Praehistorische Zeitschrift; 2016; 91(1): 103–123
Abhandlung
Helle Vandkilde*
Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern
Globalization
DOI 10.1515/pz-2016-0005
Zusammenfassung: Ist es möglich, die Bronzezeit im
Sinne der soziologisch definierten Begrifflichkeit “Glo-
balisierung” zu fassen? Der Beitrag folgt dieser Fragestel-
lung auf analytischem Wege, aber auch in der Diskussion
ihrer Merkmale auf Basis moderner und zeitgenössischer
Geschichtsschreibung. Sichtbar wird, dass die Bronzezeit
als einzigartiges Beispiel der Verschränkung eines konti-
nentübergreifenden afrikanisch-eurasischen Großraumes
anzusehen ist, der sich um etwa 2000 v. Chr. herausbildete
und um ca. 1200 v. Chr. wieder verschwand. Um die Bronze-
zeit als ein entsprechend globalisiertes Phänomen be-
­
trachten zu können, wurde der Begriff “bronzization” ein-
geführt, der die Bronze als entscheidende Ressource eines
historischen Wandels über den Zeitraum von 800 Jahren
fasst und in den Mittelpunkt der Forschung stellt.
Schlüsselworte: Bronzezeit; Globalisierung; Europa und
Afrika; bronzization
Résumé: L’âge du Bronze entre-t-il dans les limites de ce
que les sociologues appellent la mondialisation? Pour
répondre à cette question nous adoptons une approche
comparative des traits clefs qui caractérisent la mondia-
lisation à l’époque moderne et contemporaine. Ceci nous
mène à conclure que l’âge du Bronze – ici dans un espace
suprarégional couvrant l’Afrique et l’Eurasie – représente
un cas unique d’interconnectivité prémoderne qui prit
son essor autour de 2000 av. J.-C. et se mit à décliner vers
1200 av. J.-C. Nous avons inventé le terme «bronzisation»
pour décrire l’âge du Bronze comme représentant un phé-
nomène déterminant, intimement lié à une ressource mi-
nérale essentielle et sujet aux transformations historiques
qui eurent lieu au cours des 800 ans de son existence.
Mots-Cles: Âge du Bronze; globalization; Europe et
Afrique; bronzization
*Corresponding Author: Prof. Dr. Helle Vandkilde: School of Culture
and Society – Department of Archaelogy, Aarhus University,
Moesgård Allé 20, 8270 Højbjerg (Dk). E-Mail: farkhv@cas.au.dk
Abstract: Does the Bronze Age fall within the limits of
what sociologists call globalization? While pursuing
this question, the analysis advances through a compar-
ison with the key qualities defining the globalization of
modern and contemporary history. It is concluded that the
Bronze Age – covering a hyper-region in Afro-Eurasia –
constituted a unique case of pre-modern interconnectivity
which arose prior to c. 2000 BCE and began to close down
c. 1200 BCE. The term bronzization is invented to describe
the Bronze Age as an overarching globalizing phenome-
non, tightly knit by one crucial resource and subject to
cross-cutting historical change during its 800 years of du-
ration.
Keywords: Bronze Age; globalization; Europe and Africa;
bronzization
Introduction
Globalization conceptualizes connectivity of a locally
embedded as well as a hyper-regional character; global
coverage is, in fact, implicit if the name of the concept is
to be taken literally. Furthermore, globalization denotes
a way of theorizing developed in the social and cultural
sciences from 1990s onwards, founded on the argument
that the local and the global are mutually constitutive.
This has produced a plethora of sub-concepts – such as
glocalisation, hybridity, inbetweenness, mobilities, trans-
culture and travelling cultures – which can be operation-
alized when dealing analytically with globalization in
contemporary society or similar phenomena in history.
This still ongoing theorization includes, for example, the
idea of cultural hybridization1 and the view that the study
of the appropriation of exogenous culture merits a local
perspective of analysis2. The present contribution never-
theless maintains that movements and responses to those
same movements produce macro-tendencies through his-
1 Stockhammer 2012.
2 Hahn 2008.
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104 Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization
torical time and geographical space. New insight about
early globalization can be gained through comparisons3,
which is an exercise performed below.
This article asks the intriguing question of whether the
Bronze Age c. 3000–700 BCE in fact constituted globali-
zation in its own right hence being consistent with the
sociological notion of this phenomenon. There are at
least two reasons for probing this issue. First, globaliza-
tion theory is rather unexplored in the field of Bronze Age
studies, despite a potential4. Secondly, the Bronze Age
has not yet been compared to the globalization of recent
and contemporary history. Instead, this period has over
the last decades been subject to several macro-economic
analyses capitalizing on Wallersteinian world-system
theory5. Ratnagar6 notably dubs the Bronze Age a unique
case of a pre-industrial world system. In a recent review of
world-systemic approaches, Kohl makes the point that the
Bronze Age was “loosely and amorphously structured”
with linkages more adequately conceptualized as web-
like, with expanding social fields of interaction7. This is
closer to the view presented here: Bronze Age uniqueness
in a deep-historical perspective can be upheld, but neither
the Bronze Age nor the contemporary globalization is re-
ducible to a world-systemic order sensu Wallerstein8.
Below, an outline follows of the Bronze Age as multi-
scaled but coherent across a mega-region in parts of Afro-
Eurasia, hence founding the argument that the period
shares features with globalization as we know it from con-
temporary history. The Bronze Age was not globalization
in the sense of enfolding the entire globe9: this difference
in geographical reach prompts me to invent my own term,
bronzization, which paraphrases labels used to grasp
interconnectivities in antiquity: Romanization10 and
Mediterranization11. Likewise, the Neolithic may be con-
ceptualized in spatio-processual terms Neolithization12.
However, bronzization – as an overarching phenomenon
knit by one crucial resource – probably has a more fitting
match in contemporary globalization. The term bronz-
3 Jennings 2011.
4 Maran 2011a; 2011b; Vandkilde 2007a; 2009; 2010; 2014a.
5 E.g. Sherratt 1993; 1994; Kristiansen 1998; Ratnagar 2001; Beaujard
2011.
6 Ratnagar 2001, 351–379.
7 Kohl 2011, 77; 81; cf. 2007, 252; Chernykh 1992.
8 Wallerstein 1974.
9 E.g. Robertson 2003.
10 Haversfield 2012; Hingley 2005; Mattingly 2006; Pitts 2014; Ver-
sluys 2014.
11 Morris 2010; cf. Horden/Purcell 2000; Knappett 2011.
12 Glørstad/Prescott 2009.
ization,and the particularity of the Bronze Age in world
history, abides with the notion of plural globalizations
coined by Jennings13: each globalisation is underscored
by intense connectivity but nevertheless holds unique
material and socio-economic traits.
The argument will proceed in sections, which explore
qualities inherent to modern globalization in the setting
of the Bronze Age. Emphasis is upon non-Mediterranean
Europe, albeit the analysis will draw on the fact that the
Bronze Age had a much wider coverage. A particular
point to be made is how creative relationships between
human actors and the transculture of bronze were among
the principal motors driving the interconnectivity of the
Bronze Age.
Globalization vis-a-vis the Bronze
Age
Contemporary globalization is rooted in historical events
connecting Afro-Eurasia with America in the sixteenth
century CE, from whence it developed on-and-off, with
frequent fragmentation periods instigated by rivalling
states and various forms of crisis. The trends toward glo-
balization matured into a breakthrough in the late eight-
eenth century CE with industrialization, which subse-
quently became emulated widely across the globe14. The
result was an enormous economic growth, enabling a
full range of scientific innovations which, again, speeded
up the haste with which culture could travel. The early
modern globalizing trends and the contemporary globali-
zation together represent a historical process driven by an
intriguing cocktail of economy and culture.
The geographical range of the Bronze Age is by com-
parison limited, but much more far-reaching than the area
occupied by societies of the Chalcolithic period, when
copper was first introduced and put to use. The Bronze
Age is the widest-ranging area of cultural-economic con-
nectivity known from pre-modern times. It can be defined
by the use of history’s first alloy and by societies depend-
ent on copper-based metallurgy in general. It was precon-
ditioned and enhanced by far-ranging traffic in metals,
whose significance came to permeate and boost economy
and culture in a fruitful partnership which had fundamen-
tal consequences for people and their societies.
Research historically, there is consensus that the
genesis of the Bronze Age coincided with entirely new
13 Jennings 2011.
14 Robertson 2003; Morris 2011, 165–166 fig. 3,7.
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  Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization 105

