9 - Bronze Age European Elites: From the Aegean to the Adriatic and Back Again

Summary

In their recent, influential book The Rise of Bronze Age Society, Kristiansen and Larsson argued that hierarchical societies formed in Europe during the Bronze Age in response to the spread from the Near East to northern-Europe of elite objects and symbols. This chapter analyzes archaeological-data collected along a route of Bronze Age interaction that tied the Aegean to central-Europe via the eastern-Adriatic coast. Archaeologists have long recognized that networks of exchange bound Mediterranean to European-societies and vice versa, and that regional interaction was a key causal-factor in Bronze Age sociopolitical change, such as the rise of Aegean states. The Adriatic provided one point of access to central Europe via the Caput Adriae and another was via the northern Aegean. Numerous Bronze Age artifacts of purported Aegean derivation have been found in Albania. As was the case with Albania, there is much more evidence for contact of the Aegean with Dalmatia and Istria during the earlier phases of the Bronze Age.