Look Inside Organizing Bronze Age Societies

Organizing Bronze Age Societies
The Mediterranean, Central Europe, and Scandanavia Compared

Editors:
Timothy Earle, Northwestern University, Illinois
Kristian Kristiansen, Göteborgs Universitet, Sweden

Timothy Earle, Kristian Kristiansen, Charles French, Magnus Artursson, Michael J. Kolb, Marie Louise Sørensen, Maria Vretemark, Hans-Peter Stika, Brigitta Berzsényi, Joanna Sofaer

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Date Published: October 2010
availability: Available
format: Paperback
isbn: 9780521748353

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Description

The Bronze Age was a formative period in European history when the organisation of landscapes, settlements, and economy reached a new level of complexity. This book presents the first in-depth, comparative study of household economy and settlement in three micro-regions: the Mediterranean (Sicily), Central Europe (Hungary), and Northern Europe (South Scandinavia). The results are based on ten years of fieldwork in a similar method of documentation, and scientific analyses were used in each of the regional studies, making controlled comparisons possible. The new evidence demonstrates how differences in settlement organisation and household economies were counterbalanced by similarities in the organised use of the landscape in an economy dominated by the herding of large flocks of sheep and cattle. This book's innovative theoretical and methodological approaches will be of relevance to all researchers of landscape and settlement history.
- First systematic comparison between Bronze Age societies in the Mediterranean, Central and Northern Europe
- Introduces a novel materialist theoretical approach
- Defines for the first time the full complexity of Bronze Age economies
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'The ambition shown here is all too rare in archaeology.' The Times Literary Supplement

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Product details
- Date Published: October 2010
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9780521748353
- length: 328 pages
- dimensions: 252 x 180 x 16 mm
- weight: 0.59kg
- contains: 70 b/w illus. 1 map 16 tables
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: theory and practice in the late prehistory of Europe Timothy Earle and Kristian Kristiansen
2. The palaeo-environment of Bronze Age Europe Charles French
3. Regional settlement pattern Magnus Artursson
4. Settlement structure and organization Timothy Earle and Michael J. Kolb
5. Households Marie Louise Sørensen
6. Subsistence strategies Maria Vretemark, Hans-Peter Stika and Brigitta Berzsényi
7. Technology and craft Joanna Sofaer
8. Organizing Bronze Age societies: concluding thoughts Timothy Earle and Kristian Kristiansen.
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Instructors have used or reviewed this title for the following courses
- Comparative Archaeology
- Minoan and Mycenaean Art and Archaeology
- The Ancient Built Environment
Editors
Timothy Earle, Northwestern University, Illinois
Timothy Earle is Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University. His scholarship focuses on the emergence of chiefdoms, and he has conducted field research in Hawaii, the Andes, Denmark, and Hungary. He is the author of several books, most recently Chiefdoms: Power, Economy, and Ideology, How Chiefs Come to Power, and Bronze Age Economics.
Kristian Kristiansen, Göteborgs Universitet, Sweden
Kristian Kristiansen is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Gothenburg. He is an honorary Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, the Society of Antiquaries of London, and the European Association of Archaeologists, which awarded him the European Archaeological Heritage Prize in 2005. He is the author of Europe before History, Social Transformations in Archaeology (with Michael Rowlands), and The Rise of Bronze Age Society (with Thomas B. Larsson), which was awarded best scholarly book in 2007 by the Society for American Archaeology.
Contributors
Timothy Earle, Kristian Kristiansen, Charles French, Magnus Artursson, Michael J. Kolb, Marie Louise Sørensen, Maria Vretemark, Hans-Peter Stika, Brigitta Berzsényi, Joanna Sofaer