Fig. 1: The dispersal of the Chalcolithic in Western Eurasia with tin sources added: major tin sources are located outside the old cores of the
5th–4th millennia BCE in geographies which only became truly copper-using in the third millennium BCE. Restricted availability and general
remoteness of tin occurrences were essential in creating the bronzization from c. 2000 BCE, as connectivity now had to extend far beyond
local or regional spheres. From Roberts et al. 2009, fig 1a with additions

spatial scales of connectedness. 3000 BCE is the approxi-
mate point in time when scholarship speaks rather unan-
imously about Bronze Age commencement in Western
Eurasia – with the threefold proviso that bronze did not
substitute copper overnight, that copper tuned by high
contents of arsenic was in use from very early on, and
that old Chalcolithic core regions (Fig. 1) and areas situ-
ated close to tin sources were often quicker to adopt the
artificial alloy15. Albeit not yet plentiful, the number of
tin-bronze items increased during the third millennium
BCE across Europe and Western Asia, including Egypt16.
By 2200–2000 BCE, metallurgical knowledge with use of
tin had spread to include China and much of East Asia17,
and production of copper had increased enormously by
c. 2000 BCE in the main mining areas18. This maximum
reach, from Europe’s Atlantic brim to China and from
Scandinavia to North Africa, was maintained until c. 1200
BCE (Fig. 2). From around this time, local iron (and thus
the Iron Age) became an economic and historical factor
in several regions, albeit bronze use had an aftermath,
particularly in temperate Europe, until 700–500 BCE.
15 Cf. Penhallurick 1986; Vandkilde 1998; Müller 2002; Rassmann
2010.
16 Rahmsdorf 2011, Fig. 9,1.
17 Chernykh 1992; White/Hamilton 2009; Wan 2011.
18 Chernykh 2002.
However, the turn from the third to the second millennium
BCE was crucial, as societies across this mega-region in
Afro-Eurasia had become dependent on copper-based
metallurgy – and for the first time on the exogenous re-
sources of copper and tin – for their reproduction.
The alloy of bronze was the game changer. Compared
to the fairly wide and abundant availability of copper in
metallogenous regions, tin has a much rarer occurrence.
Once tin is added to a recent mapping of the spread of
copper-knowledge19 it is remarkable how the few major
tin sources are mostly placed outside those innovative
hotspots that first explored copper in the fifth to third mil-
lennia BCE. This state of affairs lasted till the end of the
second millennium BCE (Fig. 1–2). In the Chalcolithic era,
the Mediterranean, Balkan, Near Eastern and Caucasian
hubs had pursued their course without temperate Europe,
but with bronze this changed radically. With the depend-
ence on bronze, such cores with their hinterlands could
no longer rely on internal trade or trade with one another,
but came to depend on trade with outside regions. The
same situation seems to have characterized the Early
Bronze Age dynasties of China, the Xia and Shang, bloom-
ing along and between the Yellow River and the Yangtze
River 2200–1050 BCE20.
19 Cf. Roberts et al. 2009.
20 Wan 2011; Morris 2011, 204–212.

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106 Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization

We still do not know much about which sources of
tin were used and by which socio-cultural units and
regions21, but mapping demonstrates that the nearest tin
was usually a long distance away for the inhabitants of
the Bronze Age hyper-region (Fig. 1–2). This fact was fun-
damental to bronzization, which created and demanded
trans-regional directional trade, extensions of regional
spheres of interaction, and intensified local networking to
feed essential needs in, eventually, all the societies – just
as with gas and oil today. Engagement in wide-ranging
networks was no longer merely an option. It was a neces-
sity to the functioning of the Bronze Age world.
Transculture as a meta-cultural
language groups. Weaker or stronger at times as it might
have been, this coherence, with its many porous bounda-
ries, was produced by the dispersal of bronze and relied
for eight centuries upon its effective dispersal. Bronze
was such a crossover of great attraction locally precisely
because of its inherent economic and cultural potential.
Democratization of transculture
In contemporary globalization, transculture concretely
embraces crucial resources (notably money, gas, oil) and
basic consumer goods (e.g. coffee, rice, tinned food) but
also branded commodities (e.g. Coca-Cola, Nike footwear)
and a panoply of luxuries (e.g. digital devices, items linked

beyond to comfort and prestige at home and travelling). Transcul-

ture thus often holds material qualities which may invite a
material turn in globalization research. Today, varieties of
The word ‘globalization’ denotes intensifying intercon-
transculture enter most societies across the globe, engag-
nectedness across social, economic and cultural systems
ing populations in a myriad ways. Globalization implies
and borders. This growing interconnectivity is produced
a broadening access to transcultural resources, things
through people’s strategic interactions not only with one
and knowledge, inter alia because the necessarily porous
another but also with, broadly speaking, material culture,
boundaries make it difficult to exercise tight control and
while the underlying incentive is economic as well as so-
establish monopoly. This includes a tendency for the pre-
cio-cultural. As both precondition and outcome, there is
vailing transculture to ooze toward the bottom of the soci-
a rapid spread of raw materials, and the technological
etal hierarchies, while new transculture and privileges are
knowledge tied thereto, in addition to tangible and in-
appropriated by elites24.
tangible culture, which is locally responded to as well as
In this perspective, globalization sustains a democrati-
passed on. A key insignia of this ‘world in motion’ is the
zation of exogenous culture and resources which, one way
impact transferred from and through transculture. Epstein
or another, impacts the lives of all individuals, not only the
has defined this phenomenon as meta-cultural rather
upper social echelons.
than culture in a traditional place-bound sense22.
Bronze was a convertible with an almost unlimited
In this perspective, globalization is run by an intersoci-
range of potential uses due to its malleability, colour and
etal crossover – so-called transculture – which holds eco-
strength. Its potential was far greater than silver – the
nomic potentials and is culturally engaging.
global currency of the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries –
Bronze was the transculture of the Bronze Age. In
as bronze was so much more than just money: any item
the shape of both raw material and objects, bronze easily
could, whenever desirable or necessary, be incorporated
crossed boundaries between different techno-economic
into a stock of materials for recycling. Copper was during
systems, social solutions, and cultural groupings. The
the Chalcolithic period used for ornaments for body and
spread of bronze transgressed such entities with limited
dress as well as for weaponry, notably axes and daggers.
respect for territories and boundaries. Metal was valued
Copper items were at the time tied to elite interactions in
equally – albeit also in different ways – by societies across
both male and female segments of society. This clear social
the Bronze Age hyper-region, regardless of their scale or
link of exclusivity, underlined by the rarity of metal, is dis-
categorization as urban or non-urban23. Countless differ-
played in South-Eastern and Central Europe 4500–2900
ent cultures and people inhabited this Bronze Age ‘meta-
BCE25 and among third-millennium BCE Corded Ware
cultural beyond’, for example with many varieties of
and Bell Beaker communities26. With the breakthrough of
­Indo-European languages in addition to numerous other

