The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age (Oxford Handbooks)

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.

Anthony Harding is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Exeter.

List of illustrations

List of tables

1. Introduction, Harry Fokkens and Anthony Harding

Part I: Themes in Bronze Age archaeology

2. Old Father Time: the Bronze Age chronology of Western Europe, Benjamin W Roberts, Marion Uckelmann and Dirk Brandherm

3. Europe 2500 to 2200 BC: Between expiring ideologies and emerging complexity, Volker Heyd

4. A little bit of history repeating itself: a brief review of theories on the Bell Beaker phenomenon, Marc Vander Linden

5. Bronze Age settlements, Joanna Bruck and Harry Fokkens

6. Burials, Mads Kahler Holst

7. Hoards and the deposition of metalwork, Richard Bradley

8. NBNB Monuments and monumentality in Bronze Age Europe, Timothy Darvill

9. NBNB Stonehenge, Mike Parker Pearson, Peter Marshall, Josh Pollard, Colin Richards, Julian Thomas, and Kate Welham

10. The contribution of skeletal isotope analysis to understanding the Bronze Age in Europe, Janet Montgomery and Mandy Jay

11. The myth of the chief: prestige goods, power and personhood in the European Bronze Age, Joanna Bruck and David Fontijn

12. Identity, gender and dress in the European Bronze Age, Marie Louise Stig Sorensen

13. Warfare in the European Bronze Age, Nick Thorpe

14. Rethinking Bronze Age cosmology a North European perspective, Joakim Goldhahn

15. Bronze Age rock art in Northern Europe contexts and interpretations, Joakim Goldhahn and Johan Ling

16. Rock carvings and Alpine statue-menhirs, from the Chalcolithic to the Middle Bronze