Europe before History (New Studies in Archaeology) by Kristian Kristiansen ISBN 13: 9780521552271

Cambridge University Press, 1998 4to (25.5 cm), xxix, 506 pp. Publisher's cloth and dust jacket (blank leaves at the back somewhat creased, canceled stamp of an institutional library on the title). From the blurb: "The societies of the European Bronze Age produced elaborate artifacts and were drawn into a wide trade network extending over the whole of Europe, even though they were economically and politically undiversified. Kristian Kristansen attempts to explain this paradox using a world-systems analysis, and in particular tries to account for the absence of state formation. He presents his case with a powerful marshalling of the evidence across the whole of Europe and over two millennia. The result is the most coherent overview of this period of European prehistory since the writings of Gordon Childe and Christopher Hawkes. A great strength of this book is the broad European perspective, which allows the author to address some of the larger questions that have been raised in the study of… Read More