21 Pernicka pers. comm./ongoing project. 24 E.g. Friedman 2006.

22 Epstein 2005. 25 Hansen 2011.
23 Wengrow 2011, 136–137. 26 E.g. Vandkilde 2006; 2007b.

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  Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization
bronze c. 2200–2000 BCE, this pattern of restrictedness
began to dissolve.
Throughout the Bronze Age, bronze seems to have
functioned as currency. This function should be under-
stood as two-pronged. Bronze was first and foremost
a cross-culturally shared valuable which could be cut,
measured and weighed27; but in a number of instances
bronze was cast as special-purpose money produced to
be a mobile currency: the Ösenhalsringe of the Central
European Early Bronze Age, as well as the oxhide ingots
of the Mediterranean Late Bronze Age, are examples of
mass-produced objects, easy to handle and recognizable
symbols of value with standardized weights28. Impor-
tantly, both had inbuilt potentiality for a range of other
uses in the social or economic domain. Bronze objects
were frequently hoarded, a culturally embedded practice
with at least two, sometimes intertwined, motivations:
sacrifice and curation29. While it is true that bronze was
increasingly commodified over the centuries of the Bronze
Age, items of bronze had biographies of use and meaning
which underline their ability to move between statuses of
inalienability and alienability – that is, as socially valued
object or commodity.
Very broadly speaking, the Bronze Age was a period
of increasing social differences and considerable weight
on conspicuous consumption in the social–ritual spheres,
a trend noticeable throughout the entire area of distribu-
tion. Bronze was a perfect medium in the expression of
social distinction, as were copper and gold. Nevertheless,
one can note that bronze was increasingly used for tools in
the economic domain of day-to-day life. Several analyses
of early flanged axes, for example, show a broad pattern
of use already around 2000 BCE30. This included practical
work probably related to subsistence and the building of
houses and ships. To these early axes are subsequently
added other varieties of axes with a mainly practical po-
tential (e.g. palstaves, socketed axes), as are a rich variety
of mass-produced chisels, knives and harvesting tools31.
Use–wear inspections of weapons, and their increasing
specialization and deadliness, correspondingly demon-
strate their regular use in warfare32. With the extended
use of bronze, of which increasing amounts were in circu-
lation for recycling, the metal also became more common-
place and less exclusive. It is likely no exaggeration to say
27 Pare 1999.
28 Lenerz-de Wilde 1995; 2002; Bevan 2010, 53.
29 Hansen 2013; Wengrow 2011, 137 fig. 11,1.
30 E.g. Kienlin/Ottaway 1998; Vandkilde 1996.
31 E.g. Kristiansen 1998, 106.
32 E.g. Horn 2013.
107
that bronze was increasingly available for a broad spec-
trum of people outside the hierarchical top. Besides, as
bronze came to permeate society, no social grouping could
have avoided its social and economic impact. Indeed, con-
comitant economic growth may have contributed to these
trends toward ‘democratization’ of bronze-related culture.
Responses to transculture and
translational practices
Globalization’s broadening access to exogenous culture
and resources is enhanced by situated responses which
can cover the entire range, from copying to resistance.
Transculture indeed invites usage in the social strate-
gies of identification continually enacted by individuals,
groups and institutions in all societies. Transculture is
often subject to creative translation locally33, and emu-
latii and simulacra can be tracked through geographical
space in a repetitive pattern of movement and response,
or, in the phrasing of Inda/Rosaldo34, de-territorialization
and territorialization. As globalization may be considered
a threat or opportunity, tradition may as a consequence
flourish or weaken. Nonetheless, tradition can entangle
with globalization to the degree that it is difficult to see
which is which35.
In this perspective, globalization conveys how people
react creatively and in a socially and culturally informed
manner to exogenous impulses, issues and things.
Translation of exogenous novelties occurs in most
human small worlds of the past. This implies local repro-
duction of an imported object or the re-materialization of
a stored memory of such an item or structure. Often the
outcome is a highly unique translation of the original,
which again may emulate something else. Egyptianizing
trends in Greek early archaic sculpture and Orientalizing
tendencies in many periods and places make good ex-
amples of such hybridizations of local and foreign tastes,
styles or innovations36. History boasts numerous examples
from the Stone Age till today, and in many cases this would
be rooted in interpersonal and intersocietal relations.
Sometimes what we may call ‘contact cultures’
formed: geographically extended and fairly confined
zones of intense interconnectivity which may have dif-
fering backgrounds, but nevertheless display a high
33 Nicolaescu 2004; cf. Benjamin 1968.
34 Inda/Rosaldo 2008; cf. Vandkilde 2014a.
35 Otto 2013.
36 Cf. Stockhammer 2012.
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108 Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization
frequency of translations of shared ideas. The heading
“contact culture” may suit, for example, such diverse
cases as the megalithic chambered tombs across much of
Atlantic Europe, the Globular Amphora Culture of Central
and Northern Europe, the Celticization of early Iron Age
societies across much of non-Mediterranean Europe
before Rome, the Hellenization of the ancient world fol-
lowing Alexander’s conquests, and even the Renaissance.
Despite disparate background histories, these appear as
select cultural sharedness across wide geographies, prob-
ably resulting from a combination of local creative trans-
lation and cross-border mobility. The hyper-region boast-
ing a Bronze Age encompassed the onset and decline of a
number of trans-regional contact cultures37 characterized
by particularly intense connectedness within the Bronze
Age world. Contact cultures as they appear from archae-
ological maps are reminiscent of past culture–material
processes which may be illuminated through the analytic
tools of globalization theory38.
Crucially, with its inherent motor of bronzization, the
Bronze Age was more than just a contact culture. Its count-
less societies were all dependent on the same kind of exog-
enous resource, and this macro-situation compares better
with the present globalization. Compared to other pre/
protohistoric periods, the Bronze Age is particularly rich
in objects that were neither imports nor truly indigenous.
Rather, their value may have emerged from the creative
combination of local and foreign traits in terms of mate-
rial, form or decoration. Numerous typological studies,
from Montelius and Reinecke to the book series of Prähis-
torische Bronzefunde essentially testify to how bronze
weapons, tools and ornaments form temporal series with
an inbuilt logic: very often of a creative onset, followed by
monotonous reproduction, and with gradual decline. Due
to its pliability and status as transculture per se, bronze
simply invited translations of the transculturally exotic,
hence making objects co-active in local strategies of power
and distinction. In a similar vein – especially in the be-
ginning of the period – bronze became engaged in skeu­
morphic dialogues39 with a number of locally available
materials and traditional shapes. As an example of such
creativity, the Nordic flint daggers were much more than
copies of the real thing in metal and in fact seem to have
constituted their own value system and stylistic logic,
while incorporating selected properties of contempora-
37 E.g. Corded Ware, Bell Beakers, Seima-Turbino, Tumulus, Urn-
field.
38 E.g. Nicolaescu 2004; Vandkilde 2009; Appadurai 2010; Andrén
2011; Panagiotopoulos 2013.
39 Cf. Frieman 2009.
neous metal daggers. Similar skeumorphic relationships
were at work in Southern Scandinavia around 1600 BCE
between traditional stone shafthole-axes and their elabo-
rately decorated bronze counterparts, which were further-
more re-made en miniature in amber40. Bronze – and the
materials it could cooperate with – was a highly suitable
medium in those strategies that sought to re-make, renew
or transgress the cultural traditions that were challenged
due to increased mobility and permeable boundaries.
Spatial patterning of traditions and creative transla-
tions are far from absent. In large parts of non-Mediter-
ranean Europe during the Middle and Late Bronze Age,
female costumes of woolen dress and bronze ornaments
express distinct local and regional traditions, while at the
same time having an inbuilt grammar which transgresses
local and regional traditions41. Weaponry is often much
more ’international‘ than ornaments in terms of formal
type and visual qualities. Due to their potential in fighting
and in boosting warriorhood, swords, spears and chariots
are innovations adopted throughout the hyper-region. Ba-
sically the same type often occurs supra-regionally, such
as famously the flange-hilted Sprockhoff/Naue II swords
of the early Urnfieldperiod. These deadly slashing swords
were in use throughout most of Europe c. 1300–1100 BCE,
and their association with the collapse horizon of the
Aegean Bronze Age has prompted scholars to argue for
Urnfield auxiliaries in employment by Mycenaean palatial
princes42.
The transculture of bronze – and the interactions with
materials and with people that it both encouraged and re-
quired – literally made the Bronze Age. This multifaceted
process in place and space is here termed bronzization.
One could mention the Hajdusamson-Apa swords, horned
helmets from Viksø in the North to Sardinia and Medinet
Habu in the South43, socketed axes and numerous other
creative translations, and hybrids which are at once local
and global. With bronze, the underlying double mecha-
nism of mobility and receptivity grew in importance and
in effect maximized the interconnectivity of the involved
societies and people. Creative translations, as exemplified
above, perceivably illustrate how interactions situated
on local ground or transgressing boundaries built a mac-
ro-history of connected histories in a crucial bottom-up
process44.
40 Vandkilde 2014b.
41 Sørensen 1997.
42 E.g. Kristiansen 1998, 386–387; Jung et al. 2011; Suchowska-Ducke
2012.
43 Vandkilde 2013.
44 Cf. Appadurai 2010; and below.
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  Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization 109

