Forging Identities: The Mobility of Culture in Bronze Age Europe

Report from a Marie Curie Project 2009-2012 with Concluding Conference at Aarhus University, Moesgaard 2012: Volume 1With 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 époque, 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).