Theme:
4. Globalisation and archaeology
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
News from the Bronze Age – Scaling Dynamics and Narratives
Content:
The Bronze Age is a well-researched epoch in most regions of Europe, where strong narratives are built upon rich data sets and mostly top-down theoretical approaches. Those narratives, however, are not going undoubted or undebated and currently a reassessment of the Bronze Age – or Prehistoric – World is ongoing. Influenced by reflexive approaches towards the social interpretation of archaeological data and scientific studies as well as the incorporation of bottom-up approaches this session aims at challenging old narratives about the European Bronze Age.
Widening up perspectives, we would like to bring together a - theoretically, methodologically, geographically and thematically – diverse and interdisciplinary group of researchers to (re)present the broad spectrum of studies and opinions on the Bronze Age.
Within the framework of our integrative and multifaceted approach, we would like to draw special attention to the emerging dynamics that are visible on different spatio-temporal scales, settings and data sets (from site data to big-data, from artefacts to aDNA, between long-durée and adaption of innovation). Hereby, we define dynamics as the effect and interplay of forces over time and space that can be identified from the evidence of archaeological remains – investigating dynamics, as well as their theoretical and methodological exploration, is of our main interest.
Based on case studies from all over Europe dealing with dynamics of and within site occupation sequences, settlement systems, exchange networks, socio-political organisations, economic relations or the ideological framework, we want to explore the often fostered unity/heterogeneity of the European Bronze Age starting from regionally diverse settings. Therefore, we would like to invite especially contributions dealing with demography, mobility, identity, economy, politics and social organisation to discuss with us the identification and scaling of dynamics in the European Bronze Age and their theoretical and methodological investigation and to widen up horizons.
Keywords:
Bronze Age, Reflexive Approaches, Settlement Systems, Socio-political Organisation, Demography, Exchange Networks
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Laura Burkhardt (Austria) 1,2
Co-organisers:
Mirco Brunner (Switzerland) 3,4
Julian Laabs (Germany) 5,6
Ken Massy (Germany) 7
Affiliations:
1. Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology - Austrian Academy of Sciences
2. German Archaeological Institute (DAI)
3. University of Bern, Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Prehistory Department
4. University of Bern, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)
5. Institute of Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany
6. Department of Geography, Physical Geography, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany
7. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Institut für Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie
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