Directional trade Europe, full tin-bronze use dates to around 2200–2000

and non-directional flows BCE in areas near the tin deposits of Erzgebirge and Corn-
wall, while for example metal-poor Southern Scandinavia
at this point in time boasts c. 30 % tin-bronze and only
Transculture is often described in terms of non-direc-
became fully bronze-using by 1700 BCE52. Yet the obstacle
tional flows. In Appadurai’s original analysis45, globali-
is to identify the precise tin source. Interesting irrational-
zation is a world in transit in which multiple flows of
ities are revealed by a recent tin isotopy of the Nebra sky
objects, persons, images, knowledge and discourses do
disk (c. 1600 BCE), whose tin isotopic signature matches
not converge, but emanate from countless places, travel
Cornwall tin somewhat better than the nearby rich tin
with varying speed, have different targets, and engage di-
deposits of the Erzgebirge53. In any case, this stresses the
versely with institutions in regions and societies46. While
complexity underpinning the onset and early spread of
such disorganization and unpredictability might suit one
tin-bronze metallurgy.
level of analysis, it is also true that directionality and
As regards copper, data patterns currently emerging
patterning are far from absent47. Globalization could not
through chemical and isotopic analyses may suggest a
take place without direct transportation of central goods
combination of directional long-distance trade with more
crossing substantial distances, in supplement to small-
random flows rooted in local metal-recycling, small-scale
er-scale exchanges and trade48. Local demands for crucial
trading and the cultural practices of bricolage described
exogenous resources generate increasing dependency on
above. Ösenringbarren is an early example (c. 2000–1700
the outside world. In this vein, Giddens49 posits that glo-
BCE) of a combination of these major modes of move-
balization enters local networks of interaction by offering
ment, which brought so-called Ösenring copper from East
new, and often excluding, forms of economic and cultural
Alpine mining fields to faraway places toward the North54.
capital that are potentially of use in strategies of identi-
Bronzization denotes both the spread of and responses
fication and self-expression. Friedman50 agrees that glo-
to bronze metallurgy, which would logically imply local–
balization offers new possibilities, but also implies new
regional distributions, as well as fresh supplies of metal
dependencies, and even formations of new classes, on
brought in from afar.
both the horizontal and the vertical level.
Ongoing metal-analytical research of copper utiliza-
In this perspective, globalization implies both entan-
tion in Europe reveals with increasing clarity that only a
gled random flows and directional transport, in addition to
limited range of existing copper-ore sources were indus-
new dependencies and new inequalities vertically in small
trially exploited. Major ores in use during the Bronze Age
worlds as well as horizontally across the globe.
were located in the Eastern Alps (Tyrol, Mitterberg), the
These features are, with varying clarity, identifiable in
British Isles (especially Cornwall), the Massif Central,
the setting of the Bronze Age. The innovation of bronze
the Iberian Peninsula (El Aramo-Asturias, Ossa Morena),
metallurgy with the crucial addition of tin seems, with
Sardinia, Cyprus and presumably the Carpathian Basin55.
current knowledge, to have multiple origins in the late
Trace-composition patterns and isotopic fingerprinting
fourth and early third millennia BCE51, while the break-
show that copper was transported long-distance, assum-
through of the new technology dates to c. 2200–2000
edly along riverine and maritime waterways. Scandinavia
BCE. Regularities of tin-bronze-technology spread, if any,
consumed exogenous metal in surprisingly large amounts
across the Bronze Age hyper-region cannot be tracked at
and therefore fully depended on long-distance transport56
present, as scientific data are still scanty. In alignment
while at the same time requiring further networking to
with Appadurai’s non-directionality, this could have been
feed local demands. Early on, 2000–1600 BCE, Alpine
a mishmash of moving knowledge and metals ‘from all
sources with a minor input of British copper were abso-
over the place’ but directional transport seems unavoid-
lutely dominant in Scandinavia and throughout Central
able due to the situated occurrences of the key metals
and Northern Europe57, while from 1600 to 500 BCE the
and especially the rarity of tin. In non-Mediterranean
entire palette of European copper ores mentioned above

45 Appadurai 1996.
46 Ibid. 52 Vandkilde 1998; Rassmann 2010; Müller 2002.
47 Vandkilde 2008. 53 Haustein et al. 2010.
48 Also Robertson 2003. 54 E.g. Lenerz-de Wilde 1995; Krause 2003; Vandkilde 2005.
49 Giddens 1996, 367. 55 Lutz/Pernicka 2013; Ling et al. 2014, 127 fig. 19.
50 Friedman 1994; 2006. 56 Ling et al. 2014.
51 Pernicka 1998; Rahmstorf 2011, 114. 57 Vandkilde 1996; Rassmann 2000; Krause 2003.

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110 Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization
can be identified in the Scandinavian datasets58. Backed
up by the sheer amounts of metal in circulation 1600–900
BCE, this suggests organized long-range transport. Routes
probably went along the Atlantic brim and into the Medi-
terranean or across continental Europe, notably with the
Carpathian Basin as crossroad between the Aegean and
Northern Europe59. From 1600 BCE, long-distance trans-
port of copper – and presumably goods such as tin, gold,
blue glass, amber, wool, and Mediterranean silk – incor-
porated the Aegean as well as Southern Scandinavia into
one sphere of interaction. Commodities onboard the ship-
wrecks from Uluburun60 and Salcombe as well as Langdon
Bay61, located off the coasts of South-East Turkey and
England respectively, may suggest a particularly bloom-
ing directional trade in the late fourteenth and thirteenth
centuries BCE. While amber had its point of departure in
the North, blue glass beads – with origins in the Levant,
Mesopotamia and Egypt – went in the opposite direction
and reached exclusive settings in Central and Northern
Europe62.
The dispersal of Baltic amber from Bronze Age Scan-
dinavia to various destinations in Western Eurasia consti-
tutes a famous case of contact which is overall in keeping
with the directional trade described above, while the pre-
dominantly luxury contexts of local amber consumption
simultaneously stress both the growing social inequal-
ities generated during the Bronze Age and the variable
responses to the added value of such objects. The small
amber lion from a Royal tomb at Qatna (1340 BCE) in
Syria was made of a lump of Baltic amber but completely
refashioned to suit local tradition and purpose63. By con-
trast, the crescentic amber colliers with spacer-beads and
elaborately beaded shoulder belts from rich early Myce-
naean tombs 1700–1500 BCE seem to have been translated
in order to enhance the beauty of the local warrior princes,
while retaining a memory of Northern uses and an associ-
ation with the sun64. These are exotic cases among several
others across Europe between c. 1700 and 1200 BCE65.
In terms of worldviews, intriguing correspondences
exist between remote regions across Afro-Eurasia (cf.
Fig. 2): esoteric issues seem to have travelled and been
subjected to translations as much as material culture.
The similar-but-different patterns can best be understood
58 Ling et al. 2014.
59 Cf. Ling et al. 2014, 129 fig. 21.
60 Pulak 2008.
61 Needham/Giardino 2008; Parham et al. 2013.
62 Milner et al. 2010; Varberg et al. 2014.
63 Mukherjee et al. 2008.
64 Cf. Maran 2011a.
65 Jensen 1994; Czebreszuk 2007.
against the background of bronzization with its inbuilt
logic of receptivity and mobility. Research increasingly
demonstrates that it was not only raw materials and
luxury goods that travelled long-distance. Ideas associ-
ated with extraordinary objects were translated as they
travelled66. Scandinavian high-ranking warriors with
their horse-handled razors can be understood, at least
in part, against the background of Mycenaean warrior-
hood, translated into a Nordic version which maintained
the importance of a clean-shaven face67. Similarly, travel-
ling weapons from the Carpathian Basin and their added
values of exquisite warriorhood, entangled with novel
ideas of the constitution of the cosmos, played a role in
the formation of the Nordic Bronze Age as a maritime-led
oikomene c. 1600–1500 BCE. The route of combined trans-
mission and translation can be tracked from the Transyl-
vanian homeland to Scandinavia via the dispersal of Ha-
jdúsámson-Apa metalwork. These characteristic swords
with ogival blade and rich wavy decoration were in many
cases locally manufactured as creative versions of a proto-
type. The Hajdúsámson-Apa sword type was first coined
in the Carpathian Basin, while more distant ‘originals’ can
be traced to the Seima-Turbino metalworking complex of
the Eurasian steppe zone, with its preference for ogival
blades, and to early Mycenaean Greece with its luxury
daggers and swords displaying painted-in-metal inlays.
The wavy garlands with spirals that decorate both metal-
work and horse equipment made from bone show a very
similar patchwork of movement and translation across
these geographies. The elaborate decoration on weap-
onry and horse gear arguably refers to a watery (under)
world and the sky world of sun, moon and stars. Persua-
sive ideas of a tripartite cosmos – conceptualized by the
Nebra disk68 – were likely co-travellers when materials
and objects moved long-distance, undergoing transforma-
tion en route to fit local rituals and beliefs69.
Hence with the aid of current research in archaeol-
ogy and archaeological chemistry, random flows as well
as directional routine transport emerge as key modes of
dispersal. While the democratization of culture in a top-
down fashion is a long-term effect of bronzization (see
above), there are strong indications of rising inequalities,
probably stemming from the new possibilities provided
by bronzization. This is particularly evident from wide-
spread elite consumption of sophisticated metal objects
and luxury items with added values. The polarization into
66 Kristiansen/Larsson 2005; Ling/Stos-Gale 2015.
67 Kaul 2013.
68 Meller 2010, 64 fig. 30.
69 Vandkilde 2014a.
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  Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization 111

