Third and fourth millennia Ireland and Britain: a history of Major social change Explored (TIME)

公元前3500-2000年（新石器时代晚期和铜石器时代）的不列颠和爱尔兰的证据表明，这是史前最重要的时期之一。在这段时间里，我们看到了壮观的刻槽器和烧杯陶器，冶金，雕刻的狼头槌，以及一些欧洲最具代表性的遗址，如纽格兰奇和巨石阵。最近的古代DNA数据（表明在这一时期结束时几乎完全的种群更替）和饮食稳定同位素（表明人类和动物在以前无法预料的距离上的移动）表明，还有很多东西需要学习。这些新数据挑战并重新激发了关于日益增长的社会等级、种族、宗教组织和身份的旧辩论。然而，这些数据并没有与我们的年表发展相匹配；这种细粒度的证据需要同样复杂和具体的年表来理解这些变化。虽然以前的史前学家不得不依靠遗址和事物的类型来确定他们的时间结构，但我们现在有能力使用贝叶斯统计分析来产生非常精确的、概率的、独立的年表（例如Bronk Ramsey 2009； Bayliss 2009）。贝叶斯分析为单个遗址（例如Whittle 2018）或遗址类型的活动（例如“新石器时代墓葬”；Whitehouse等人，2014）提供了精确的年表，这些年表以前被理解为几个世纪的尺度。它提供了一种连贯的方法来比较科学年表，并将其应用于更早的新石器时代遗址（例如Whittle et al. 2011），在考古学家将科学定年作为一个整体的方式方面具有国际意义。虽然我们有关于新石器时代晚期和铜石器时代遗址或事物的科学年代学的优秀例子（见下文），但没有人试图用准确而详细的年代学来写一部关于爱尔兰和英国四千年晚期和三千年晚期戏剧性变化的综合历史。此外，仅仅“简单地”提高时间顺序的准确性是不够的。为了充分发挥贝叶斯“革命”的潜力（参见Bayliss 2009； Bronk Ramsey 2009; Griffiths 2017），我们既需要一个独立的时间框架，也需要一种超越更精确的地点或序列年表的“史前”方法。我们需要能够综合和解释考古学家认为重要的“一揽子”证据的叙述——比如新石器时代晚期和铜石器时代——并且使用精确定义的时间尺度作为讨论历史特定时期人们产生的实践、事物和地点变化的基础。查普曼（2018）最近称这是“核心挑战”，以便撰写“一种新的考古学”，而惠特尔（2018,248）则认为“史前必须来自史前史”。这个项目将做到这一点。我们将以以前的方法为基础，为公元前3500-2000年不列颠和爱尔兰的所有证据建立特定地点的时间模型，同时生成重要的新数据遗产，以便使用以世纪和几十年为单位的时间作为我们新的叙事结构的基础。我们将开放所有数据、分析程序和产出，这意味着在未来的研究中有可能调整和修改我们的年表。因此，这个项目的意义不仅在于我们的方法，或者我们对1500年爱尔兰和英国历史的常规时间顺序的精确，或者我们对开放获取的承诺，还在于我们未来书写“史前”叙事的新方法。

Evidence from Britain and Ireland between 3500-2000 BC (the late Neolithic and Chalcolithic) makes this one of the most important periods in prehistory. During this time, we see spectacular Grooved Ware and Beaker pottery, metallurgy, carved mace heads, and use of some of Europe's most iconic sites such as Newgrange and Stonehenge. Recent ancient DNA data (suggesting almost complete population replacement at the end of the period) and dietary stable isotopes (indicating movement of people and animals over previously unsuspected distances) suggest that there is still much to learn. These new data challenge and reinvigorate older debates in terms of growing social hierarchies, ethnicity, religious organisation, and identity. However, these data have not been matched by developments in our chronologies; such fine-grained evidence requires equally sophisticated and specific chronologies in order to understand these changes. While previously prehistorians had to rely for their chronological structure on typologies of sites and things, we now have the ability to produce very precise, probabilistic, independent chronologies using Bayesian statistical analyses (e.g. Bronk Ramsey 2009; Bayliss 2009). Bayesian analysis has provided precise chronologies for individual sites (e.g. Whittle 2018) or activity at types of site (e.g 'Neolithic burials'; Whitehouse et al. 2014), which were previously understood at the scale of several centuries. It allows a coherent way to compare scientific chronologies, and applications to earlier Neolithic sites (e.g. Whittle et al. 2011) have had international significance in the ways archaeologists approach scientific dating as a whole. While we have had excellent examples of scientific chronologies for individual late Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites or things (see below), no attempt has been made to write a synthetic history of the dramatic changes of late 4th and 3rd millennia Ireland and Britain using accurate and detailed chronology. Moreover, 'simply' increasing chronological precision on its own is not enough. To fully achieve the potential of the Bayesian 'revolution' (cf. Bayliss 2009; Bronk Ramsey 2009; Griffiths 2017), we need both an independent chronological framework, and an approach to 'prehistory' that moves beyond ever more precise chronologies for sites or sequences. We need narratives that can synthesise and interpret evidence from across 'packages' that archaeologists recognise as significant - such as the late Neolithic and Chalcolithic - and use precisely defined time-scales as the basis for discussing changes in practices, things and places produced by people in historically-specific times. Chapman (2018) has recently called this the 'central challenge' in order to write 'a new kind of archaeology', while Whittle (2018, 248) argues that the 'pre- must come out of prehistory'.This project will do just that. We will build on previous approaches, producing site-specific chronological models for all evidence from Britain and Ireland from 3500-2000 BC, while generating a significant legacy of new data, in order to use time - expressed in centuries and decades - as the basis for our new narrative structure. We will make all data, analytical programs and outputs open access, meaning it will be possible to adapt and revise our chronologies in future research. This project's significance will therefore lie not just in our methods, or our routine chronological precision for 1500 years of Irish and British history, or our commitment to open access, but also in our new approaches to writing narratives of 'prehistory' in the future.