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 2005 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.
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.