Fig 2: The geographical coverage of the Bronze Age 2000–1200 BCE in parts of Afro-Eurasia. Tin sources are indicated approximately: a large
star denotes a large source, a small star a smaller one. Urbanized hubs with irrigation agriculture are encircled, to show that provision of tin
and the making of bronze required long-range movements and connectivity reaching far beyond the urban familiar. Map builds on own data
for Scandinavia, in addition to data in Chernykh 1992; Penhallurick 1986; Kohl 2007; Roberts et al. 2009; White/Hamilton 2009; Wan 2011;
Pryce et al. 2011

zones of “have” and “have not” described by Friedman Growth of technology and economy:
and Giddens as an outcome of the contemporary globali-
zation may well have existed within the Bronze Age hy-
high mobility
per-region. This cannot however at present be confirmed
Globalization depends on and promotes a linear devel-
unless we choose to maintain the differences in socio-eco-
opment of technology and economy71. This yields wealth,
nomic development between West and East argued by
hence more reliable subsistence, but also a more deadly
Morris. The soaring developmental curves over the mil-
military. Importantly, the innovative quest comprises
lennia BCE are very similar, but with the West in the lead
cross-fertilization between front-line crafts and mobility
until the very end of the Bronze Age, c. 1000 BCE, at which
forms. Because of the immense enhancement of mobility
point differences between the two are levelling out70.
systems72, innovations and other forms of transculture
Following this thread, a dichotomy may have crystalized
can travel at a higher speed than ever before and eventu-
between urban and non-urban sections of the Bronze Age
ally spread to all corners of the globe: people, resources,
hyper-region: in that case, broadly between South and
culture, and knowledge. Albeit globalization is synony-
North, which could, very hypothetically, be one of several
mous with high mobility, it is thought-provoking never-
reasons for the breakdown of the Bronze Age which began
theless that money and goods continue to be more mobile
to crystalize from c. 1200 BCE albeit with major regional
than people73. Time-space compression is furthermore
variations.

