2015 The 13th Nordic Bronze Age Symposium - Session Nordic-Mediterranean relations in the 2nd mill. BC

2015

The Bronze Age was the first epoch in which societies became irreversibly linked in their co-dependence on ores and metallurgical skills that were unevenly distributed in geographical space. Access to these critical resources was secured not only via long-distance physical trade routes, making use of landscape features such as river networks, as well as built roads, but also by creating immaterial social networks, consisting of interpersonal relations and diplomatic alliances, established and maintained through the exchange of extraordinary objects (gifts). In this article, we reason about Bronze Age communication networks and apply the results of use-wear analysis to create robust indicators of the rise and fall of political and commercial networks. In conclusion, we discuss some of the historical forces behind the phenomena and processes observable in the archaeological record of the Bronze Age in Europe and beyond.

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THE BALTIC IN THE BRONZE AGE Regional patterns, interactions and boundaries, edited by Daniela Hofmann, Frank Nikulka & Robert Schumann, 2022

How do we distinguish between the role of gifts as prestige goods and commodities as objects of trade when discussing Bronze Age trade? While some wish to abolish such categories as being linked to a modern perception of the past (Brück 2015), others maintain that the Bronze Age indeed represents the beginning of a pre-modern era (Kristiansen 2018d; Vandkilde 2016), even if it was still couched in the mythological role of prestigious travels (Kristiansen and Larsson 2005, chapter 2) and an ideology of ritual destruction (Fontijn 2019). We are thus dealing with two different value regimes, and it is therefore considered meaningful to apply both the concept of prestige goods as a means of forging political alliances (social value) and the concept of commodities as a means to characterise trade (economic value) (Kristiansen and Larsson 2005, fig. 38; Risch 2016 for comparative analysis of surplus). It has also been suggested that by the Bronze Age inter-regional trade across the European continent, at least in part, was based on competitive advantages that different regions possessed, such as tin from Cornwall or amber from south Scandinavia (Earle et al. 2015, fig. 1). However, so far it has been difficult to quantify volumes of trade, which has left the discussion in a sort of stalemate. I propose that we now have a new foundation for discussing the organisation of trade, which allows us to move from relative to absolute volumes of trade

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NBER Working Paper leading to 2019e, 2019f

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Dynamics of Production in the Ancient Near East 1300-500 BC, edited Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia, 2016

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Metal, Minds and Mobility. Integrating scientific data with archaeological theory, 2018

Our ability to relate objects to a particular ore deposit or supply through metal analysis is strongly governed by current archaeological knowledge about metal production and circulation, and not least the available reference data on ore deposits. In addition, interpretations must be backed up with knowledge about past trading systems. In this article, examples from several interrelated provenance studies are used as a stepping stone for approaching the human aspects of the exchange of metals. These studies contradict the dominant paradigm of importation of metal to Scandinavia mainly from the Austrian Alps and the Slovak Carpathians, and demonstrate that metals reached Scandinavia also from more far-away regions like Iberia. This may indicate, we argue, that the transportation of metals was partly sea-based, and furthermore that commodity-based exchange operated in concert with gift-giving systems. In light of these assumptions, this article seeks to explore the potential role played by the northerners in Bronze Age sea-based, long-distance trade of metals.

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Human Mobility and Technological Transfer In The Prehistoric Mediterranean.

It is argued here that the new forms of mobility instantiated by the demand for metals set Bronze Age political economies apart from what had gone before. Transport by sea and by land was transformed by innovative technologies (the sail, the chariot), enabling long-distance mobility, especially when combined. Th ese changes helped create a new interconnected 'globalised' world without historical precedent. In this chapter it is suggested that fl ows of people and material were facilitated by certain social institutions, with a widely shared tradition of warrior chiefs and traders primarily responsible.

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