The Neolithic of Southeast Europe: Recent Trends

The prehistory of the Aegean, Balkans, and Carpathian Basin has changed dramatically in the last two decades. This review covers five aspects of these changes: (a) the development of theoretical approaches, in which diversification from cultural archaeology has seen the spread of processual, postprocessual and later approaches; (b) the acquisition of data, with the key major development being the proliferation of large-scale infrastructure projects; (c) the synthesis of data, the most significant challenge being to make sense of the massive increase in paleo-environmental research, materials science, regional surveys, and site monographs; (d) thematic questions, whose very diversity underscores the discipline's growth in these regions; and (e) emergent trends, such as the creation of new forms of synthesis at the local, regional, and interregional scales, the theorizing and differentiation of new ways of relating people, places, plants, and animals and objects, and continuing diversification in the application of scientific techniques.