ABSTRACT
This book is an examination of the archaeological evidence for the existence of an Atlantic axis of contact and interaction along the north-western coasts of Europe in the first millennium BC.Throughout this period Atlantic Europe was composed of distinctive cultural zones which nonetheless shared, at various times, close links and common socio-cultural attributes.Aspects of settlement, society, and material culture in Atlantic facing areas are examined to provide insight into the existence, scale, and significance of maritime communication between them.The central concern of the book is how far potential maritime links between Atlantic communities could be said to form zones of similarity (zones in contact) and what effect such contact may have had on the distinctive character of local communities. At what points in the sequence can socio-cultural similarities be explained as the result of contact and, conversely, at what points are these apparent similarities over-exaggerated and more likely to be due to parallelism or development from a common background?
