European Societies in the Bronze Age (original) (raw)
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Mode of Production and Archaeology, 2017
In the beginning of the second millennium BC we have evidence of exten-sive trade in metals, and on mobility in persons and things in temperate Europe (Kristiansen 1998). Also, we see the rapid emergence of boundaries as manifested in the regional appearance of distinctive patterns of metal-work, housing, and burial rites (Figure 9.1), features that altogether broadly can be associated with certain modes of productions. To understand the nature of European Bronze Age societies in terms of interaction, trade, and boundaries, we must acknowledge both the spe-cific social conditions of material life and the larger economic framework on which they depended (Marx 1973:63; Kristiansen 1998; Ling and Row-lands 2013). In our definition a bronze economy is constituted by particu-lar workings in a larger social formation with certain common interests (e.g., metal-using societies).
Europe at around can best be described as a chessboard of archaeological entities in di erent cultural traditions. ese traditions can easily be categorized into two blocks: on the one hand there are regionally dispersed archaeological cultures and groups, mostly de ned by their respective pottery. ese stretch geographically like a belt from the Balkans in the east, over the Carpathian Basin, to Italy and France, including probably also parts of Spain and Portugal in the west. On the other hand there are the supra-regional, expansionistic cultural phenomena, covering wide parts of the continent and connecting, through their respective social, economic, ideological, and material features, regions and landscapes that were previously culturally separated.
Local Societies in Bronze Age Northern Europe. Edited by Nils Anfinset and Malanie
2015
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Time, like space, is a physical category. It is a dimension, not an element of reality. It is continuous and totally independent of human will and human actions (Aveni 2001, 13). Many philosophical schools (e.g., Plato, Leibnitz, Husserl) have unveiled the randomness of the world and its dimension – time (Kołakowski 2009, 195). Embedded in culture as the effect of analytical minds, science – including archaeology – aims at taming an accidental physical environment. Humans have a need to give meaning to the world they experience and do so through references to a myth, a reality that requires neither justification nor proof. The essence of culture is that it imposes a mythical organization on the world, providing it with rules of understanding the empirical, random, and meaningless reality as meaningful (Kołakowski 2009, 13-15).
Nils Anfinset and Melanie Wrigglesworth (eds): Local Societies in Bronze Age Northern Europe
Norwegian Archaeological Review, 2013
The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.
From 2500 B.C. onward, the continent of Europe experienced changes in their societies, economies, and technologies that occur very rapidly, relative to the changes that occurred from the Paleolithic to Neolithic times. For thousands of years before the Late Neolithic, the life of a normal European inhabitant was the same and moved at a slow pace. Major changes occurred on the order of thousands of years, rather than the scale of hundreds of years that happened in the Bronze and Iron Ages. There is no one particular reason for the change of pace that is apparent, but rather it is a complex set of factors that caused this to happen, and this set of factors will be discussed thoroughly starting with the Early Bronze Age (EBA) and working through time to the Late Iron Age (LIA) and ending right before the start of the Roman Empire.