The meetings of the most significant archaeological association of
Europe, the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA), provide each
year an outstanding opportunity for dialogues between scholars of
various countries and backgrounds. At the 16th meeting, held in
September 2010 in The Hague, The Netherlands, Volker Heyd, Gabriella
Kulcsár and Vajk Szeverényi organized a full-day conference session
focusing on interregional contacts and social, economic and cultural
change in the third millennium BC in and around the Carpathian Basin.
This book was prepared based on the papers given at this session. The 13
articles of this volume, all written in English, discuss problems of
transition and change from the Late Copper to the Early Bronze Age, that
is more than a millennium from the later 4th to the end of the 3rd
millennium BC. The book highlights temporal and spatial dynamics in the
interregional interactions and communication networks among various
societies of that period. Traditional typo-chronological approaches are
supplemented by the results of absolute dating, anthropological and
biochemical investigations and statistical analyses. Also new finds and
materials are presented and new perspectives offered. The publication of
the volume will certainly promote communication between the
archaeological schools of western and east Central Europe, providing new
aspects for future research as well. It will likewise contribute a great
deal to our knowledge about the Carpathian Basin in the third millennium
BC so important in bridging the prehistoric east and southeast to the
west of the Continent.
