Could the circulation of objects or ideas and the mobility of artisans explain the unprecedented uniformity of the material culture observed throughout the whole of Europe? The 17 papers presented here offer a range of new and different perspectives on the Beaker phenomenon across Europe. The focus is not on Bell Beaker pottery but on social groups (craft specialists, warriors, chiefs, extended or nuclear families), using technological studies and physical anthropology to understand mobility patterns during the 3rd millennium BC. Chronological evolution is used to reconstruct the rhythm of Bell Beaker diffusion and the environmental background that could explain this mobility and the socio-economic changes observed during this period of transition toward Bronze Age societies.

The chapters are mainly organised geographically, covering Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean shores and the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula, includes some areas that are traditionally studied and well known, such as France, the British Isles or Central Europe, but also others that have so far been considered peripheral, such as Norway, Denmark or Galicia. This journey not only offers a complex and diverse image of Bell Beaker societies but also of a supra-regional structure that articulated a new type of society on an unprecedented scale.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Introduction. A Folk who will never speak: Bell Beakers and linguistics
• Chapter 2: Bell Beakers and Corded Ware people in the Little Poland Upland – an anthropological point of view
• Chapter 3: Personal identity and social structure of Bell Beakers: the Upper Basins of the Oder and Vistula Rivers
• Chapter 4: Bell Beaker stone wrist-guards as symbolic male ornament. The significance of ceremonial warfare in 3rd millennium BC central Europe
• Chapter 5: The earlier Bell Beakers: migrations to Britain and Ireland
• Chapter 6: Bell Beakers – chronology, innovation and memory: a multivariate approach
• Chapter 7: The long-house as a transforming agent. Emergent complexity in Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age southern Scandinavia 2300–1300 BC
• Chapter 8: Expanding 3rd millennium transformations: Norway
• Chapter 9: The Bell Beaker Complex: a vector of transformations? Stabilities and changes of the indigenous cultures in south-east France at the end of the Neolithic Period
• Chapter 10: The dagger phenomenon: circulation from the Grand-Pressigny region (France, Indre-et-Loire) in western Europe
• Chapter 11: Long-distance contacts: north-west Iberia during the 3rd millennium BC
• Chapter 12: Early gold technology as an indicator of circulation processes in Atlantic Europe
• Chapter 13: Environmental changes in north-western iberia around the Bell Beaker period (2800–1400 cal BC)
• Chapter 14: Evidence of agriculture and livestock. The palynological record from the middle Ebro valley (Iberian peninsula) during the 3rd and 2nd millennia cal. BC
• Chapter 15: Bell Beaker pottery as a symbolic marker of property rights: the case of the salt production centre of Molino Sanchón II, Zamora, Spain
• Chapter 16: Exploring social networks through Bell Beaker contexts in the central Valencia region from recent discoveries at La Vital (Gandía, Valencia, Spain)
• Chapter 17: Dynamism and complexity of the funerary models: the north-west Iberian peninsula during the 3rd–2nd millennia BC
• Chapter 18: Concluding remarks