The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmissions and Transformations

Description

Beginning with state formation and urbanization in the Near East c. 3000 BC and ending in Central and Northern Europe c. 1000-500 BC, the Bronze Age marks an heroic age of travels and transformations throughout Europe. In this book, Kristian Kristiansen and Thomas Larsson reconstruct the travel and transmission of knowledge that took place between the Near East, the Mediterranean and Europe. They explore how religious, political and social conceptions of Bronze Age people were informed by long-distance connections and alliances between local elites. The book integrates the hitherto separate research fields of European and Mediterranean (classical) archaeology and provides the reader with an alternative to the traditional approach of diffusionism. Examining data from across the region, the book presents an important new interpretation of social change in the Bronze Age, making it essential reading for students of archaeology, of anthropology and of the development of early European society.

Kristian Kristiansen is Professor at the Department of Archaeology, University of Gothenburg. His previous publications include Europe Before History (0521784360) and Social Transformation in Archaeology (2000) (with Mike Rowlands). He was the co-founder and first president of the European Association of Archaeologists and is a member of the Swedish Academy of History and Letters. Thomas Larsson is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Umea. He is the co-editor of Approaches to Swedish Archaeology (with Hans Lundmark) (British Archaeological Reports, 1989) and monographs on the Scandinavian Bronze Age including The Bronze Age Metalwork in Southern Sweden: Aspects of Social and Spatial Organization 1800 - 500 BC (1986).

'... much to admire...' Antiquity