Eight papers, ranging from the Chalcolithic in Northwest Africa and Iberia to the Iron Age in Central Europe, shed light on issues as diverse as the principles of chronology building, the role of alleged ‘defensive’ enclosures, pottery studies, use-wear analysis of Iron Age weaponry and the Hallstatt/La Tène transition in the eastern Alps.

Papers from Session XXXIV-6 of the XVIII UISPP World Congress 2018 were divided into two parts, the first dealing with lithic technology, use-wear analyses and the relation between the decline of stone and the development of metallurgy while the second focused on stone tools used for metallurgy. This publication combines these two parts.

The fifth millennium BCE was a period of rapid social change. One of the key factors was the developments in technology which led to the rise of the metals industry. Archaeological finds from sites dating to the Chalcolithic period indicate the production and use of copper. 'Dawn of the Metal Age' examines a range of sites - from copper mines in Jordan and Israel to the villages of the northern Negev where copper was produced in household workshops, to a series of cave burials where a range of luxury metal goods were buried with the elite members of Chalcolithic society. Ancient technology is reconstructed from the archaeological evidence, which also illuminates the changing economic, social, religious and political environment of the time.

12 papers by 22 authors from the “Metools” symposium (Queens University, Belfast, 2016), aim to shine a spotlight on the tools of the metalworker and to follow their evolution from the beginning of the Bronze Age through to the Iron Age, as well as the place held by metalworking and its artisans in the economic and social landscape of the period.

This concise dictionary is intended to be helpful in the reading of archaeological books and publications, and in the writing of papers and articles in both English and French.

The book treats three primary themes. The first covers the Baden, Kostolac/Bošáca and Vučedol cultures, demonstrating their genetic relationship and indigenous development. This development is marked by changes in distribution (the global horizontal stratigraphy) caused by the penetration of the Pit Grave Culture, our second theme. The third theme analyses the emergence of the EBA. Particular attention is afforded to the absolute chronology. Two excursuses discuss finds outside the Carpathian Basin, but part of its cultural sphere. The archaeological analysis of the cultures underpins a novel cultural and historical interpretation.