Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the 2006 SAA Book Award 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. 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.
Synopsis
Presents a significant new interpretation of the social transformation in Bronze Age Europe.
About the Author
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 Umeå. 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).
Table of Contents
Prologue - between Scylla and Charybdis; 1. A theoretical strategy for studying interaction; 2. Odysseus - a Bronze Age archetype; 3. Rulership in the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze Age; 4. Europe in the early Bronze Age - an archaeological background; 5. Symbolic transmission and social transformation in Bronze Age Europe; 6. The cosmological structure of Bronze Age society; 7. Among gods and mortals, animals and humans; 8. Cosmos and culture in the Bronze Age.