ABSTRACT
In the following an attempt is made to explore the significance of applying a world system concept to the Bronze Age. It will be argued that as a heuristic device it may help us to rethink the nature of international connections that characterised Bronze Age Europe and beyond. From approximately 2000 BC onwards, the expansion of international exchange accelerated the pace of change between regional cultural traditions, and-by the very nature of bronze technology-created a dependency in terms of supplies of metal and know-how between different regions that added a new dimension to change and tradition. A changed balance of international exchange relations might now affect local and regional polities hundreds or even thousands of kilometres apart. Although regional traditions were maintained, by recontextualising new information into their cultural idioms (for example, Nordic, Atlantic or Lausitz cultural traditions), they rested upon a common stock of metallurgical know-how and common traditions of social and religious value systems that accompanied the flow of bronze.
