Europe Before History (New Studies in Archaeology) by Kristian Kristiansen


Europe Before History (New Studies in Archaeology)
Title : Europe Before History (New Studies in Archaeology)
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0521784360
ISBN-10 : 9780521784368
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 536
Publication : First published August 6, 1998

The societies of the European Bronze Age produced elaborate artifacts and were drawn into a wide trade network extending over the whole of Europe, yet they were economically and politically undiversified. Kristian Kristiansen attempts to explain this paradox using a world-systems analysis, and provides a rich body of evidence to support his case. The result is a coherent overview of this period of European prehistory that addresses some of the larger questions raised in the study of the period.

Europe Before History (New Studies in Archaeology) Reviews

  • Vicki

    It turns out that the patriarchy really is about horses. This expansive text comparing Central European societies to Near Eastern societies during the Bronze and Iron Ages seeks to determine why the Europeans did not form nation states as quickly as those peoples around the Mediterranean. I read this book as a follow up to The Horse, The Wheel and Language (Anthony, 2007) and found it had plenty of information to answer my questions about what happened when the Indo-Europeans began their interactions with the people of Europe. It had much more information as well. Throughout the book, Kristiansen reviews and summarizes key interpretations of the mostly abundant archaeology. In Chapter 5, Kristiansen finds that pastoral horse-riding people came to dominate sedentary agriculturalists, but that pastoral societies are inherently long-distance, complex and less stable than more sedentary ones. The resulting societies where sedentary agriculturalists are influenced by pastoral horse-riders become more hierarchical and with more prominent warrior elites than the sedentary societies. This process of migration of a mobile population, followed by its dominance of a more sedentary culture, followed by internal feuding and fragmentation followed by migration played out numerous times across Europe.