Description: The Bronze Age was a formative period in European history when the organization of landscapes, settlements, and economy reached a new level of complexity. This book presents the first in-depth, comparative study of household, economy, and settlement in three micro-regions: the Mediterranean (Sicily), Central Europe (Hungary), and Northern Europe (South Scandinavia). The results are based on ten years of fieldwork in a similar method of documentation, and scientific analyses were used in each of the regional studies, making controlled comparisons possible. The new evidence demonstrates how differences in settlement organization and household economies were counterbalanced by similarities in the organized use of the landscape in an economy dominated by the herding of large flocks of sheep and cattle. The eight chapters in this book provide a new, contextualized understanding of the social and economic complexity of the Bronze Age. Its innovative theoretical and methodological approaches will be of relevance to all researchers of landscape and settlement history.
Brief description: Timothy Earle is Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University. His scholarship focuses on the emergence of chiefdoms, and he has conducted field research in Hawaii, the Andes, Denmark, and Hungary. He is the author of several books, most recently Chiefdoms: Power, Economy, and Ideology, How Chiefs Come to Power, and Bronze Age Economics.
Review Quotes: "Recommended." -Choice