engleski

Bronze Age European elites: from the Aegean to the Adriatic and back again

In their recent, influential book The Rise of Bronze Age Society (2005), Kristiansen and Larsson argued that hierarchical societies formed in Europe during the Bronze Age in response to the spread from the Near East to northern Europe of elite objects and symbols. These were adopted into and transmitted through existing European institutions following identifiable paths. One of these paths traversed the eastern Mediterranean, entering continental Europe via the Aegean and Adriatic seas. In this scenario, the Late Bronze Age Mycenaean states acted as nodes of communication and transfer, shipping ideas and items up the Adriatic coast and onwards to central Europe. But there is good evidence that contacts between the Aegean and the eastern Adriatic were at their strongest prior to and immediately following, not during the Mycenaean period. In order to disentangle the complex patterns of culture contact and transmission that characterized interactions between the eastern Mediterranean and Europe in the Bronze Age, we deploy various theoretical frameworks at different analytical scales. This effort reveals dynamic processes of change and transformation at the local and regional levels, which are helpful in understanding the continental patterns synthesized by Kristiansen and Larsson.

Bronze Age Europe, elite, Aegean, Adriatic

nije evidentirano