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Chapter Thirteen - Entrepreneurs, Metals and Change

Scandinavia Meets Its Neighbours in the Earliest Bronze Age

from Part IV - Marxian And Post-Colonial Approaches as well as World System Theory in Relation to Gift Exchange and MacroRegional Exchange

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2022

By
Helle Vandkilde
Edited by
Johan Ling ,
Richard J. Chacon  and
Kristian Kristiansen
Johan Ling
Affiliation:
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Richard J. Chacon
Affiliation:
Winhrop University, South Carolina
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Summary

The Bronze Age was a period of premodern globalization across a number of parameters, which may deserve the term ‘bronzization’ – a multi-scalar process of bronze-led connectedness across a macro-region in Afro-Eurasia (Vandkilde 2016, 2017b). The onset of bronzization dates to c. 2000 bce, a time-point that marks the first historical threshold: bronze was now used over much of the Bronze Age macro-region (Figure 13.1). Another tipping point occurred c. 1600 bce, expediting the full implementation and floruit of bronze-based culture, whilst a phenomenal shrinkage began c. 1200 bce, which marked the beginning of the end of bronzization. Bronze Age connectedness in Afro-Eurasia emerged from innumerable transports of goods, encounters, local responses to the transculturally exotic, and the surge in the economy, creativity, and innovation that characterized the entire period. Local histories thus became linked through encounters of neutral, diplomatic or conflicting nature: intersecting interaction spheres may have been the fundamental building blocks of the vast grid of bronzization (Figure 13.2).

Type
Chapter
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Trade before Civilization
Long Distance Exchange and the Rise of Social Complexity
 , pp. 309 - 333
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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