71 Robertson 2003.
72 Urry 2007.
70 Morris 2011, 177 fig. 4,2. 73 Hirst/Thompson 1996.

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112 Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization
considerable because of effective mobility systems. This
involves new possibilities of navigating in a global world,
and this in turn nourishes a global twist in mentality. Most
people have a sense of a much wider world beyond home;
notably through hypermedia and migrations, and hence
through communication and movements between diaspo-
ras.
In this perspective, globalization implies high mobil-
ity with considerable time-space compression, in addi-
tion to economic and technological growth and degrees of
globalness as state of mind.
Most of these features characterizing the present
globalization can be re-found in the Bronze Age, albeit
scale and complexity were then of quite a different order.
Overall, the Bronze Age was a period of high cultural mo-
bility and a growing economy (understood as subsistence,
crafts, and trade connected thereto). It is of course diffi-
cult to separate cause and effects, but again bronze makes
a good case as the leading factor in driving mobility and
economy.
Much new research has Bronze Age mobility at the top
of the agenda. Increasing numbers of archaeological finds
and analyses based upon them together with data from
archaeological chemistry make it impossible to maintain
views about societal autonomy and minimal interaction
with outside realms. Yet there are several issues in need
of nuancing by future studies, such as who travelled and
why, and the distances involved. While it is hard to ex-
aggerate the high mobility of raw materials, objects, and
knowledge (see above), in- and out-migrations of people
were likely much more limited, as is the situation even
today. Besides, the degree of human mobility was varia-
ble. Measured as the degree of in-migration at particular
sites in Central Europe (burial grounds), some investiga-
tions report very high mobility with a considerable influx
of newcomers74. Other studies have identified only limited
in-migrations, despite a material repertoire and identities
dependent on foreign imports and translations thereof 75.
It seems the option has been to travel out or to make the
world come to you.
Looking at the wider Bronze Age region, much current
research likewise notes circumstances of increased cul-
tural mobility. Intensified movements between urbanized
hubs and the pastoral zones of steppes and mountains
constitute one major heading76. Other trends in mobil-
ity studies highlight the deep history and considerable
complexity of interconnectivity unfolding within a single
74 E.g. Price et al. 2004; Pokutta 2013; Wahl/Price 2014.
75 E.g. Oelze et al. 2011; Reiter 2014; Taylor in prep.
76 E.g. Kohl 2007; Franchetti 2008; Wilkinson et al. 2011.
sphere of interaction – notably the maritime-led inter-
societies of the Mediterranean and the Nordic region re-
spectively77. Bronze Age mobility seems firstly motivated
by the increasing dependence on metal, and secondly (as
had always been the case) desire for rare materials, com-
prising for example amber, lapis lazuli, jade, coloured
glass, and of course salt, whose social and economic im-
portance should not be underestimated78. Other pushfac-
tors like war, natural hazards and over-exploited environ-
ments must certainly at times have impacted the mobility
of these household-based communities79.
The generally high mobility of the Bronze Age was fa-
cilitated by much improved mobility systems, which were
again logically embedded in the Bronze Age economy as
both precondition and outcome. Bronze instigated paral-
lel innovations, and simply boosted a number of singular
or networked crafts such as notably metalworking, the
mining industry, shipbuilding, carpentry, textile produc-
tion, horse breeding and various sophisticated crafts that
processed and mixed rare substances to make for example
perfumed oils, coloured beads and elaborately decorated
containers and weapons. Improved transport must have
compressed the time previously spent on travelling and
was based on shared technologies – likewise on the move:
spoke-wheeled vehicles80, horses for riding and driving81,
and ships empowered by wind or human labour82. Even
outside the urbanized hubs there is evidence of road con-
struction and a developed infrastructure directing the
traffic across the landscape83 and similarly at sea84.
These innovations and improvements of m ­ obility
systems in turn aided the speed with which culture could
travel. Did this produce an increased and dispersed
awareness of a wider world beyond the safety of home?
The archaeological sources are overall biased, as they
often represent upper parts of social hierarchies: the
people who were likely also those organizing or undertak-
ing the travels. On the other hand, the democratization of
culture built into the bronzization would allow a hesitant
Yes. With Scandinavia as case, there could well have been
an awareness of the foreignness of the shiny metal, which,
unlike flint, could not be retrieved locally. Tales similar to
the Homeric epics circulated among the gentry but could
77 Broodbank 2013; Kotsakis 2011; Morris 2010; Knappett 2011;
Bevan 2014; Østmo 2011; Vandkilde 2014a.
78 Harding 2013.
79 Cf. Sørensen 2010; Hildebrandt-Radke et al. 2011.
80 E.g. Fansa/Burmeister 2004; Anthony 2007.
81 E.g. Metzner-Nebelsick 2003; Anthony 2007.
82 E.g. Pulak 2008; Kristiansen 2004; Østmo 2011.
83 Johansen et al. 2003.
84 Ling 2008; Østmo 2011.
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  Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization
hardly have been successfully monopolized: legends of
maritime travels and heroic endeavours were mediated in
a highly visible manner on rock and on bronze, and were
central to religious beliefs and communal ritual interac-
tion with the Other World85. The iconographic and ritual
emphasis on the plank-built horse-headed longship and
even depictions of oxhide ingots and travel accounts86
would of its own accord suggest that the world was in-
corporated into the domains of everyday life at home in
Nordic Bronze Age communities.
Bronze can be seen as a major impetus for the dis-
persal of new lifestyles and economic growth. Within the
hyper-region, different techno-economic models with dif-
fering social solutions existed. These are perhaps reduc-
ible to four main categories, each of which in their way
grew enormously over several stages during the Bronze
Age. Firstly, in non-Mediterranean Europe sedentary com-
munities – based on advanced agriculture with influx of
herding, trading and raiding – prevailed, developed and
created open landscapes of pastures and fields87. Sec-
ondly, toward the East in the Bronze Age hyper-region,
pastoral herding economies thrived and expanded as they
came to play momentous roles in shaping stable networks
of exchange across Eurasia88. Thirdly, the Mediterranean
had a mixed rural, storage, crafting and trading economy
in which the traditional markers of oils and wines were
basic constituents, with the addition of, for example, tex-
tiles and metals. All these components were enormously
boosted during the Bronze Age89. Fourthly and finally,
there were the urban clusters of wealth and stately power,
sustained by irrigation agriculture in the fertile river-val-
leys of the Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Indus, the
Yellow River and the Yangtze. Some developed further
from their deep-historical roots and archival economies,
while in the East the emergence of the mythical Xia
Dynasty with its capital Erlitou90 seems to have coincided
with the onset of bronzization.
By 2000 BCE, demographic growth in temperate
Europe had multiplied91, and with the Urnfield period
from the thirteenth century BCE onwards, the well-organ-
ized landscape was densely settled: this situation relates
to a growing economy with a number of key innovations,
foremost among these bronze, but also intensive agricul-
85 Vandkilde 2013.
86 Kaul 1998; Ling 2008; Goldhahn 2013; Ling/Stos-Gale 2015.
87 E.g. Hänsel 1998; Kristiansen 1998; Earle 2002; Müller 2012;
Holst/Rasmussen 2013; Horn 2013.
88 Franchetti 2008.
89 Christakis 2008; Bevan 2012; 2014.
90 Liu/Xiu 2007.
91 Müller 2013.
113
ture with efficient ploughing and readymade agricultural
tools of bronze92. New palettes of crops were adopted to
feed the growing populations and to resist the periods of
crisis, which were perhaps built into the system from the
onset93. The new or refined crops included oat, millet, rye,
and horsebean, in addition to varieties of naked barley
and bread wheat and the chief four animal domesticates
of cattle, pig, sheep and horse.
Surplus production is customarily linked to evolved
economies in the Aegean and the irrigated river plains,
but there seems no reason why the rest of the Bronze Age
world could not have traded their subsistence surplus in
periods of bounty. According to the scores of socio-eco-
nomic development (including energy capture per person
per day) calculated by Morris94, the curve begins to rise at
3000 BCE, soars high in both West and East from c. 2000
BCE and continues to rise throughout the Bronze Age
until c. 1200 BCE, when the curve descends drastically in
the West, while flattening in the East from c. 1000 BCE.
Despite the uncertainties of such calculations, the graphs
support the argument made here, namely that bronze, in-
terconnectivity and economic growth engaged in a posi-
tive feedback loop – creating more of one another between
c. 2000 and 1200 BCE.
Conjuncture and disjuncture
Globalization generates convergence, but certainly also
divergence and – speaking in the abstract – thrives on
a balance between these oppositional forces operating
at scales from the local to the global95. Conjuncture is
an appropriate term because hyper-regional relations of
culture, as well as similarities in societal systems, subsist
worldwide through high-speed mobilities. Fundamen-
tal openness with porous boundaries and overlapping
spheres of interaction precondition the survival of each
small world. Globalization in this manner transgresses
territories, whether ethnic-language groups, economic
modes, nations, towns or other hubs. The world at present
is becoming more uniform because transcultural com-
modities are powerful transmitters of globalness that
boost cultural homogeneity worldwide96. The antipole of
disjuncture is an equally appropriate term, because glo-
balization concurrently produces fragmentation, friction
92 Kristiansen 1998, 104–106.
93 Ibid. 102–103; Müller et al. 2010.
94 Morris 2011, 135–177 161 fig. 3,3; 166 fig. 3,7; 177 fig. 4,2.
95 E.g. Giddens 1984; Friedman 1994; 2006; Appadurai 1996; 2008.
