With a strong emphasis on data, the two volumes of this book demonstrate that mobility was essential to the European Bronze Age by exploring the shared cultural expression of Bronze Age societies in contrast to their simultaneous development of new local and regional characteristics. During this seminal epoque, cultural and social formations of an entirely new kind and magnitude came to characterize Europe. The intense and dynamic relations between local and large-scale change processes coincided with increased mobility in different domains and forms, forging new identities and shaping the emergence of Europe as a distinct cultural zone. Through over fifty essays by leading Bronze Age scholars, the reader engages with cultural mobility and connectivity and the ways in which these forces affected and transformed human behaviour. The two volume set includes four parts; this volume contains parts 1 (Materiality and Construction of Identities) and 2 (Economic and Political Foundations of Interaction and Mobility). 5pt;font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana'>

Table of Contents:
Cultural Mobility in Bronze Age Europe Helle Vandkilde, Svend Hansen, Kostas Kotsakis, Kristian Kristiansen, Johannes Muller, Joanna Sofaer and Marie Louise Stig Sorensen Part 1: Materiality and the Construction of Identity Marie Louise Stig Sorensen and Joanna Sofaer Continuity and 'Cross' Contamination: A Socio-Economic Characterization of Early Bronze Age Cemetery Traditions in Southwest Slovakia Jozef Batora Gifts or Commodities? Reconfiguring Bronze Age Exchange in Northwest Europe Joanna Bruck Tracing Workshops through Ornaments? The Production of Early Bronze Age Nordic Full-hilted Swords and Daggers in Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein Jan-Heinrich Bunnefeld Nordic by Nature? Ideas about some Inhabitants of the 'Hunenburg' Hillfort near the Harz Mountains in Periods V and VI Immo Heske Just Lids or Vessels for Funeral Drinking and Feasting? Karen Margrethe Hornstrup Female Identities in the Making? Aspects of Late Bronze Age Hoarding Lene Melheim The Differentiation of Identity: A Hierarchy of Symbols? Initial Thoughts on the Informative Potential of Nordic Bronze Age Miniature Swords Jens Notroff Tracing the Hand that Crafted: How Individual Working Traces Make Bronze Age Ornaments Talk Heide W. Norgaard Bioarchaeology of Social Inequality in the Unetice Culture: A case study Dalia A. Pokutta, Justyna Baron, Pawel Dabrowski and Christina Karlsson Migration and Identity at the Early Bronze Age Cemetery of Jelsovce, Southwest Slovakia: The Strontium Evidence Samantha S. Reiter and Karin Margarita Frei The 'Social Skin' and the Hypothesis of an Uxorilocal System in the Early Late Bronze Age (14th-12th BC) in the Southeast of the Paris Basin Stephane Rottier Fanning the Flames of Change: A New Approach to Cremation Cemeteries and Identity Nicole Taylor Cult Identity as Ethnic Mix: Findings from Southern Italian Ritual Contexts Ilaria Tirloni Meaningless Movements: A Critique of the Bronze Age Mobilities Paradigm Tim Flohr Sorensen Part 2: Economic and Political Foundations of Interaction and Mobility Johannes Muller and Kostas Kotsakis Farms and Villages in the Late Neolithic and Earliest Bronze Age of Southernmost Scandinavia: Examples from Southwest Scania, Sweden Kristian Brink Early Bronze Age Settlements at Vejen in Southern Jutland, Denmark: New Perspectives on the Three-aisled Longhouses from Period II Scott Robert Dollar and Martin Egelund Poulsen Identifying Mobility in Populations with Mixed Marine/Terrestrial Diets: Strontium Isotope Analysis of Skeletal Material from a Passage Grave in Resmo, Oland, Sweden Elin Fornander, Kerstin Liden, Gunilla Eriksson and Per Andersson Mobility and Meaning in the Nuragic Culture of Bronze Age Sardinia (c. 1700-900 BC) Emily Holt Contradicting Context: Understanding Early Bronze Axes from the Perspective of Production Maikel H. G. Kuijpers Copper Smelting in the Raxgebiet (Austria): A Late Bronze Age Alpine Industrial Landscape David Larreina-Garcia, Brigitte Cech and Thilo Rehren Between Economy and Symbol: Flint in the Bronze Age in Eastern Central Europe Jacek Lech, Danuta Piotrowska and Dagmara H. Werra Bronze Age Social Practices: Demography and Economy. Forging Long-Distance Exchange Johannes Muller Landscape and Settlement in Southern and Middle Sweden: Changes around 800 BC against a European Backdrop Peter Skoglund Children, Childhood and Food: The Diets of Subadults in the Unetice Culture of Southwestern Poland Dalia Anna Pokutta and Rachel Howcroft Bronze Age Metrology: Length, Volume and Weight Klavs Randsborg Subsistence Economy, Settlements and Political Organisation: The Early Bronze Age in Central Germany and the Carpathian Basin Compared Claes Uhner