This book aims to understand the process of the Bronze Age societies of Northern Europe which are often regarded as the periphery and a bleak contrast to the Central European Bronze Age. The Bronze Age is the first "globalised" period with new types of societies and new modes of exchange and trade. In this context there is considerable local variation and diversity within the Bronze Age societies of Northern Europe which is poorly understood, although there have been advances and changes in this research. Therefore this book challenges some of the mainstream opinions on the Bronze Age of Northern Europe, and focus on local and regional aspects. This is done by a series of articles from significant contributors that deal with these issues on theoretical and empirical levels, with regards to differences, cultural dualism, boundaries, regions and regionality in a period of increased "globalisation". The result is a movement away from local and regional aspects toward communications, travels and contacts between northern Europe and the greater world, not only towards Central Europe and the Near East but also towards the east. Northern/Arctic Europe is often left out in these discussions, and this book will contribute to this greater picture of the Bronze Age world.

The Bronze Age was a formative period in European history when the organisation of landscapes, settlements, and economy reached a new level of complexity. This book presents the first in-depth, comparative study of household economy and settlement in three micro-regions: the Mediterranean (Sicily), Central Europe (Hungary), and Northern Europe (South Scandinavia). The results are based on ten years of fieldwork in a similar method of documentation, and scientific analyses were used in each of the regional studies, making controlled comparisons possible. The new evidence demonstrates how differences in settlement organisation and household economies were counterbalanced by similarities in the organised use of the landscape in an economy dominated by the herding of large flocks of sheep and cattle. This book's innovative theoretical and methodological approaches will be of relevance to all researchers of landscape and settlement history.

The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age is a wide-ranging survey of a crucial period in prehistory during which many social, economic, and technological changes took place. Written by expert specialists in the field, the book provides coverage both of the themes that characterize the period, and of the specific developments that took place in the various countries of Europe. After an introduction and a discussion of chronology, successive chapters deal with settlement studies, burial analysis, hoards and hoarding, monumentality, rock art, cosmology, gender, and trade, as well as a series of articles on specific technologies and crafts (such as transport, metals, glass, salt, textiles, and weighing). The second half of the book covers each country in turn. From Ireland to Russia, Scandinavia to Sicily, every area is considered, and up to date information on important recent finds is discussed in detail. The book is the first to consider the whole of the European Bronze Age in both geographical and thematic terms, and will be the standard book on the subject for the foreseeable future.

This innovative volume draws on a range of materials and places to explore the disparate facets of Bronze Age society across the Nordic region through the key themes of time and trajectory, rituals and everyday life, and encounters and identities. The Bronze Age in Northern Europe was a place of diversity and contrast, an era that saw movements and changes not just of peoples, but of cultures, beliefs, and socio-political systems, and that led to the forging of ontological ideas materialized in landscapes, bodies, and technologies. Drawing on a range of materials and places, the innovative contributions gathered here in this volume explore the disparate facets of Bronze Age society across the Nordic region through the key themes of time and trajectory, rituals and everyday life, and encounters and identities. The contributions explore how and why society evolved over time, from the changing nature of sea travel to new technologies in house building, and from advances in lithic production to evolving burial practices and beliefs in the afterlife. This edited collection honours the ground-breaking research of Professor Christopher Prescott, an outstanding figure in the study of the Bronze Age north, and it takes as its inspiration the diversity, interdisciplinarity, and vitality of his own research in order to make a major new contribution to the field, and to shed new light on a Bronze Age full of contrasts and connections.

This book aims to understand the process of the Bronze Age societies of Northern Europe which are often regarded as the periphery and a bleak contrast to the Central European Bronze Age. The Bronze Age is the first "globalised" period with new types of societies and new modes of exchange and trade. In this context there is considerable local variation and diversity within the Bronze Age societies of Northern Europe which is poorly understood, although there have been advances and changes in this research. Therefore this book challenges some of the mainstream opinions on the Bronze Age of Northern Europe, and focus on local and regional aspects. This is done by a series of articles from significant contributors that deal with these issues on theoretical and empirical levels, with regards to differences, cultural dualism, boundaries, regions and regionality in a period of increased "globalisation". The result is a movement away from local and regional aspects toward communications, travels and contacts between northern Europe and the greater world, not only towards Central Europe and the Near East but also towards the east. Northern/Arctic Europe is often left out in these discussions, and this book will contribute to this greater picture of the Bronze Age world.

This book is about how local communities in prehistory, by shaping their landscape, carved out a place for themselves in a big social world that stretched out far beyond the landscape they lived and worked in.