96 Inda/Rosaldo 2008, 17.
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114 Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization
and polarization in the domains of culture, economy and
society. In Appadurai’s thinking97, the flows of globaliza-
tion are multi-directional and inherently disjunctural as
well as often asymmetrical in terms of access, both locally
and across the world. Similarly, Tsing98 introduces friction
as a metaphor for the disparate and conflicting interac-
tions that constitute today’s world. Transculture easily
challenges tradition, hence crafting frictions both locally
and regionally.
In this perspective, globalization implies conjuncture
and disjuncture in a competitive relationship, which is diffi-
cult to fit into the Wallersteinian model.
Above we have identified random flows as well as
directional transport, neither of which seems inherently
disjunctural or conjunctural. Rather, these two antipoles
of globalization should be located in the encounter
between new materials, ideas and people and local his-
tories and traditions in the individual Bronze Age so-
cieties. Such meetings can be alarmingly disjunctural,
with radical consequences for people and their society,
as when Hawaiians clashed with Captain Cook and his
crew99. Meetings may, on the contrary, be endorsed with
great readiness (and strategy) so as to adopt the foreign
and translate it into a local resource or personal capital100.
With its permeable boundaries and travelling novelties,
the Bronze Age must surely have experienced these sce-
narios. An example from Northern Europe is appropriate
here: Southern Scandinavia’s entry into the metal age c.
2000–1700 BCE was shrouded in a strengthening of tra-
dition as the novelty of bronze became traditionalized
into the well-known axe form and subsequently chan-
nelled into the domain of deep-rooted wetland rituals.
With large amounts of bronze in circulation c. 1600–1500
BCE, this process could no longer continue. Social life
became intrinsically linked to the consumption of metals
and, arguably, also to the ideologies and cosmologies they
enhanced. This new situation can be associated with the
privileged group of people who buried their dead in rich
mound-covered graves101. That this was a societal change
achieved, at least in part, through conflict is shown by
the new focus upon weaponry and by a case of trauma102.
Communities caught in friction because of rising social
disparity and differing reactions to change, or oppositely
a relative consensus because of the new possibilities for
97 Appadurai 1996; 2008.
98 Tsing 2004.
99 Sahlins 1985.
100 Vandkilde 2008; Otto 2013.
101 Holst/Rasmussen 2012; Vandkilde 2014a.
102 Vandkilde 2013; Horn 2013.
wellbeing offered, cannot have been unusual. On the
bottom line, this is what makes history.
Bronzization had the consequence that both neigh-
bouring and remote societies, and their histories, grew
more connected than ever before. In turn, this intercon-
nectivity is probably also the reason why conjuncture
(convergence) and disjuncture (divergence) could spread
to become macro-regional. The transculture of bronze
must have been a persuasive transmitter of ‘globalness’.
Overall and compared to previous eras, homogeneity in
terms of material culture, and perhaps values, tended
to prevail in the Bronze Age in Europe, with highlights
in the fifteenth to thirteenth centuries BCE. Oppositely,
fragmentation with distinct regionalized traditions of
culture at other times got the upper hand, notably in the
seventeenth century BCE and especially from the twelfth
century onwards as the Bronze Age was drawing to a close.
Hubs, inter-societies and
­intersected spheres of interaction
As globalization disrupts boundaries and boosts coher-
ence within and across numerous spheres of interaction,
it may be seen to counteract strictly territory-based states
and empires known from history with their peripheries
and margins. On the other hand, new kinds of dependen-
cies and inequalities are enhanced, allowing new breeds
of cores and confederacies to rise to prominence, such
as (currently) South-East Asia, notably with India and
China103. Nodes striving toward hegemony regionally, or
even globally, contribute to the state of today’s world;
but their development is not tied unequivocally to the
exploitation of underdeveloped regions, as the world-sys-
tem theory prescribes104.
In this perspective, globalization can comprise several
hubs and nodes with tributaries and is impacted by their
growth and decline; yet globalization, as intensified inter-
connectivity, cannot be reduced to a world system of cores
and peripheries.
This may even hold true for the Bronze Age hyper-re-
gion. As often claimed, the Bronze Age had several hubs
and cores; but these cannot be pinpointed as the primary
drivers or skeleton of the overall structure.
Rivalling urbanized hotspots with their wars and
their trade may have impacted, but did not on their own
terms create, Bronze Age interconnectedness. Rather, they
103 Morris 2011.
104 Wallerstein 1974, 87–100; 310–324.
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  Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization
Fig. 3: Intersecting spheres of interaction might be the crux of
Bronze Age hyper-scaled connectivity: the principle underscoring
the effective movement across wide distances of tactile and intan-
gible novelties. In this much idealized model the intersections are
repositories of cultural and economic knowledge stemming from,
as well as being accessible to, faraway places; indeed, Bronze Age
versions of Histoire Croisée (Werner/Zimmermann 2006).
formed prominent segments of wider spheres of interac-
tion, or designed their own constrained domains of net-
working. Their economic and political impact was essen-
tially regional, as exemplified by the palatial small-states
of Minoan Crete, the Minoanization of the East Mediter-
ranean region105, or the imperial expansion of Akkad106.
Besides, it seems inadequate to see the Bronze Age in the
light of developed regions exploiting underdeveloped
regions. The interconnectivity boosting bronzization,
and vice-versa, rather depended on many spheres of in-
teraction within the hyper-region, including for example
the maritime inter-societies of Scandinavia and the Med-
iterranean or the pastoral confederacies of the Eurasian
steppes. There were several larger and smaller spheres of
interaction, but they were rarely exclusive; rather, they
overlapped and were regularly transgressed.
The East Asian Bronze Age may appear to be an excep-
tion, marked by its own connectedness: it was surely de-
viating from the West, but there is also common ground,
105 Niemeier 2009, 11–21; Broodbank 2013.
106 Beaujard 2011, 13.
115
both in state management and in part also in the reper-
toire of metal objects107. Scholarship now argues for con-
nections between the rich Seima-Turbino metalworking
complex across the steppe zone c. 1900–1700 BCE and
the adoption and development of a metal culture in East
Asia with China and Indo-China108. This Seima-Turbino
intersocietal group of mounted pastoralists in all likeli-
hood mediated the innovation of a major weapon, namely
the socketed spearhead, across huge distances. As object
and technology, the spearhead travelled both eastwards
crossing the Altai Mountains into South-East Asia as well
as westwards into the gateway of the Carpathian Basin109,
whence this key innovation of war unfurled into Europe
c. 1700 BCE. Likewise, palstaves, socketed axes, knives,
swords, and war chariots were among the shared vocabu-
lary of items across much of the hyper-region. Brand new
research furthermore demonstrates the considerable time-
depth for trans-Eurasian exchange: East and West became
connected in the Bronze Age through networks which an-
ticipated the later so-called Silk Road of caravan routes110.
Simultaneously, deep-seated cultural differences between
East and West were maintained over the long term111.
Interaction spheres overlapped in ways that would
allow the resources of culture and economy to be pooled
in the intersections, hence making them available to
several outside parties (Fig. 3). The Carpathian Basin was
such a crucial intersection between spheres of interaction
in Central Europe, Southern Scandinavia, the Western
Steppe zone and the Balkans with the Aegean. This cross-
road and cultural crucible was tremendously important
for the onset of the Nordic Bronze Age as a cultural zone
in its own right within the wider Bronze Age connectiv-
ity112. Other crucial intersections existed: the copper-rich
Iberian Peninsula, for example, makes a good candidate
as a crossroads uniting the Atlantic and the Mediterra-
nean spheres, with faint beginnings in the Argaric period
to culmination in the Urnfield era113.
Background history and further comparisons make it
possible to pinpoint Bronze Age uniqueness further. The
Bronze Age differed from the Chalcolithic in terms of scale
and societal integration of connectivity, and it likewise
107 Cf. Morris 2011, 201–209.
108 E.g. Franchetti 2008, 52–55; 173–74; Linduff 2004; White/Hamil-
ton 2009; Wan 2011.
109 E.g. Koryakova/Epimakhov 2007, 106–110; 323; Vandkilde
2014a; 2014b.
110 Wilkinson 2014; cf. Kristiansen 2011.
111 Fuller/Rowlands 2011.
112 Vandkilde 2014a; 2014b.
113 E.g. Risch 2012; Ling et al. 2014; Burgess/O’Connor 2008; Lull
et al. 2010.
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116 Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization
differed from other expansive phenomena with a cultural
and economic drive in pre-modern history. Compared to
the copper-using era, growth in the Bronze Age was enor-
mous, especially considering that it was founded on distri-
bution and dependence on non-local resources. Besides,
the Bronze Age differed decisively from the dispersal of
Neolithic farming culture and economies. These, while
exceedingly expansive over several millennia, depended
mainly on local resources and therefore also lacked the
hyper-regional coherence which became manifest with
the Bronze Age. Comparison with expansive interconnec-
tivities such as notably ‘Romanization’ helps to delineate
further how the Bronze Age was particular. The Roman
Empire became an engine for interconnectivities and for a
complexity of creative responses in Europe and adjoining
parts of West Asia114, but the Bronze Age lacks a princi-
pal pulsating hub exercising militant hegemony as well as
cultural impact. It was driven by something different.
The Bronze Age does not seem reducible to world-sys-
temic order. Rather, a range of bronze-led interaction
spheres, and their intersections across the hyper-region,
makes the Bronze Age appear to us as a unique case of
