Old Father Time: The Bronze Age Chronology of Western Europe

Description

In book: The Oxford Handbook of European Bronze Age, Chapter: 2 — Oxford University Press, 2013. — pp. 17-46.The creation of a chronology that spans the mid third millennium BC to the early first millennium BC and encompasses western Europe—defined here as the modern countries of Spain, Portugal, France, Ireland, Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands—remains a work in progress rather than a finished product. The absence of any written records has meant that scholars have always had to rely upon distinguishing distinct material or architectural phases at relatively well-excavated and published sites. These sites are then used to build chronological schemes which they would subsequently apply across broader, and less well-studied, regions.The current chronologies for the western European Bronze Age are a product of over a century of scholarship where frameworks based on relative and absolute dating techniques, frequently relying on different materials and sites, have accumulated but have not always been integrated. Each country has distinct histories and traditions of archaeological research, contrasting archaeological remains, differing regional and national chronological schemes, and a varying enthusiasm for revising or redefining chronologies.It is therefore only possible to provide an introduction and overview of the current state of knowledge of the Bronze Age in western Europe. For the purposes of simplicity and space, the chronological framework of each country will be outlined in one of three groups according to proximity and similarity in dating sequences: Britain and Ireland; Netherlands, Belgium, and France; and Iberia.