6 The afterlife of the Bronze Age

Abstract

Many aspects of the Bronze Age had a life, as the previous chapters have discussed. People, objects, places and societies all came into being, lived their life, and then passed away. This is what a study of the ancient past consists of – examination of the surviving data, speculating on its meaning, and attempting to understand and describe the phenomena involved. But the lives I have outlined remain shadowy.We cannot experience Bronze Age life directly, certainly not in pre-literate Europe.We may suppose that Bronze Age people experienced emotions and states of mind just as we do; they interacted with their families and their neighbours, some of them also with people from far outside their local environment. They fought each other, and they exercised the arts of peace. The things people made were an integral part of their interaction with the world around them; they brought them into being and were in turn influenced by them. The places that people inhabited were changed by them, and in turn changed them; the turning of space into place is a social act and reflects social dynamics. And the societies in which people lived were dynamic things, changing and shifting as the interactions between people changed and shifted; the people who lived in those societies were in turn influenced by them. These lives went on in parallel with the developments in technology and economy that characterise the 1700 years with which I have been concerned. The achievements of the Bronze Age are most easily seen in the craftsmanship of the products of the period, some of which are spectacular. In bronzework, it may be objected that China led the way; nothing in Europe compares with the extraordinary and intricate vessels and figures produced during the Shang Dynasty, coeval with much of the European Bronze Age. Nevertheless, the Trundholm sun chariot, the lurs of Scandinavia or the horns and crotals of Ireland, show a mastery of the medium that reflects a very high degree of skill. The Bronze Age goldwork of Ireland or Scandinavia, or the gold conical hats of central Europe, are on a par with anything produced in gold in China at the same period. The Nebra disc, while not on the same technical level as these objects, is remarkable in a quite different way, indicating as it does an interest in the heavenly bodies that appears to be both developed and sophisticated. In pre-industrial societies, people were obviously much more aware of the bodies in the night sky than we are today; astronomical knowledge was of course highly developed in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the Nebra disc suggests that there were skilled observers of the night sky in Europe as well. They were also highly skilled in the extraction of minerals from the ground; not just copper and tin, but gold, salt and stone.