The exceptional concentration of Late Hallstatt chieftain burials on the upper Danube and upper Rhine lasted only to the beginning of the 5th century bce, when decentralization set in, but it had played a role in a period when relations within Europe were transformed. During the Bronze Age, Europe was roughly divided into two worlds: the eastern Mediterranean and temperate Europe, each with a common cultural heritage. With the Iron Age, the fragmentation and diversification of temperate Europe began, while the eastern Mediterranean expanded through a burst of colonial activities that resulted in cultural dominance over an extended but internally diverse area. Prestige and status
The Neolithic was a period of remarkable communal enterprises. Against this background, the emphasis that the Bell Beaker and Corded Ware cultures placed on the individual constituted a radical change. The British archaeologist Colin Renfrew characterized the change as one from “group orientation” to “individualized chiefdom,” and this change was essential for the emerging Early Bronze Age communities. In the Late Neolithic, collective burials disappear from European prehistory in favour of individual graves. The form of the grave and the character of the funerary ceremonies changed substantially during the Bronze and Iron ages. The common and widespread use of cremation introduced by the Urnfield Culture is an important indication of the potential for radical changes within this realm. Throughout the period, the individual remained the focus of the funerary ceremony, and the evidence suggests that prestige and status often were communicated through the wealth and types of objects found in graves. It is debated whether the differences between individuals that this suggests were classlike and absolute, were expressions of sex, age, and lineage differentiation, or were assigned through deeds rather than ascribed at birth. The changes through time suggest increased social differentiation, but there also are periods, such as the Urnfield Culture, in which social differentiations are less obviously expressed in graves. The grave can, therefore, be used mainly to establish relative differentiation within one community rather than pronouncing absolute historical trends. One such study comes from the cemetery at Branč, where 308 inhumation graves spanning 200 to 400 years of the early Unetician Culture were analyzed. Within the graves there was clear evidence of internal differentiation, with some individuals having more elaborate grave goods than others. This suggests that in this type of community there would be leading families, marked by their grave goods, and that wealth and status would tend to be inherited through the male line (since male children had richer grave goods than female children). Females obtained rich costumes during adolescence and young adulthood, possibly at the time of their marriage. The status expressed at this period was to a large extent relational, placing each member of the community according to lineage, sex, and age. This differentiation was not directly based on access to power, possessions, or absolute wealth, and, in most areas of temperate Europe, social differentiation until the 1st millennium bce was likely moderate. The exception to this was short-lived local expressions of individual wealth or, more likely, prestige, such as the Wessex graves and the Leubingen-Helmsdorf group, since they suggest single leaders occupying sociopolitical roles, which were symbolized through emblems of power.
Throughout the Bronze Age, sex and age were the main components organizing the structures of daily life. Outside the Mediterranean area, there were few differences between the size and plan of most of the structures within individual sites, although the sites within a region often were internally ranked in terms of size and complexity, which suggests that they had different functions. Such “tiered” settlement systems came into being in the Early Bronze Age in areas such as southeastern Europe, and they were quite prominent during the Late Bronze Age in the Lusatian Culture of Poland and northeastern Germany as well as in the Urnfield Culture of central Europe. This settlement organization probably continued into the Early Iron Age in some regions, such as England, where the hill forts became central places for an agricultural, and possibly also political, upland.
A clear social and political hierarchy was, however, lacking from the Bronze Age settlement pattern. This was particularly true of northern, western, and central Europe, which saw a variety of settlement organizations during the period. There were extended farmsteads in northern and western Europe with a development of enclosed compounds and elaborate field systems in Britain. In central Europe the extended farmsteads were in time supplemented by both unenclosed villages and defended hilltop sites, as was also the case in the area of the Late Bronze Age Lusatian complex in Poland and neighbouring areas. The fortified settlements were usually large planned enterprises, rather than organic village sprawl, and they were often erected over a few years; an example is the Lusatian defended settlement at Biskupin, Pol., where a settlement of 102–106 houses estimated to shelter some 1,000 to 1,200 people was built in just one year. The fortified sites and enclosed villages of the European Bronze Age show centralized decision making and capacities for planning and constructing grand enterprises. Their concern was the whole community rather than the individual household, and communal features such as paths, gates, and wells were well maintained and planned. The superbly preserved Late Bronze Age sites from the Swiss lakes show these communities vividly. The settlement at Cortallois-Est, on Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland, illustrates the main features of such sites: straight rows of equal-sized houses aligning paths and alleyways, with the whole complex contained within a perimeter fence. Each house had a fireplace with a decorated house-alter, or firedog. The rubbish accumulated in front of the entrance, and various activities took place within the house. The sites were densely inhabited, and minor internal differences of objects and structure existed between the houses; but they were not divided into different classes in terms of their wealth, size, or accessibility, although different crafts and trades may have made up quarters within the village. These Late Bronze Age villages did not contain any structures that could be interpreted as administrative centres or as religious offices.
A different form of organization is found throughout the Early Bronze Age in southeastern Europe and in southeastern Spain. Both areas had nucleated defended settlements during this period, and there appears to have been some differentiation of the houses in terms of function and size. A tendency toward centralization is demonstrated by the Early Bronze Age site at Spišsky Štvrtok. This was a fortified site of economic, administrative, and strategic importance. An oval area, enclosed by a ditch and rampart, was differentiated into an acropolis and a settlement area, with the houses of the acropolis built using a different technique. The amount of gold and bronze objects hidden in chests under the floors of the houses in the settlement area further suggests that there were economic and social distinctions among the inhabitants.
The important exception to this picture is the eastern Mediterranean, which underwent a rapid and dramatic social development during this period, permanently severing its cultural affinity with temperate Europe. At a time of modest stratification in the rest of Europe, the first European civilization—as defined by administration, bookkeeping, writing, urbanism, and the separation of different kinds of power—arose in the Aegean. Its background was the Neolithic cultures of the 3rd millennium bce, which were closely aligned with those of temperate and southeastern Europe. The Neolithic roots alone cannot explain the development in the Aegean, and there is no convincing evidence for external influences behind these changes in Greece nor is there basis for arguing for a migration. Local factors must have caused development to follow a different route in this area.