On the co-movement of people, techniques and objects in Bronze Age Europe

By Vanessa Guyot (vanessa.guyot@gmail.com)

ESR Fellow, Berlin

The aim of this project is to approach the problems related to Bronze Age mobility, especially in Central Europe. The human movements, the displacements of things, andabove all the displacements of metallic objects and/or raw metals, will be dealt with, as thecirculation of ideas and knowledge, in particular related to the metallurgical field. The dataused in this study will be mainly selected from some well-preserved cemeteries spreadacross Central Europe, maybe completed by some hoards and settlements, if they arerelevant enough. In addition, this work will focus on the central Unetician and North-AlpineDanubian groups, that is, on the Early Bronze Age. However, the transition to the MiddleBronze Age will also be taken into account. Indeed, changes in movements will be animportant aspect approached in this project, so including the transitional phase betweenEarly and Middle Bronze Age, when a lot of changes take place, may be very interesting.

Both small-scale displacements, inside each of the studied regional groups, andlarger-scale movements, between these same areas, will be considered. First, regarding thecirculation of metals and knowledge, classic typological methods, but alsoarchaeometallurgical data, will be used in order to detail precisely and map thesemovements. Thus, determining if a relevant object is an importation or a local imitation, theorigin, the intensity and the scale of the displacements, their modalities, their organization,will be of course central questions.

Then osteological methods, as well as new scientific approaches, like DNA andisotopic analyses, will bring fundamental information about the human mobility studied here.This way, moving people will be identified. Their origin, characteristics and particularities willbe analyzed, and the reasons and features of their movements approached.And finally, the extent to which the circulation of objects, knowledge and the humanmobility correlate will be discussed. Thus, the obtained results will be assessed andinterpreted, by using modern theories of mobility.




Department of Anthropology, Archaeology and Linguistics | Aarhus University | Moesgård Allé 20 | DK-8270 Højbjerg | Denmark | Email: aal@au.dk | Tel: +45 8942 1111