Preface

Summary

This book has three audiences, to each of which it will seem unsatisfactory in different ways. Theoretical archaeologists in the Anglophone tradition may wish for the theoretical agenda to be pursued further and, perhaps, with less encumbering detail. Italian prehistorians, on the other hand, may lament the great mass of data on the Italian Neolithic that I have glossed over in the interests of synthesis and social interpretation. To each of these communities, I ask for tolerance, and, hopefully, to each I can offer some compensation. The theoretical archaeologist may appreciate the chance to see a theoretical agenda worked through systematically across the entire spectrum of archaeological data. For Italian prehistorians, I would hope to offer some interesting interpretations to pursue empirically, in places convergent with ideas arising within the Italian prehistory community. The third audience will be theoretically minded European prehistorians who share the author's desire to see prehistoric Europe neither reduced to one-size-fits-all theoretical frameworks nor left faceless and uninterpreted. To this audience, I can only say that the more ambitious a book is, the more likely it is to fall short, and nobody knows a book's limitations like the author.

This project has been in the making for about a decade. In that time, I have discussed aspects of archaeological theory and Mediterranean prehistory with many friends and colleagues.