- The range of material culture widely used by Neolithic communities had elements which were certainly capable of committing acts of harm and violence. Flint and other lithic materials were worked into arrowheads, and stone axes could potentially have been used as weapons, too, though neither is known to have been specifically designed for acts of combat or war.
- No evidence for violent death has as yet been identified amongst the human remains recovered from Neolithic sites in South West Scotland. Seeking such evidence is made difficult, however, by the fact that the dominant mortuary rite appears to have been cremation, and that unburnt bone survives only poorly in the regional soil conditions. The absence of defensive structures across the wider landscape may indicate a society where long-distance exchange networks and gift-giving enabled alliances to be built and maintained, discouraging potential conflicts between rival parties.
- This cannot be assumed, however. Detailed examination of human bone assemblages from elsewhere in mainland Britain is increasingly revealing evidence of trauma and violence. In South West Scotland, only one possible example can be put forward. This is an antiquarian find from just south of Glenquicken Moor, where a human skeleton with what the excavators described as a severed arm, was found in association with a greenstone axe (Yates 1984). It is difficult to assign this a Neolithic date for several reasons. Firstly, the description suggests a cist, rather than a chamber, which would suggest a Bronze Age, rather than a Neolithic origin. Mention of a greenstone axe immediately implies association with a Neolithic axehead. It is possible, however, that the object in question was a battle-axe or axe-hammer, consistent with a Bronze Age date.
- If the Glenquicken Moor example is excluded, then the potential for such violence can only be inferred. The wide range of material culture – including items of exotic materials like jadeite and Arran pitchstone – present at Luce Bay in the earlier Neolithic, is replaced by a much more restricted range of items (namely, arrowheads and sherds of Grooved Ware) in the Late Neolithic. Does this suggest some kind of regional retrenchment, possibly even involving hostilities? Is the pit group at Mye Plantation, now interpreted as pit-traps for hunting wild game (Thomas 2015), merely a subsistence strategy, or does it hint at a society where violence against wild animals might elevate into violence against other people? The situation no doubt changes over time, with periods of uncertainty and unrest balanced by times of comparative peace and stability. Sadly, the physical traces of life and death which have reached us in the present are too impoverished and fragmentary for us to reach any kind of understanding of this aspect of Neolithic life.