Bronze Age Connections: Cultural Contact in Prehistoric Europe

New and exciting discoveries on either side of the English Channel in recent years have begun to show that people living in the coastal zones of Belgium, southern Britain, northern France and the Netherlands shared a common material culture during the Bronze Age, between three and four thousand years ago. They used similar styles of pottery and metalwork, lived in the same kind of houses and buried their dead in the same kind of tombs, often quite different to those used by their neighbours further inland. The sea did not appear to be a barrier to these people but rather a highway, connecting communities in a unique cultural identity; the 'People of La Manche'. Symbolic of these maritime Bronze Age Connections is the iconic Dover Bronze Age boat, one of Europe's greatest prehistoric discoveries and testament to the skill and technical sophistication of our Bronze Age ancestors. This monograph presents papers from a conference held in Dover in 2006 organised by the Dover Bronze Age Boat Trust, which brought together scholars from many different countries to explore and celebrate these ancient seaborne contacts. Twelve wide-ranging chapters explore themes of travel, exchange, production, magic and ritual that throw new light on our understanding of the seafaring peoples of the second millennium BC.
Table of Contents
Building new connections (Peter Clark)
Encompassing the sea: 'maritories' and Bronze Age maritime interactions (Stuart Needham)
From Picardy to Flanders: transmanche connections in the Bronze Age (Jean Bourgeois and Marc Talon)
British immigrants killed abroad in the seventies: the rise and fall of a Dutch culture (Liesbeth Theunissen)
The Canche Estuary (Pas-de-Calais, France) from the early Bronze Age to the emporium of Quentovic: a traditional trading place between south east England and the continent (Michel Philippe)
Looking forward: maritime contacts in the first millennium BC (Barry Cunliffe)
Copper Mining and production at the beginning of the British Bronze Age new evidence for Beaker/EBA prospecting and some ideas on scale, exchange, and early smelting technologies (Simon Timberlake)
The demise of the flint tool industry (Chris Butler)
Land at the other end of the sea? Metalwork circulation, geographical knowledge and the significance of British/Irish imports in the Bronze Age of the Low Countries (David Fontijn)
The master(y) of hard materials: thoughts on technology, materiality and ideology occasioned by the Dover boat (Mary W Helms)
Exploring the ritual of travel in prehistoric Europe: the Bronze Age sewn-plank boats in context (Robert van de Noort)
In his hands and in his head: the Amesbury Archer as magician (Andrew Fitzpatrick)