pre-modern globalization. The Bronze Age hyper-region is
the largest pre-modern interconnectivity not driven by the
ambitions and conquests of empires.
Globalization as history
The present globalization has a history. Robertson115 de-
scribes how globalization from its embryonic entry in
the sixteenth century ran for a long time on low energy
because of the bounded interests of states and nations
who rivalled, warred, thrived or failed. Expansive contact
cultures such as the Renaissance and the Enlightenment
notwithstanding, fragmentation (regionalization) pre-
vailed. Silver was the first global currency that could en-
courage conjuncture, but fossilized forms of fuel made
connectivity with porous boundaries a necessity only
from the late eighteenth century.
When globalization had its breakthrough – sustained
by a booming economy – it also introduced an inbuilt vul-
nerability by virtue of the external resources on which it
depended, from fossil fuel to daily commodities. Further-
more, several scholars pinpoint the fundamental prob-
lems created by globalization in particular societies that
are often grounded in unequal possibilities to appropriate
114 E.g. Pitts 2014; Versluys 2014.
115 Robertson 2003.
transculture as a route to welfare, wellbeing and social
success. Such inequalities are local mirrors of the unequal
access to resources across the world116. There are indeed
different scales and degrees of disjuncture. Globalization
therefore contains crisis (instability) as a potentiality.
Crisis easily spreads along the same channels as trans-
culture (as we have recently learned), and its gravity can
be further enhanced by climate change, war, and social
upheaval.
In this perspective, globalization is a historical phe-
nomenon which has a beginning, cycles of growth and
decline, and potentially an end.
Bronzization had a history with a duration of some
800 years. If outliers of faint beginning and shrinkage are
counted, it lasted c. 2,300 years, and in any case a much
longer time span than contemporary globalization. In
analogy with the latter, bronzization embraced connected
histories that underwent change synchronously. The
strength of Bronze Age interconnectivity – bronze – may
also have been its weakness. The cohesion ensured by
bronze transfer could be undermined by systemic disjunc-
tures, anthropogenic pressures and natural hazards. Con-
versely, inter-linkages would be a reason why local prob-
lems and crisis could spread to become of macro-regional
concern and thus push linked societies across the brink
in a synchronized manner. This accords with Gladwell’s
idea117 that change tends to accumulate while spreading
until a threshold is reached.
There are contours of cross-cutting historical pat-
terns of change which have only recently begun to be
researched118. Ongoing theoretically grounded efforts
furthermore strive to understand and document how dif-
ferent scales of history interwove over the long term119.
Besides, numerous local and regional investigations add
crucial information to the puzzle by scrutinizing human
interactions with one another and with culture, economy
and landscape120. It seems that Bronze Age historical se-
quences with intervals were terminated by tipping points
which were brief and dramatic phases which transpired
through radical material change and signs of crisis. In
particular the tipping points of c. 1600 BCE and again
around 1200 BCE appear to be linked across large parts
of the hyper-region. Quite possibly the onset of bronziza-
tion c. 2200–2000 BCE could be understood as yet another
116 Friedman 2006.
117 Gladwell 2000.
118 Kristiansen/Larsson 2005; Morris 2011, 158–254; Risch/Meller
2013; Vandkilde 2014a; Meller et al. 2015.
119 Robb/Pauketat 2013; cf. Werner/Zimmermann 2006.
120 E.g. Kneisel et al. 2012.
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  Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization
Fig. 4: Socio-economic sequences c. 3000–500 BCE in Europe and the Levant (from Kneisel et al. 2012 fig. page 271) with the major tipping
points of bronzization specified (2200 BCE, 1600 BCE, 1200 BCE and 800 BCE)
seminal threshold, as could the ultimate conclusion of
bronzization around 800–700 BCE. These thresholds
or tipping points of macro-regional consequence each
in their particular way seem to arise from a mixture of
factors, nature-given as well as human-made.
Tentatively, and the enormous local and regional vari-
ation notwithstanding, the Bronze Age breaks into at least
four historical turning points, designating the kickstart
(2200–2000 BCE), the point of rapid growth (1600 BCE),
the point of decline (c. 1200 BCE) and the ultimate con-
clusion of bronzization in the last stronghold in temper-
ate Europe (800–700 BCE). It is thought-provoking how
changing climate regimes and hazard events coincide
with major turning points in the Bronze Age of Europe
and the Near East, and possibly still further away. The 4.2
kiloyear BP aridification event (2200–2100 BCE), the vol-
canic eruption of Thera (c. 1600 BCE), the Löbben glacial
maximum (c. 1300–1100 BCE) and the Göschenen glacial
maximum (c 800–700 BCE) can be understood as overall
backgrounds of environmental instability – as potential
exogenous push factors. Climate changes included dete-
riorations of hot and dry with drought or of cold and wet
with frequent rainfall. This would have impacted harvests
for better or worse depending on the region, hence in turn
117
demographic growth or decline, which may again have
instigated migrations in a complex interplay with dis-
junctural problems in culture and socio-economy (Fig. 4).
That the Bronze Age hyper-region at certain times was im-
pacted in its entirety can be assumed, and in some cases
verified121.
Can globalization end? This may seem an odd question,
but probing into deep history with the Bronze Age as
a case in point, there may have been globalizing trends
which failed to mature because disruptive forces, in al-
liance with natural hazards, came to prevail over trends
toward convergence. Bronzization began to draw to a close
c. 1200 BCE, which was in a manner of speaking the begin-
ning of the end and the culmination of deep crisis that had
long been underway. Climatic factors (the end of Löbben
glacial) can be claimed, but with human-made factors
as no doubt concomitant: the hyper-region of bronziza-
tion shrank remarkably after 1200 BC, while persisting in
temperate Europe until c. 750 BCE. The generally more re-
gionalized Iron Age unfolded while capitalizing on local
iron in numerous rising petty-chiefdoms, archaic states,
121 Morris 2011, 188–247.
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118 Helle Vandkilde, Bronzization: The Bronze Age as Pre-Modern Globalization
pastoral and tribal confederacies across Afro-Eurasia. In
effect, this was a less coherent landscape, interregional
but decreasingly trans-regional in its lack of a universal
transculture to glue it together.
Conclusions
It has been asserted above that the Bronze Age shared a
number of qualities with the present globalization, albeit
scale and complexity differ between now and then. Bronz-
ization denotes a connectivity which was locally embed-
ded as well as hyper-regional, while being tightly knit and
driven by the alloy of bronze. As it spanned a hyper-region
in parts of Afro-Eurasia, bronzization was a unique case
of pre-modern globalization, not fuelled by empires’ con-
quests or centre-periphery relationships. Rather, as the
name indicates, bronzization was propelled by a shared
desire for and dependence on bronze, as this resource
derived from non-local deposits of copper and the much
rarer tin. Bronze, interconnectivity and economic growth
became engaged in a mutually enhancing positive feed-
back loop over a period of 800 years, during which novel
objects, exotic raw materials, fashions and ideas circu-
lated macro-regionally: weaponry, dress, housing, cos-
mologies and religiosity.
The period boasts countless creative translations and
hybrids which were at once local and ‘global’. Relation-
ships between humans and the transculture of bronze
were crucial for maintaining this interconnectivity in
a number of ways. A combination of random flows and
long-distance directional transport contributed to several
trans-regional and intersectional spheres of interaction
within the hyper-region. The intersections should possi-
bly be understood as crossroads, as well as repositories
of tangible and intangible culture and knowledge. Bronze
was democratized over time, in the sense that it was in-
creasingly available to people outside the top of the social
hierarchies and was used in subsistence strategies as well.
At the same time, however, inequalities grew more dis-
tinct and social frictions arose in alignment with periods
of nature-given pressures.
Bronzization divides historically into four phases of
beginning, growth, decline and conclusion, each punc-
tuated by a threshold or tipping point of synchronous
change: c. 2200–2000 BCE, 1600 BCE, 1200 BCE, and
c. 750 BCE. At 2000 BCE a full metal culture permeated
most aspects of human life across the Afro-Eurasian hy-
per-region (cf. Fig. 2), while at 1200 BCE bronzization de-
clined rapidly into shrinkage.
Bronze may be compared to the silver from Central
America which in the sixteenth century CE developed into
the first global monetary system. However, bronze was so
much more than just money and therefore could create
a tighter interconnectivity, while also being available to
people outside the upper societal rungs. Silver linked a
world that for a long time remained fragmented into rival-
ling centres and conflicting imperial powers. This situa-
tion does not overall match the Bronze Age, and could be
more in alignment with the decline period of bronzization
and the Iron Age.
Acknowledgments
This article builds on my own and colleagues’ research
in Bronze Age mobility122, but also on prolonged discus-
sions with anthropology colleagues during a special re-
search initiative at Aarhus University targeting issues
of globalization. This included fieldwork in Papua New
Guinea in 2007 with an ensuing book manuscript123 scru-
tinizing how contemporary globalization impacts people
and culture in Island Melanesia. I am very grateful to my
colleagues for generous exchanges of insights in these dif-
ferent contexts, without which this article would not have
been possible. Additionally, I owe thanks to Ben Roberts
and Jutta Kneisel for permission to reproduce Fig. 1 and 4,
and Louise Hilmar and Carsten Meinertz Risager for help
with the illustrations. An excerpt of the present article
has been submitted to a forthcoming volume at Routledge
about archaeology and globalization (edited by Martin
Pitts).
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