European Societies in the Bronze Age

Anthony Harding (emeritus University of Exeter) provides a very in-depth, detailed overview of life in the Bronze Age (2500-800 bce), in Europe, based on archaeological finds. It does not follow a chronological, but a thematic division (housing, clothing, agriculture, warfare, religion, etc.), which allows it to be relatively complete, but which means that evolutions within that period of 1700 years are somewhat less clear. Harding discusses methodological aspects at the beginning of each chapter, which is certainly commendable, but which makes this book less suitable for a general audience. Also striking: the author swears by a materialistic approach. This means that he rejects ethnographic reference material (largely rightly), and show more hardly uses theoretical models from the social sciences (largely wrongly). More about that in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6296617983 show less