constructing the dolmen at Carreg Samson, south-west Wales
• Chapter 10: Stones that float to the sky: portal dolmens and their landscapes of memory and myth
• Chapter 11: In touch with the past? Monuments, bodies and the sacred in the Manx Neolithic and beyond
• Chapter 12: Rock art, identity and death in the early Bronze Age of Ireland and Britain
• Chapter 13: The setting and form of Manx chambered cairns: cultural comparisons and social interpretations
• Chapter 14: Where is the Cumbrian Neolithic?
• Chapter 15: The Isle of Man: central or marginal in the Neolithic of the northern Irish Sea?
• Chapter 16: Neolithic worlds; islands in the Irish Sea
• Chapter 17: Axes, kula, and things that were ‘good to think’ in the Neolithic of the Irish Sea regions
• Chapter 18: Materiality and traditions of practice in Neolithic south-west Scotland
• Chapter 19: Evidence of absence? The Neolithic of the Cheshire Basin
• Chapter 20: Away from the numbers: diversity and invisibility in late Neolithic Wales
• Chapter 21: By way of illustration: art, memory and materiality in the Irish Sea and beyond
• Chapter 22: The early Bronze Age on the Isle of Man: back into the mainstream?
• Chapter 23: Layers of life and death: aspects of monumentality in the early Bronze Age of Wales
• Chapter 24: Memory, tradition and materiality: the Isles of Scilly in context