Bronze Age
Most surviving bronze implements are tools or weapons, though some ritual artifacts survive.
The date of the arrival of a Bronze Age varies from culture to culture.
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2 Central Asian Bronze Age 3 East Asian Bronze Age 4 Aegean Bronze Age 5 British Bronze Age 6 Central European Bronze Age 7 Northern European Bronze Age |
The Aegean bronze age established a far-ranging trade network. The network imported tin and charcoal to Cyprus, where copper was mined and alloyed with the tin to produce bronze. Bronze objects were then exported far and wide, and supported the trade. Isotopic analysis of the tin in some Mediterranean bronze objects indicates it came from as far away as Britain.
Navigation was well developed at this time, and reached a peak of skill not exceeded until a method was discoved to determine longitude around 1750.
The Minoan empire appears to have coordinated and defended the bronze-age trade.
One crucial lack in this period was that modern methods of accounting were not used, or available. Numerous authorities believe that ancient empires were prone to misvalue staples in favor of luxuries, and perish by famines created by uneconomic trading.
How the Bronze age ended is still being studied. There is evidence that Mycenaean administration of the empire followed Minoan. There is evidence that several Minoan client-states lost large populations to extreme famines or pestilence, so the trade network is believed to have failed at some point, preventing the trade that would have previously relieved such famines and prevented some forms of illness (by nutrition). It is also known that the bread-basket of the Minoan empire, the area north of the Black Sea, lost population and probably some degree of cultivation in this era.
Recent research has discredited the theory that exhaustion of the Cypriot forests caused the end of the bronze trade. The cypriot forests are known to have existed to later times, and experiments have shown that bronze production on the scale of the late bronze age would have exhausted them for charcoal production in less than fifty years.
One theory says that as iron tools became more common, the main justification of the tin trade ended, and the trade network ceased to exist. The indvidual colonies of the Minoan empire then met accidents of drought, famine or war, and had no access to the far-flung resources of an empire to recover.
Another family of theories looks to the explosion of Thera, which occurred shortly before the end of the bronze age. Thera is about 40 miles north of Crete, which was at the time the capital of the Minoan empire. Some authorities speculate that a tsunami from Thera destroyed Cretan cities. Others say that perhaps a tsunami destroyed the Cretan navy in harbor, which then lost crucial battles with the Mycenaean navy, so that a former colony took over the empire.
Another theory looks to the loss of Cretan expertise in administering the Empire. If this expertise was concentrated in Crete, and simply became discredited by military failure, the Mycenaeans may have made crucial political and commercial mistakes when administrering the empire.
All of these theories are persuasive, and all may have operated to some extent.
British Bronze Age and burial types (correct title needed)
In Britain, the Bronze Age is considered to have been the period from 2500 to 500 BC. The Neolithic (New Stone Age) had just finished and change was significant. First, the climate was deteriorating, forcing the population down from easily-defended sites in the hills to fertile valleys. Also, the burial of dead (which until this period had usually been communal) became more individual. For example, whereas in the Neolithic a large chambered cairn was used to house the dead, the Bronze Age saw people buried in individual cists, sometimes covered with cairn material. Ritual sites also changed, often becoming cruder and smaller as, perhaps, the original meaning became diluted and twisted as it was passed down from generation to generation.
Structures:
In central europe, the early Bronze Age Unetice culture (1800-1600 BC) with numerous local groups like Straubing, Adlerberg and Gaban culture is followed by the middle Bronze age (1600-1200 BC) characterised by inhumation burials in tumuli (barrows). Some very rich burials like Leubingen with grave gifts made of gold point to a beginning social stratification already in the Unetice culture.
The late Bronze age urnfield culture, (1300-700 BC) is characterized by cremation burial includes the Lusatian culture in eastern Germany and Poland ((1300-500 BC) that continues into the Iron Age.
The central European bronze age is followed by the Iron Age Hallstatt culture (700-450 BC).
sites
In Northern Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, the Bronze Age is divided into the periods I-IV according to Oscar Montelius. Period Montelius V already belongs to the Iron Age.
Near East Bronze Age
(around 3000 BC, text needed)Central Asian Bronze Age
A bronze age culture known as the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex thrived around 2000 BC in areas around today's northern Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and eastern Iran.East Asian Bronze Age
The Shang Dynasty of early China used bronze vessels for rituals.
(text is needed)Aegean Bronze Age
British Bronze Age
Sites:
Central European Bronze Age
Northern European Bronze Age
| Three-age system: Stone Age | Bronze Age | Iron Age |