Provisional conclusions Instead of uninterrupted continuity, a much more complex and differentiated sequence emerges. At the island scale, this appears to be a history of interaction between households and relatively small communities. Due to the constant and rapid changes, it is plausible that this was a competitive situation, with rivalries played out in monument construction, forms of material culture and the social space of houses. There is good reason to view the innovations of both passage graves and Grooved Ware as part of local social strategies of differentiation (cf. Sheridan Reference Sheridan, Roche, Grogan, Bradley, Coles and Raftery2004). The foundation of new settlements in areas previously little occupied, such as Barnhouse (Richards et al. Reference Richards, Jones, Sheridan, Dunbar, Reimer, Bayliss, Griffiths and Whittle2016a), and the constant development of the form and interior spaces of houses (Figures 3a–d & 6) can be considered along the same lines. Perhaps local political tensions and social concerns driving the trajectory towards closer settlement nucleation could not be sustained, despite people investing time and labour in monuments relating to deities, ancestors and origins that stretched well beyond the shores of Late Neolithic Orkney. The Orkney story is also one of connections throughout, as suggested above for passage graves and stone circles. Local identities may have been constituted in part through far-reaching contacts and relationships; the Late Neolithic world was indeed clearly expansive in nature (Thomas Reference Thomas2010; Richards et al. Reference Richards, Jones, Sheridan, Dunbar, Reimer, Bayliss, Griffiths and Whittle2016a; Sheridan et al. in prep.). If there is a case for placing the origin of Grooved Ware in Orkney, does the coincidental appearance of the Orkney vole allow us to visualise the direct exchange of ideas or the movement of people from regions where flat-based pottery was already common in the later fourth millennium cal BC (e.g. from northern France to the Alpine foreland)? With the decline of Late Neolithic settlement in Orkney, it is perhaps no coincidence that previous connections and networks also lapsed, as evidenced by the sparse Beaker presence in the archipelago. History had moved elsewhere.