Rebuttal Final 17 December 202.docx

This paper in part responds to an article (Madgwick et al 2021) which in turn presented itself as a response to an earlier paper of ours (Barclay and Brophy 2020). But, like our earlier paper, this one has a wider remit. We had explored the presentation of the supposedly ‘national’ ‘unifying’ role of monuments in a geographically restricted sector of south-western England – what we called the ‘“British” late Neolithic mythos’. Madgwick and his collaborators’ response fails to address the key points raised in our paper and, in doing so, in our view, provides further evidence of both methodological nationalism and conceptual conservatism in continuing to present a prehistory written around and prioritising evidence gathered in this restricted area. It does this apparently without any recognition that that research is being carried on within a problematic theoretical framework.