As mentioned earlier, there is very little fiction written about prehistoric Britain, or indeed anywhere else in neolithic and bronze age Europe. Paleolithic and mesolithic times seem more popular for writers (surprisingly,considering the greater antiquity) and then from the Iron age through the Roman period and the dawn of written history there are loads. Obviously the bronze and neolithic eras seem to give authors 'trouble.' This is often bourne out by the books themselves.
Here is my list of big turn offs (for me personally):
1) Fluffy bunnies. Depictions of prehistoric people as pacifist Great Goddess-worshipping vegans with nothing better to do than hug stones and 'live in harmony with earth' (whatever that means) and wait for the novel's 'baddies' to swoop down on them. Come on, folks, Gimbutas was discredited years ago, and was mainly talking about an earlier era anyway. There's lots of evidence of warfare and even mass killing in the neolithic, and some farmers practiced slash-burning (not very green!)
2) Mean Beakers! Lots of 80's novels had the nice fluffies (see above) attacked by the mean, violent patriarchal Beaker folk who were just ravenously after tin and gold. Of course no one really believes in a mass Beaker invasion today (although I do believe in beaker people, unlike some! The Amesbury Archer isn't exactly Scotch Mist!) but there certainly was acculturation, a 'beaker package' that spread with what was probably a small number of people. Interestingly, despite the more martial appearance of the beaker folk, with their composite bows, wrist guards and daggers, there is actually less evidence for out-and-out warfare in the neolithic.
3) Bad nomenclature. We don't know exactly what tongues were spoken by the neolithic and bronze age Britons...but naming your characters names like Og and Tor is just plain lazy and sounds like it comes from some 60's Dinosaur and Caveman movie. Be a bit creative! Do some research! It is quite possible and even probable that some form of a proto-celtic language was in Britain by at least 2500 BC. before that...maybe something like Basque (as least one author writing of mesolithic Scots gave them Basque names.)
4) generic prehistoric. This is my name for what is pure laziness on the author's behalf. The setting could be anywhere, for instance if you changed the names it could be an African village. If it doesn't feel like it's really set in prehistoric Britain, then it isn't working. I also include the ones here who start out with the characters at Stonehenge, then suddenly the monument's never mentioned again, and all of a sudden they seem to have anachronistic long swords and seem in dress and manner as if they could be magically tranported into the early middle ages.
5) Weird ideas about what people looked like. Several novels I've read had virtually all the prehistoric Britons as blondes and redheads, who thought a dark haired person looked alien and strange. Look around you at the 'celtic' areas where the most ancient ancestry is found--the more 'traditional' you get, the darker the hair gets, with considerable black hair in Ireland for such a northerly latitude. It always amused me...if vikings were blonde and Saxons were blonde and 'celts' were blonde, where the heck did all us brunettes come from? (And please don't say Romans or I might have to kill you...)
