The prehistories of Britain and Ireland are inescapably entwined with continental European narratives. The central aim here is to explore ‘cross-channel’ relationships throughout later prehistory, investigating the archaeological links (material, social, cultural) between the areas we now call Britain and Ireland, and continental Europe, from the Mesolithic through to the end of the Iron Age. Since the separation from the European mainland of Ireland (c. 16,000 BC) and Britain (c. 6000 BC), their island nature has been seen as central to many aspects of life within them, helping to define their senses of identity, and forming a crucial part of their neighbourly relationship with continental Europe and with each other. However, it is important to remember that the surrounding seaways have often served to connect as well as to separate these islands from the continent. In approaching the subject of ‘continental connections’ in the long-term, and by bringing a variety of different archaeological perspectives (associated with different periods) to bear on it, this volume provides a new a new synthesis of the ebbs and flows of the cross-channel relationship over the course of 15,000 years of later prehistory, enabling fresh understandings and new insights to emerge about the intimately linked trajectories of change in both regions.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Chapter 1: Continental connections: introduction
• Chapter 2: From sea to land and back again: understanding the shifting character of Europe’s landscapes and seascapes over the last million years
• Chapter 3: Attitudes and latitudes to seafaring in prehistoric Atlantic Europe
• Chapter 4: Britain and Ireland inside Mesolithic Europe
• Chapter 5: Seaways and shared ways: imagining and imaging the movement of people, objects and ideas over the course of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition, c. 5,000–3,500 BC
• Chapter 6: Parallel lives? Neolithic funerary monuments and the Channel divide
• Chapter 7: What was and what would never be: changing patterns of interaction and archaeological visibility across north-west Europe from 2,500 to 1,500 cal. BC
• Chapter 8: Rethinking Iron Age connections across the Channel and North Sea
• Chapter 9: Connections and separation? Narratives of Iron Age art in Britain and its relationship with the Continent
• Chapter 10: Continental connections: concluding discussion