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Settlement, Landscape and Social Identity: The Early‐Middle Bronze Age Transition in Wessex, Sussex and the Thames Valley
Author(s) -
Brück Joanna
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
oxford journal of archaeology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.382
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1468-0092
pISSN - 0262-5253
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0092.00110
Subject(s) - bronze age , subsistence agriculture , settlement (finance) , archaeology , period (music) , history , identity (music) , bronze , geography , ancient history , ethnology , agriculture , art , world wide web , computer science , payment , aesthetics
In southern England, the end of the Early Bronze Age is marked by the appearance of archaeologically visible farmsteads and field systems. This paper explores and critiques the widespread idea that these changes are the direct result of a need to intensify agricultural production. Such discussions have implicitly drawn on evolutionist images of economic maximization and environmental exploitation that do not sit easily with our knowledge of other aspects of Bronze Age society. In this paper, I shall consider economic change as a consequence rather than the cause of wider changes to the social fabric at this time. A review of the Early and Middle Bronze Age settlement evidence provides insights into how society became transformed over the period and begins to hint at some of the reasons why subsistence practices changed so visibly.